A Busy End to a Busy Week

This morning Matthew got to try out the melted wax painting. He made two paintings: one for himself and one for his brother Andrew.

Josephine and Eden took out all the paper and heart punches and made Valentines cards.


Later on Josephine relaxed in the livingroom and crocheted.

And at the end of the day, the children asked for the hot glue gun stuff and had a great time creating.

Weeding in the Garden

This afternoon we finally got around to working out in the garden. I put "weeding around the bird bath" on the agenda for this week in an attempt to start getting the garden ready for spring. Once we get all the beds cleared out, we can start planting. Gabriel and Eden were great helpers in clearing out the dead nasturtiums and the dead daylilies, as well as a host of weeds.

Here are the dead daylilies which we cleared out . . .

. . . to then discover new growth underneath all the dead leaves. It looks like we'll surely have daylilies again this spring.

Ria enjoyed being outside with us and had fun going inside the bamboo teepee.

Later on, Ria, the great imitator, relaxed on the chair with Gabriel.

Snake Ties and Temporary Tattoos

Yesterday I rotated all the toys. This is something I'd intended to do every month but have now gone several months without doing so. I have bins and bins of toys out in the garage, so I put away what had been out and took out "new" toys. Well, it took Iain less than five minutes to discover the change this morning. All the snake ties were soon out to the great enjoyment of Jack and Iain.

All the excitement of the new toys meant a very large mess to clean up before school. We put on Rock Lobster, cleaned it all up in a hurry, and then even had a little time leftover for some dancing before we left.

Ria enjoyed hearing Rock Lobster as well.

Last week Katie turned the playhouse into a post office, and today it became a tattoo parlor. Unfortunately, there weren't many children here in the afternoon, so Josephine ended up playing the tattoo recipient time and time again.

These photos were taken during Josephine's tattoo sessions. I just had to include them, as I think Ryan's expressions are priceless (and check out the gap-toothed smiles of both Jo and Ryan).

In the end Josephine looked like quite the biker-chick, all "tatted" up.

More Melted Wax Painting and Violin Playing

The fun of melted wax painting continued again today. There's something very relaxing and almost meditative about the melted wax. The "paint" is very vibrant and thick and dries (cools) almost instantaneously. Here are Gabriel, Eden, and Katie experimenting with this new medium.

Later on Katie practiced her violin as Gabriel sat and watched. Meanwhile, inside the others continued painting and asked her to play louder so they could hear as well.

Water Globes and Melted Wax Painting

Now we begin week 2 of the renewed blog . . . there's so much to report! As the kids arrived this morning, the posted planned activities were:

This Week
At Children’s Garden
January 26-30
*Heart Collage Valentines
*Melted Wax Painting
*In the Garden- Weeding around Bird Bath

But first, the water globes are ready and going home! What seemed like a fun and simple project ended up being extremely complicated. As I glued the lids on, they were not completely watertight, but the glue took so fast that I couldn't unscrew them to fix them! Sven then used silicone caulking along the edges -- twice! -- and this took several days to cure. So here are a few photos of some of the waterglobes.

Some chose a woodland scene with deer and evergreen trees . . .

. . . some chose oceanic themes with either whale heads or tails and a blue tint to the water . . .

. . . and then Lucas clever combined the two themes by using a whale head, blue tinted water, and a "Christmas tree" decorated, appropriately enough, with tiny seashell ornaments. It turned out rather lovely.

So today we started our melted crayon painting experiment. It started with an old mini-muffin pan and a whole bunch of old broken crayons in a variety of colors.

They spent some time in the oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit . . .

. . . and soon started melting into little wax pools . . .

. . . and then were placed onto an electric griddle to be kept warm. Cotton swabs were used as disposable paintbrushes.

Nicholas, Luke, and Gabriel were the first to try it out, and it was a great success.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Today ended up being a wonderfully light day. For most of the time there were only Josephine, Iain, and Ria. Since I’ve taken care of Iain and Ria from before the family child care was in operation, it was sort of a lovely return to the olden days and a chance for Iain and Jo to play one-on-one. Iain wasn't interested in the projects, but in the mail that day I’d gotten an advertising flyer that had a bunch of pennies printed on one side. As I was about to drop it into the trash, I suddenly saw how cool it would be to a 6-year-old and saved it for Josephine. Well, I showed her and Iain how they could use the large circle punch to cut out the pennies, and they spent an amazingly long amount of time working on making their pennies. It was a wonderful day to end a wonderful week.

Election Day

Thursday turned out to be much like Tuesday, where thanks to Katie, my planned projects were shelved for a much more interesting activity. This time it was election day. Katie, Eden, and Josephine decided to run for president. They planned the election, made posters,

created separate voting booths out of manila folders,

created ballots and a ballot box, . . .

. . . and the two older girls composed speeches.

The girls also made little trinkets to be handed out to the kids after their speeches.

Eden's speech:

Katie's speech:

Josephine's speech:

After each girl gave her speech, all the kids all rushed into the dining room to vote. In the end, there was a tie between Katie and Eden. There was then a runoff election, and Katie emerged the victor. Everyone was very pleased with the result, even Eden, who was then declared vice president.

Crystal "Hearts"

This week the kids made Borax crystal “hearts.” I was a little worried that I had planned projects which were too closed-ended and that I had done the kids a disservice by creating models (my intention in making the models was to entice them). Well, the first child followed the heart shape, just like the model. Then the next child, Marie, asked if her heart could be made out of two pipe cleaners of two different colors. Of course! She cut them herself and figured out how to create the heart out of two versus one, and was very pleased with the result. Josephine followed Marie's example and made a bicolored heart, and then Lucas asked if he could use three colors. Of course! He made a red, white, and blue pole with a small heart on top in honor of Inauguration Day. In the following days children formed their pipe cleaners into the first letters of their names, double hearts suspended from each other, and the shape of the cross. I’m so glad they made the project their own and were able to see beyond the model.

This turned out to be a wonderfully simple and successful science/art project. We boiled water, and for every cup of water we added three tablespoons of Borax. Borax is commercially sold as a "laundry booster" type of detergent, but basically borax (with a lower case b) is sodium borate (check out Wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax ). The kids formed their pipecleaners into whatever shape they wanted, and then we suspended the shapes in the solution using a string. Within a few hours we could see crystals beginning to form, and then in about 6 to 8 hours, the pipecleaners, along with the bottoms and sides of the container, were completely covered in crystals. For complete instructions, check out:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/winter/crystalsnowflake/

The Letter Writing Club

Right now I'm taking a child development class and have the opportunity to plan my own special project. For my project I am going to work on curriculum planning, putting together 2 or 3 projects to be done throughout the week, and then I will restart the blog which I haven't touched for the last 11 months. I love contributing to the blog, thinking back over our days and sharing them with the families, but on average it was taking about five hours a week and just became too much. But with renewed energy and inspiration, here we are again, and I am so excited to share what we did this week!

As the kids arrived on Tuesday, they were greeted by a paper on the magnet board which read:

This Week
at Children’s Garden
January 20-23

*Recycled Paper Heart Mobiles
*Melted Wax Heart Window Suncatchers
*Borax Heart Crystals

The morning started out very slowly, as it was Inauguration Day, so I didn’t have any of the boys in the morning. After Obama was sworn in, Maya’s and Sam’s mothers dropped them off, and the fun began. Maya was very excited to have a project all ready to go-she’s always looking for something to do. Much time was spent using the pencil sharpeners to obtain crayon shavings, and I think they really enjoyed that part of the process the most. I think they showed an amazing amount of focus for 4-year-olds. They were both very proud of their creations (wax paper/melted crayon hearts) and then moved on to cutting paper with a variety of scissors and then drawing with markers.

After picking up the kids in the afternoon, I explained how there were three projects planned and that they could choose whatever they wanted to do. Once we got home, I showed them the three projects and then explained that there were also envelopes, paper, stickers, and stationery out in the playhouse in case they wanted to play office or post office. “Post office,” Katie declared, “I love playing post office!” I made snack for the kids, and while they ate snack and watched a short show, Katie snuck out to the playhouse, skipping the show and taking her snack out with her. Just before the show ended, Katie re-appeared with 6 letters in hand. She handed one out to each child and told them to wait to read them until the show was over. A few minutes later, the show ended, and the children eagerly tore into the envelopes. Here is one of the letters:

Well, there was an immediate stampede on the playhouse. Katie had created a "mailbox" for each child out of bags, and each had a name on it. I was left inside, alone, so anxious to share my projects with the kids, but I knew that there would be time later today and later this week, and that what they were doing with Katie was just so much fun for all of them. They were practicing their literacy skills all in the guise of play. I know for certain that if I had said, “Okay, everybody, today we’re all going to write letters to each other,” that I wouldn’t have had anywhere near the success that Katie did. I snuck outside for a photo of the excitement, but other than that left them alone until things naturally came to a close.