Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! I would just like to say thank you for thinking of me during the Christmas season. I love all my gifts, some were very thoughtful! And thanks for getting me extra dollar tree gift cards you know the toddlers love our fun sensory bins!

My parents loved the Vitamix I bought for them. The good thing is I can come over and make smoothies anytime. I made an orange cranberry one that turned out pretty good.

Ingredients

1. 1/2 c orange juice or 1 orange, juiced
2. 1/2 c cranberry juice
3. 1/2 c cranberries, fresh or frozen
4. 1/4 c old-fashioned oats
5. 3 tsp honey
6. 1 c milk

Instructions

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Serve Immediately! 

Rainy Day Fun!

This is our first time doing this with our younger toddlers. Lola remembered because she loved trying to paint every inch of the foil while I was cleaning up! I taught them to paint their bellies with the lotion, they even painted my whole arm. As you can see they are loving rubbing the lotion onto their friends bellies. We will always take a donation of a bottle of lotion. I just used what I had on stock.

Our Snowflakes, yes I also did one! 

Anytime anyone has their shoes off in the baby bears room the toddlers automatically think that the shoes are theirs and try and wear them. I caught these two wanting to wear my boots. They thought they were pretty cool in them!

Our Cutest Moments:

Our Christmas Party

We had a good Friday celebrating a few Christmas type activities with the baby bears. We tasted candy canes as I was sitting with them showing them how to lick them, as soon as they bit down on them I took those pieces away. We probably licked them for a good five minutes. Alice was the only one who cried when I took hers away. Who knew they all liked peppermint?

James brought us in some delicious mini cupcakes for our afternoon snack. They all had about 2 cupcakes as James was sneaky and took a 3rd one while I was cleaning up! 

We had to burn off all our energy by playing in the gym and going outside for a little bit. I had them all in snow pants since they were in thin layers today. I am getting faster now at putting them in their snow gear. Today it only took me 10 minutes instead of usually 20 minutes!

The best part of the day for the toddlers was playing with glow sticks. Who knew it was going to be such a huge hit after nap time today. We watched Kipper's Snow Fun on my laptop during this time. 

Our sensory activity was finger painting with cool whip, as you can tell from the photo you won't see many of the toddlers. For some reason or another the baby bears were not interested and had more fun running around the room during that time in just their diapers. I'm glad the 2's enjoyed painting!

Our Cutest Moments:

Having fun with clean play dough...

I love this recipe for play dough that I found on Pinterest.  It's 1 box of cornstarch and a bottle of any kind of conditioner you have on hand. Today I made candy cane dough for them to explore, we had a few tasters but after the first lick they did not try and eat it again. It was everywhere in the classroom today but it cleaned right off the carpet and made the room smell heavenly. Tomorrow we will have our Christmas party and get to finger paint with cool whip. 

We used birthday candles to poke into the dough. We sang happy birthday to Jesus that's when they decided to try and take a bite of the dough. 

If you can't tell by now, I'm addicted to make cute hand and footprint Christmas crafts. The hand print wreaths were a last minute thing I did during their naps today since they all took nice long ones. 

Our Cutest Moments:

(Be sure to check out our cutest moments in our classroom, I've updated them!)

Christmas Art and Sensory today!

It was too cold to go outside today that we decided to have another sensory activity this afternoon. I was going to put this on their cookies but then figured I would try and see who just liked the taste of gingerbread. I think no matter what they would have eaten it. I told them ahead of time that we could eat this paint, they couldn't seem to stay away from each other's papers during the process.  

We had so much extra stuff left that we invited over Miss Ashley and her 2 year olds to join in on the fun!!!

This morning we did their favorite activity, we painted with rolling marbles in our sensory tub.

Our Cutest Moments:

My Christmas Ornaments

Who doesn't love homemade Christmas Ornaments?! I've been making these little picture abc blocks for about four years now to give out to my parents during the holiday season. Every year I master it just a little better. It's a lot of prep but in the end it seems like I can't stop making them. I also made one for my parents this year of my sisters wedding, which I'm quite proud of.

Please stop by anytime this week to pick up your little keepsake. I will also have story books I bought for the toddlers to give out during our Christmas party on Friday. Don't forget to dress your little one in their Christmas jammies this Friday we will have a fun filled day of climbing on soft climbers, tunnels and parachute game with the 2's! And some yummy treats for our snacks.

Lets not forget our gingerbread cookies I've been promising on making for the toddlers to try. I'm not a great baker mainly because I was never aloud to use flour in the house growing up because of my sisters life threatning wheat allergy. However just recently I received this set of Christmas cookie cutters as a gift. So I decided to make some scratch cookies and use the cutouts. Lets just say, I was quite nervous about this, but it turned out really good. So now I am overloaded with cookies at my place!

Santa's Little Helpers!

We had a lot of fun exploring our Christmas sensory tub. We unwrapped toys in foil, played with sticky bows and had fun throwing tinsel.

We have had a lot of rearranging the furniture from Kai and Chance today. They both like it a certain way. 

I made them make up with each other by posing for a picture on their couch. 

We never did get to try and taste gingerbread this week, so I will have gingerbread cookies for them on Tuesday. We will shake sprinkles onto them.

Our Cutest Moments: