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!

Boys in the Morning . . . Boys in the Afternoon

In the morning, Gabriel, Matthew, and Luke built an elaborate construction using both blocks and dominoes.

After school, Iain and Jack set up their camp around the swingset and made slingshots, amongst other things, out of tape, paper, and string.

Guest Contributor: Eden

Katie invited all the kids to "Club Calm." Everyone enjoyed it.

Katie and I had to make some rules or they would go crazy! I was the "helper." We had a really great time.


Drawing was one of the most faivorite activities. Orianna and Ryan liked drawing.

Katie and Gabriel were playing with the Litebrites while waiting for room at the drawing table.

I had to read because they didn't want to do Litebrites while waiting for drawing, so I read them two books.

Jo got her report card for being very good in Club Calm.

The people who drew and didn't want their pictures let us hang them up on the bulletin board.

Marie, Jo, and Orianna decided to bring out the tunnel and pretend they were animals.

I made puppets from a book that my mom gave me called 365 Things to Do and Make. I had the same idea as Rachel, because she had the same thing in her idea book.

Here are my two girls that I made. The one without the bow is Mary Jane, and the other one with the bow is her sister Fancy Nancy.

Jo decided to make puppets just like I did. I don't know the names of hers.

Here are the back sides of her puppets.

Backyard Exploration

We have a plastic bin in which we keep binoculars, magnifying glasses, bug-catching paraphernalia, compasses, etc. It is Iain's favorite bin, and he asks for it at least once a week, and he asks for it always by calling it "Compass and Stuff," which is now what it is officially called (yes, I put that on the label on the bin). Today, somebody besides Iain asked for this bin. It was Katie. She then asked all the kids if they wanted to go exploring with her. So that was the major activity this afternoon . . . exploring.

Here Jo explores Mamma taking pictures with the camera.

Meanwhile, Lucas worked busily away with the hot glue guns and a large amount of popsicle sticks.

New Hot Gluing . . . Take Two

This morning the boys discovered the new hot gluing supplies (though Iain of course knew this yesterday) and spent the entire morning creating.

New Hot Gluing

Here Ria enjoys coloring from a standing position. Honestly, she was originally in a chair, but had far more interest in drawing after getting down.

Over the weekend I went to RAFT and replenished my supply of hot glue gun craft supplies. Needless to say, Iain was anxious to get started.

Lucas joined Iain at the table and created an elaborate home with multiple rooms.

Meanwhile, the girls enjoyed a quiet afternoon playing with dolls in the bedroom.

Gack, Butterfly Hair, and Baylands Park

There was no school today, and not a very large crowd here at Children's Garden, so we started off the day playing with blue gack and red marbles . . .

Ryan, Iain, and Jo enjoyed their snack out in the playhouse . . .

. . . meanwhile, Katie adorned Ria with approximately a million butterfly clips.

After lunch we explored a new park in Sunnyvale, Baylands Park.

After I took some pictures, Katie borrowed the camera and added these: