House of Dominoes

Today Gabriel built a replica of our house using dominoes!

Dolls, Fairies, and Popcorn

Early in the afternoon Orianna and Josephine played with eachother and with their respective dolls. Here they are, all four, swinging together.

Later on the imaginary play of the day was that the children were all in Pixie Hollow, part of Tinkerbell's fairy world.

Here Ryan, Eden, and Marie enjoy a late afternoon snack of popcorn and apples.

Happy Birthday, Eden!

Today was Eden's 8th birthday. Yesterday Katie had talked about surprising her with a party, but we didn't have any concrete ideas of exactly what to do. After school today we were all sitting out by the field at school, enjoying the beautiful sunshine, when my phone rang. It was Melanie, Eden's mom. She told me she wanted to get ice cream to bring over to share with everybody and wanted to know what time would be best. I told her what time, but then purposely didn't tell Eden about the phone call. I told Katie about it, and we decided to make it part of the surprise.

Once home, party preparations were soon underway. Katie enlisted everyone to help in decorating the playhouse. All the children made birthday cards for Eden and signs to hang up.

Eden was made to stay in the bedroom so she wouldn't see the preparations. Surely she knew what was happening (as we do this whenever a child's birthday falls on a family child care day), so she patiently lay in Josephine's bed and strung beads.

When Melanie arrived, we made sure to keep it a secret from Eden, and we took her around the side yard into the backyard to hide in the playhouse with all the kids. I went to get Eden, to reveal the surprise. She knew that all the kids would be in the playhouse waiting for her, but she was thrilled to discover her mother there as well (with a vast array of ice cream!).

Katie helped to scoop up the ice cream (so many flavors to choose from!) . . .

. . . and the birthday girl enjoyed the celebration . . .

. . . as did everyone else!

Painted Pencils

Over the weekend I found a package of unpainted pencils amongst my seemingly endless supply of art materials. We took out the acrylic paints, and they all busily painted their pencils.

Once we ran out of pencils, the enthusiasm for painting things was not quite satisfied, so they they painted anything in sight.

Here are the finished pencils . . . what fun!

Lite-Brites in the Dark

It was a very calm and quiet Wednesday morning. We usually have 5 kids here, but this morning it was just Jack and Luke.

They turned the lights off in the bedroom, closed the curtains, and played with the Lite-Brites in the dark. Unfortunately, when I took the picture with the flash, it didn't look a bit dark . . .

. . . and then without the flash, this is all I got:

Nectarine Blossoms!

Just a week ago our nectarine tree seemed just about to burst, as it was loaded with tiny pink buds . . .

. . . and now it has exploded into what looks like a bunch of pink popcorn.


Here are the buds, just before opening . . .


. . . and here is the first flower!

Boys' Fort

The boys spent this morning building and playing in a fort in the nice, quiet, and dark bedroom . . . spooky!