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.

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:

Guest Contributor: Katie

Today we had our first annual art show market. From yesterday to today we have been making arts and crafts. There was everything from paper drawings to colored cds.

Here is Ryan making our famous colored cds:


This is a sign I made advertising my both. Rachel let me put it on her door only if I took it down after. It says, "Buy from Katie she has awsome stuff," which was very true.


We made all of our stuff by hand. Some of the art took awhile to make. We were allowed to use anything we wanted to use. I am pretty sure that we bought everything there was to buy.

This is a photo of my booth. Eden and I got the biggest booths.The younger kids used stools and chairs. I had made some colored cds, bookmarks made out of string, some cds glued together, and some hot glue gunned art.


Jo sat outside about a hour before the art show even started. I do not know how she did it. She just sat there very patiently and it was cold out there! Jo was one of the kids who managed to fit all of their art on a little stool.

Ryan got the picnic table. His art was colored cds and a lot of them. On the table was Rachel's watering can. He took a cd and voila! -- it projected off the watering can. So then people started buying cds from Ryan, not me. Later we found linoleum in the hot gluing stuff. Then I got an idea that if we propped it up on the table we would have a projecting screen.

Lucas and Iain shared an area in the art show. The way it worked was that you would get your area and would use it to put your art. Iain was not here yesterday, so Lucas got to share his area with Iain. Since Iain did not have a place to put his art, I gave him one of my stools. Iain also got to make some art. So we had the art show later in the day.

I made up some rules like: only these tables can get up when these people are selling, no running, do not say mean things if you do not think the item is priced right.

This is Eden giving Gabe an item. Gabe used up his money a lot so Eden and I gave him some more to buy with.

Eden is giving change to Lucas in this photo. The change part was hard for the kindergartners and 1st graders. So we kind of just did the change part ourselves.

We had wallets to keep our money in. The money was paper. To start off you would get one 5$, four1$s, and 25¢. You would make more money so some of us ended up with about 20$ at the end.

Candle Holders and Rock Candy

This morning Gabriel worked on decorating a baby food jar with glitter glue and sequins. We later put a tea candle inside.

Later on Ria and Maya made candle holders as well.

In the afternoon, we pulled out the first of the rock candy--which Lucas then took home with him.

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.

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.

The Boys

There was great jubilation when we arrived home from school today at the same time that Iain's mother pulled up to drop him off. Iain was thrilled that he was joined by not one, but two boys--Ryan and Lucas!!! They ran around the yard for a few minutes out of sheer excitement and then asked me to get my camera so I could document the wonderful event.

Another Emma and a Happy Iain

This morning we had a new addition . . . Emma R.! Here Emma and Josephine make collages out of clear contact paper and paper cut-outs.

Meanwhile, Iain worked on a Tinkertoy invention/creation that I'm sure had a very interesting name which I have completely forgotten by now.

Still No School . . . Just a Rainy Day

Josephine, Eden, Gabriel, Holger, and Lucas all lean on the couch and watch the rain pouring down outside.

Over the winter break I spent a little time cleaning out my art cabinet and came across an old Polaroid camera. I still had a few packages of (very expired) film, so I handed the camera to the kids and let them take turns until the film was all gone. Each one loved the power of choosing who would be in each photo and then taking the picture. All the pictures turned out completely terrible, by the way, but I think all the fun was in taking and posing for them, anyway.

Eden and Katie look at a magazine together.