Just ranting...

This thanksgiving put me in perspective of why I am grateful for having a job, but more or less teachers don’t get paid enough and if that’s bad enough daycare workers get paid worse than teachers. 

I come from a family of teachers, my dad a retired middle school teacher, my mom a kindergarten teacher and my sister who is also a kindergarten teacher. This weekend has consisted of me helping them out in their classrooms. Today, I helped my mom out in her room by putting up high Christmas decorations that she couldn't reach, switching out holiday books, cutting and gluing activities to be done later in the week. My mom proceeds to thank me over and over of how grateful she is for me helping her out, sure mom I say after all I have been procrastinating by doing my own lesson plans for the month of December. 

I still think we should both be getting paid a lot more by doing all of this extra work. I know,  I buy most of my things for my classroom, mostly not because I have to but I do it out of generosity, and because I like certain things for my room. I've started asking for donations. So please if you donate, know I use it for the classroom and for the children. I could really use some dollar tree gift cards. I buy most of my sensory and art activities at that store. 

Most of my books I buy, I purchase on Ebay through lots. Just a note we will take anything recycled because we have fun with those pop bottles, toilet tubes and let’s not forget scraps that you might just throw out. So why do I just become a teacher and not work in a childcare center....? Because I love working with young children, I love getting to hear their first words, their experience with different things. I love the cuddling and I love being around them, I love my children as if they were my own! 

So I guess in the end be grateful for the things you have in life. I'm grateful for all my parents in letting me care for their children, so thank you!

Easy fun activities to do with toddlers...

Shaking the parachute is a good game to play with the baby bears. They work on holding onto something without letting go. The parachute had little handles to grab onto. I showed them how to put the balls in the middle so when we shook it we would see them bounce. They loved that part!

Today I got out the pom-poms to play with. I bought a jumbo bag. I just have them in a small sensory tub. I also have empty plastic bottles, jars with lids, and spoons included. I decided since I had extra toilet tubes that I would stick them to the side of the changing station including extra slinky's. I showed them how to drop their pom-poms into the tubes and then I put the large pom-poms in the slinky's and let them figure out how to get them out. Who knew this would be such a big hit!

Hard to believe that Monday will be December 1st, with the snow I decided to put up the Christmas Bears. 

Our Cutest Moments:

Happy Thanksgiving

I celebrated my Thanksgiving with my family last night. We did it earlier because my sister is going to her husbands over Thanksgiving. My mom said next year she is not doing this again. I laugh because Jill and I got stuck with the baking part that neither of us are good with, but we made it work and the rolls, stuffing and brownies turned out really good in the end! 

 

We were all about flashcards today. I have colors, shapes and animals we worked really hard putting them into our slotted containers and learning about each one. The toddlers are really good about giving me a certain card that I ask for.

What do you do when you have left over paint, that's right you create more art!

Our Cutest Moments:

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble says the Turkey...

Well these cute little hand print turkeys took me all of nap time to create. It was quite difficult really but I do have to say they are pretty cute on my door! I even had to make myself one!

You might wonder why the baby bears have on different colored mittens. Well that is because we went outside this morning and they got all wet. This is why I ask for 2 sets of mittens, but not to worry dollar tree has these great mittens and they are longer so they will actually roll up over their coats. You might want to just check out if your out this weekend. They are very warm too!

This was my project that I stayed up until midnight working on these last night. It was actually easy putting them together it was the cutting that I dreaded. These will be yours next Wednesday to take home for Thanksgiving.

All week we have been reading this book called "10 fat turkeys" well apparently today, Chance doesn't like it, and fusses every time I try and read it. Sorry buddy, soon we will have Christmas books on our bookshelf!

After nap time I change diapers and I ask them to go get some books so we can read. I was filling out their daily sheets and I looked over and saw them all sitting quietly reading together. It melted my heart!

Today Theo was our dancing boy every time I turned on the music throughout the day Theo was right there dancing. That boy has some cute dancing moves! 

Our Cutest Moments:

My little polar bears!

It was still chilly outside today but we were brave and took the baby bears outside to play in the snow. We had to borrow a few size four snowpants that we managed to roll up. They were pretty bundled up to the point they had trouble walking steadily in the room without knocking over. Although it took us 30 minutes with a lot crying. We got to enjoy 15 minutes of lots of giggling toddlers outside!

I got a great deal on the Thanksgiving cards I had printed out of our turkey pictures. I will have them up on our classroom door tomorrow. They are a gift from me to

 you for Thanksgiving! I think they all turned out really cute! 

For two solid days during naptime, I've been cutting out their little handprints that I am working on creating turkeys with all the donated toilet tissue tubes. So thank you so much, they will be a great table centerpiece for our Thanksgiving feast and yours to take home that day as well!

Our Cutest Moments:

Painting the snow...

Driving in the snow...

Since it's been too cold out to play outside, I brought in snow to play with inside. The deal was though they had to wear mittens to play in it. Once the mittens came off they had to play somewhere else. I think they will keep their mittens on next time we play outside.

We made little snowmen for them to hold onto, but they had more fun trying to eat the snow. I guess there is always some snow eaters in the bunch. We talked about how cold the snow is and practiced saying "brr" and made the sign for it.

Our Cutest Moments:

Theo had discovered reading books, Welcome to the book club Theo!

Brrr. It's cold outside

Mason has officially moved to the 2 year old classroom. He is the last child I have with me since infancy. I've seen him grow so much in the last 2 years. I feel fortunate to have watched him grow up. I have been working on the DVD slideshow for a good-bye gift. 

This freezing weather is not what I signed up for when  I was bragging that I wanted to snow, mainly snow to play in with the kiddo's outside. I don't know if we will even go outside at all this week, if we do it might be Friday. So please bring these winter items to store in your child's cubby: winter coat, snow boots, mittens (2) in case they get wet., hat. We will also be bringing in snow in the sensory tubs this week too! 

Side Note: We will be finger painting with chocolate pudding on Thursday instead. I forgot to pick up the pudding.

Taking care of our hygiene...

Just a note, I have finished doing the toddlers assessments. If you would like to discuss them with me we can go over them and I can also give you a copy as well. Everyone is on target as far as their  development goes! I do these every six months. It has been fun going back and rereading how much they have changed in just six months. And that is why I also take as many pictures as I do!

We have been practicing our teeth brushing today, and reading "Brush like Daddy" book we have about teeth. Today we just used water I will probably pick up some baby toothpaste this weekend. 

We had fun dipping our combs into water and brushing our hair!

Our Cutest Moments:

We're not just playing we're learning!

I love doing this activity with my toddlers because clean up is so easy. Next month I will cut out green and red circles for Christmas.  This is a learning activity about colors and shapes all packed into one. Chance and Alice were my dippers. They were great about dipping their paint brushes into the water so we could paint our windows.

After we did a good job painting the whole window with water we were ready to place our foam shapes to the window. They stick very well and look so pretty with the sunlight coming in.

When it's too cold to play outside that just means we have to finger paint inside one of my favorite activities. We are starting to decorate our walls with hints of Fall artwork. Still collecting those toilet tubes for an art project so keep them coming!

Today at Bible it was Matthew's third birthday, so he stood on a chair and we all sung happy birthday to him. Teagan really loved that song that we heard it all day long. She's our little vocal singer!

So were playing with the fall sensory tub this morning. I look over and see Teagan stuffing her shirt full of pom-poms and my door stop. We have been really working hard on cleaning up our toys apparently she was too!

Of course we have to help out our friends clean up too...

Our Cutest Moments: