Glitter Paint

Kids LOVE to paint. They do! I would be a liar if I didn't admit to cringing at the thought of getting out the paints.   Covering the table and floor with paper, covering the kids with aprons,  painting shirts, full body hazmat suits...  And then there is the clean up! Yikes!  Don't even get me started on the clean up...  :)

 So when I was attended a class that introduced a very simple glitter paint recipe I sat up straighter and took out my pen to copy it down.  Turns out I didn't need to write it down.  It's so easy... Two ingredient!  That's it!  Cheap, easy, and no paint stains!  Best of all the kids LOVE to paint with it!  It's better than regular paint, cause it has GLITTER in it. Who knew?

What you need:
One large bottle of clear -the  cheapest you can find - hair gel, extra fine glitter in a variety of colors, paint brushes, and small clear containers with lids - check you local craft store.

Pour the glitter in the bottom of the containers, cover with gel and stir.  And let them PAINT!

 How fun is that?

Easy peasy, cleans up in a snap, no stains, and did  I mention it has glitter in it?






Happy painting everyone!

Pre-school, Toddlers, and More!

Snack sized Pringles cans work great for word worm cans.

My pre-school kids are working on emergent reading and writing.  To work on letter recognition, and writing letters and words, we use our word worm cans to recognize sight words. Each child's word worm can contains words that pertain to the interests of that child. They give the can a shake, pull a word out and identify it. They also copy the words from their worms onto a sheet of writing paper. 

 Another thing we've started doing during our pre-school time is book writing. We've written a variety of simple "reading" books for the kids to take home and read to their parents.

When I introduced book writing to the kids we decided on a few rules. First, each book must have a cover with the author's name on it. Second, each child as an author gets to choose the content - picture they draw - of their book. And Third, each book must be at least two pages long.

 The kids draw the pictures, I help them spell the words, and they put as many pages - at least two - into their books as they like.

This book is an example of the "Turkey, Turkey, What do You See?" books we wrote for Thanksgiving.

With my two year olds - actually all my kids want a turn - we've been working with Sensory Boxes. One week we did sea shells with colored rice.


Coloring rice:  Add about 1 tsp rubbing alcohol and several drops of food coloring along with rice to a zip lock bag then spread out to dry.

The following week we did moon sand with dinosaurs.  The moon sand was a tad on the messy side, but the kids LOVED it.


Moon sand: 8 cups flours and 1 cup baby oil.

And then we did different types of dried beans with scoops, small backhoes, diggers and dump trucks.

For our really little ones we introduced our milk cap game. They enjoyed putting the caps in, opening the container, and then dumping them out so they could do it all over again.  I have also done this one with different sized pom poms.

Dyed Noodles and Rice

Dying rice and noodles is quick, affordable, and best of all super easy. All you need is rubbing alcohol, food coloring, ziplock bags and of course noodles and rice.

 Put about a teaspoon of rubbing alcohol into a ziplock bag along with a shot of food coloring (the more food coloring the more intense your finished product will be), add between a half and three quarter cup of rice or noodles, remove the excess air and seal the bag.

Smash the contents around until everything is evenly colored.  Then spread out in a pan to dry. Drying takes about a half an hour. Then you are ready to have fun!

Note: I did not dye the rice and noodles with the kids because little noses like to be right in the action and the fumes of the rubbing alcohol are kind of strong.

Finished noodles in an array of colors. The black and orange ones we strung onto pipe cleaners and made fall bracelets.

One of the things I strive to do when doing any art project is to divide it into two parts. The first part  works on listening and following directions skills and the second part of the project is left open to the creativity of the artist. In this case we did a simple color by letter. After which they they got to glue dyed noodles anywhere on the pumpkin, in any pattern or combination they wanted.  Nothing fancy, but they loved it so much that we did the whole thing over again later in the day.

Playing with dyed rice and sea shells in the sensory box.  Little "short attention spanners" will sit for very long periods of time sifting, scooping and dumping.

Dyed noodles and rice are fall fun for everyone!



printable color by letter and other fun activities are available at:   http://www.2teachingmommies.com

Self Serving Cereal

Half honey Nut Cherrios and half regular mixed and ready to scoop.

 One of the many day to day challenges of running a daycare is feeding a lot of kids all at the same time.  Breakfast is especially challenging because my families arrive at different times and at different stages of morning wakefulness. Some kids are revved up and ready to face the day from the minute their eyes pop open while others need time to fully wake up before they can embrace the day.

When I first opened my daycare I was resolved to serve only homemade meals... including breakfast meals. I made pancakes from scratch, old fashioned oatmeal, scrambled eggs,  etc.

The problems with this were many. First these breakfast choices were labor intensive and required a lot of my attention while kids were arriving, some revved up, some pouty and flopping around in despair over being ripped out of their comfy beds too soon, while still others are clingy and in need of morning snuggling.  None of these scenarios are conducive -  on their own or collectively - for me to be working over a hot stove.

Also, and most importantly, the kids did not want these things for breakfast.  Don't misunderstand, most of my kids like all these foods and will eat them at lunch or snack, but they don't consider them breakfast.

Go figure! But as I thought about it I realized that I had never made these things for breakfast for my kids when they were little, nor did my parents make them for us at breakfast time. In my childhood home pancakes were a supper food! So who did I think I was kidding?

Now I know that there are plenty of people out there who really do make and eat these things for breakfast in the mornings, which is partly why it had been so important for me to do big breakfasts, but I found out fast that it just wasn't working for me.

What my daycare kids wanted was cereal.  Lots and lots of cereal. A bowl here, a bowl there, most of the kids in my care will consume at least three bowls

of cereal during the course of the morning.  And then beg me to serve cereal for morning snack! So grudgingly I gave up my home grown idea of big breakfasts and bought a LOT of cereal.

My next problem was that I couldn't get more than two steps away from the cereal cupboard at any given time in the morning. "Tammy! I need cereal!!" became a morning war cry.  I would just finish putting everything away when the next wave of hungry savages trooped up to the table and demanded sustenance. There had to be a better way... I needed a way for the kids to self-serve this high demand morning meal.  Preferably without turning my kitchen into a disaster area.

I put my thinking cap on and this is what I came up with.  A mini breakfast bar in the kitchen! I have a corner cupboard that is too shallow for a lazy susan or to be of any real storage use, but is perfect for kids dishes, bowls, cups, plates etc.  The best part being that its so shallow the kids' stuff cannot get pushed too far back and nothing is out of reach, not even for the littlest ones.

So now when I buy cereal I pour it all into a big bowl and scoop half cup servings into a ziplock bag - snack sized works best.  I keep a variety of cereals in a large bowl in the cupboard and the excess in the pantry to refill the bowl as needed. When the kids are ready for breakfast in the morning they can go into the cupboard get a bowl, spoon, cup and their choice of cereal and bring it all to the table. When they are situated I pour them milk, round off their meal with a serving of fruit and viola! Self serve!!!!

The rules are simple, no horsing around with the things inside the cupboard, one bag of cereal at a time, and no seconds unless they eat it gone.

Since starting this I have greatly expanded the types of cereal I keep on hand and have discovered that most of my kids will choose healthier cereals when they are not being influenced by the box the cereal comes in.

I have also filled a salt shaker with sugar and allow the kids to shake sugar onto cereals that have little or no sugar added, like Rice Krispsies. However I keep the sugar shaker in a different cupboard and they have to ask for it. :)

I also keep their dinner plates in this cupboard - they get their own plates out for lunch - and each child has a water bottle with their name on it that they can fill at any time of the day and bring outside with them during outdoor playtime.

It works out wonderfully!  Yes I wash a few more bowls and spoons doing it this way, and at first there was a little more wasted cereal as the kids were adjusting to the freedom of choosing, but all in all it is a win for everyone.  And don't worry, I still do homemade and healthy for snacks and lunches!

Play Dough Saved my Sanity

This year winter drug its frozen heavy feet at a glacial pace.  With no snow to play in, cold dreary mornings slowly merged into cold dreary afternoons.  The kids were out of sorts, stir crazy and boiling over with pent up energy. Nothing held their interest for more than a few minutes before they resorted back into the ever popular, and yet simple, game of racing from one end of the house to the other at warp speed, volume maxed out.

I'll be the first to admit that normally in a household with one or two children this would be acceptable, even cute in a “ahhh don’t they just about drive you crazy" kind of way, but when your household is a daycare and you have ten children under foot at any given time, this game gets old fast.  I needed to dig into my bag of tricks and find productive things for these wonderful children to do with all that extra energy. Unfortunately I was suffering a bit from the winter doldrums as well and having a hard time coming up with something new and inventive to keep the little ones occupied.

   

My first idea was to keep them busy with projects. I decided that with outside play off the table I wasn't structured enough with my daycare schedule. Foot loose and fancy free was totally okay in the summer time when there was the whole great outdoors to keep them entertained, but in this cold, dead, snowless winter, less was not proving to be more.  In short, there was too much free time in our day and all I needed to do was fill this gap and the gang of screaming banshies would be disbanded. 

This course of action worked well, for a while.  The kids love working on crafts and projects, especially if they can glue and use markers, but this solution took up a lot of "my" free time.   Evenings spent planning, preparing and shopping for supplies for new things to do to fill what I’d affectionately come to view as the “witching hour”.  That point in the day where all the toys have been played with and discarded, disagreements break out, they are tired, hungry and inevitably they begin to suffer from classic "ants in the pants gotta run until they shake loose" syndrome.

So, while I was effectively keeping them busy with all kinds of crafty things to do, I soon realized that I had gone into overboard.   I, and more importantly, the kids were burning out.  I'd forgotten my own philosophy - daycare isn't supposed to be school. That's what "school" is for.   The kids weren't simply getting tired of all the project work, they were down right sick of it and had taken to throwing themselves onto the floor and crying out "NOOOOOOOO" every time I mentioned the word project, and I had to admit that this wasn't totally the solution I was looking for.

So okay, keep doing projects, but scale back, hmmm what else could we add in to fill up those hard to deal with hours? 

It wasn't too long after the "Project Experiment" that I had an ah ha moment!  It was the strike of a lightening bolt zapping me on the forehead.  Apps! I needed apps and I needed them now.  Everyone talks about them, everyone plays them, they are the latest and greatest electronic obsession. I needed kid friendly apps to keep those squirmy wormy bodies in check. 

I started downloading apps onto my Nook Tablet with abandon. I got a drawing pad, interactive books, a zoo, several abc games and activities, a live feed to a penguin exhibit at a California Zoo, and yes Angry Birds. The kids LOVED it! They were obsessed! All of them were now clambering for first dibs at the Nook.  And there-in lay my next problem. Ten kids – one Nook… I think you can see where I’m going with this. Yes it settled down the child who was actually playing with the Nook, and it had the potential to entertain that child until the kingdom came, but it left the other nine fighting over who was next and who got to sit next to the lucky gamer as he/she pot-shot pigs with funny looking round birds who for some unknown – at least to me - reason were angry. 

So keep the Nook, keep the projects, but still what to do? I added magnetic dolls, Polly Pockets, puzzles, lacing - they hated the lacing -, magnetic mazes, the list goes on and on... 

They liked all of these things, well except for the lacing, but it was like watching a swarm of busy bees in the flower garden. They would flit from one activity to the next, sometimes not even playing with what they'd gotten out before moving on to the next activity. I had taken them into activity overdrive. There were so many things to choose from, that they wanted to choose them all and ended up playing with none.

I needed one simple thing, not twenty. Something that could be spontaneous, quick to set up, and that all my kids loved and could do at the same time with minimal supervision… I was at a loss, and the winter weather was not improving.   Not a fan of snow personally, the lack of it was a challenge. Who wanted to go outside onto a play area of brown dead grass and stare at a frozen sandbox?

One evening, sipping a glass of Merlot and trying to unwind, I was scrolling through Pinterest when a picture of homemade play dough popped up. I wasn’t totally impressed, after all I had raised my own kids and playdough was that taboo stuff that used to put me and my own mom before me into cleaning frenzies.  It gets stuck in kids’ hair, smashed into the carpeting and the upholstery of every piece of furniture in the house, armies of little play dough pieces can migrate across the entire ground floor of your home in no time...  but, even still, it WAS fun to play with… perhaps it might provide an afternoon or two of entertainment.  After all, at this point, what did I have to lose?

So the next morning I got out the ingredients, my big pot and cooked up a batch. After getting input from the kids we dyed the play dough blue and VIOLA!  The rest - as they say - is history.

The children were beyond intrigued, they were sitting at the table – all of them - quietly playing with the stuff like it was the greatest invention since… well ever.  They were fascinated with all the different things you can do with the stuff, and face it there's a lot. You can mold it. Shape it. Roll it. Ball it. Cut it. Smash it. Hide things in it.  Make things out of it. There is NO limit to what a little mind can imagine with a hunk of play dough in front of them.

My play dough epiphany happened three months ago and I still have to keep the bag on the kitchen counter at all times because the fascination continues to burn strong. One batch lasts about two weeks, and each child in my care plays with it at least once a day.

Now don't get me wrong, the kids still love doing projects, they still play angry birds on the Nook, polly pockets, puzzles, all of that good stuff, but there is always at least one child at the table with a mound of shapeable dough in front of them creating, imagining, and playing quietly.  It seems that play dough has become the great equalizer. These days it is not uncommon to see two kids playing play dough sitting next to one with the polly pockets, sitting next to one playing a game on the nook, sitting next to one coloring a picture with markers. And they are happy, entertained, and engaged. 

So the big question I know you’re burning to ask is: Do they still run like a pack of wild animals through my house from time to time? You bet, they’re kids after all.  But when the Tasmanian Devils within are released I know it won’t be long before I can rein them back in with the prospect of a bit of dough. Besides, summer is almost here and running wild is an art form of summer fun!

Safe Non-toxic Air Fresheners

I love arts and crafts and all the cute pictures you can make in a daycare setting, but one of my goals is to work on doing more science orientated projects. Now I'm not talking about working up to what back in my day was the dreaded ninth grade "Sludge" test. I want to expose my kids to simpler things, things that maybe we don't even realize are science.  So when I came across this recipe for an all natural, non-allergenic air freshener my little wheels started spinning. Science project that ends in something pretty and useful, and - dare I say it - smells great! I couldn't wait to get started.

These are the ingredients we used:
1 oz or 4 envelopes gelatin
2 cups water (one cup boiling one cup cold)
1 tablespoon salt
food coloring
10 drops essential oil in each jar
(I used Young Living Oils because they are pure and can be ingested)
Each batch fills two pint sized jars.

 Then we all sat down at the table and talked about smells and how some are good and some are bad and we also talked about mixing things together to make something that is different than what you started with. I let the kids smell the oil I'd chosen for our project. Citrus Fresh, and they decided it smelled good. Then we got down to business, and I explained what we would need to do to make our project successful.  I explained to my kids that there would be parts of the project they can do and parts they would have to watch me do and we talked about using our patience while we waited for our turns. And as always they came through for me by listening and waiting patiently and not complaining.

The first thing I had the kids do was take turns putting the gelatin into the mixing bowl. (Since there were six kids there that day we made a triple batch.) Then we added the salt (whose purpose is to deter the growth of mold).  Setting that aside I put the water on to boil. Each child then added ten drops of essential oil to a pint sized jar and food coloring of their choice.  Then I whisked the hot water with the gelatin and added the cold water. I helped each child fill their jars and mix in the oil and food coloring. I had asked the kids earlier what color they thought the oil smelled like, and they all agreed it smelled yellow or orange.  Interestingly, when it came down to picking a color, half reverted to their favorite colors and half went with what the smell reminded them of.  :)

After everyone's jars were stirred we wrote names on the lids and carefully screwed the covers on and set them on the counter to cool . Since oil does not mix with water we set a timer to shake our jars after twenty minutes. Then we stuck them in the fridge and gave them another shake twenty minutes later for good measure. Everyone's turned out awesome!  The kids had a fun time and were very proud of their projects. Go Science!

Magnetic Chalkboard

What can you make with a $10 drip pan from Wal-Mart and chalkboard paint? Well a magnetic chalkboard of course! Surprisingly the hardest part of this venture was finding blackboard chalk. Once we located some chalk we were all set for playing school, writing notes, free drawing, and so much more. And best of all I'd finally found a place where the letter magnets could live. The front of my fridge has never looked so clean and clutter free.  Then I decided I wanted to take my new activity area to the next level.

Thinking along the lines of a story board I printed off different farm pictures, had them laminated, cut them out and stuck a magnet on the back. Viola! My little kids love to rearrange, name and play with the farm animals and the big kids enjoy doing story rounds. "On the farm today..." is how we start and everyone gets to take a turn deciding what's going to happen on the farm next. It's so much fun watching their minds work on developing their next story line and seeing them think about, process, and then approve of where their peers have taken the story is truly amazing. I'm already thinking about what other kinds of story boards we could create... sky's the limit!