A New School Year... New Beginnings!

 I'm back to the blogging world and excited for the new school year to start! I've decided to use Funshine Express for my daycare curriculum this year, I've used them in the past and have had good luck, so hoping for the same again this year!

We were excited for the "new" year to start! New calendar, new charts for the weather, number/color/shape and I'm not going to lie... I love the farm theme Funshine choose this year since my daycare is on a farm:)

Here's a peak:

weather chart with the season 

something new since I've last purchased is the character posters, each month we receive two posters to focus on positive traits. We've been "smart" this week! 

a space for the color and shape, although this tractor being red has brought quite the discussion with the littles that it's not green! 

number

I choose not to use their traditional calendar, instead I love the number line way better. I think kids understand it easier and it makes it easier to count down to special/fun days. The month is at the beginning and next month's calendar title is at the end of the number line. So they realize that we have to go all these spots until we get to October and then we have to start all over again! 

Here's our little reading area/morning meeting area with the music/listening center/flannel board/books 

Can't have a Off to School theme without the bus tent! 

School books fill the bookshelf

 We went on a "red" hunt! We found red items all day long, everything red one of the older kids found they would yell, "Hey, Nicci, here's something red"

You can't talk about red without finger painting with red paint! 

 Time to work on our Grandparents Day bookmarks... the first day with their new coloring "cans"... so coloring, gluing and using a scissors is always extra fun when it's new! We talked about who has grandmas and grandpas and what their names are, where they live, what kind of stuff we do with them, etc... and we also read the book, "Hooray for Grandparents Day" by Nancy Carlson.

For snack, we made these cute little school buses from cheese its, mini oreos, graham crackers and yellow frosting.

Number 1!

Number 1 page in our journals, we glued a popcorn kernel to the dot for number 1 

America the Beautiful

We had a short week this week and didn't get to everything that I had planned! So it went back in the box for next year!

Annual handprint flags for the little kids

2014 shirts

Treats to go home

firework paintings 

Enchanted Gardens

Here's our short week of fairy gardens... it was a week filled with painting stuff! Wednesday we took a field trip to Greenwood Nursery and they all picked out a plant for their garden. They each got to paint 2 houses and 2 people that I purchased at Jo-Ann Fabrics. For the garden, I took a wash tub and drilled holes in the bottom for drainage and then we filled them to the top with dirt. 

We painted gnome rock homes

Gnomes- from TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Gnome-Sweet-Gnome-Spring-Craft-and-Writing-1183114 

Another thing from TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fairy-Houses-Creative-building-using-natural-materials-721526 

A couple of the kids fairy gardens.... I would buy all black next time and let them use chalk to decorate the sides! 

Another from TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Little-Fairy-Houses-2-Make-Believe-1056385

We made a big fairy garden to play with outside. 

We did a little bit of pattern work to make some things to put in their fairy gardens 

A freebie from TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Tooth-Fairy-Art-Activity-192811 

Splashing into Summer

Here's a few things we did for Splashing into Summer.... 

5 Green and Speckled Frogs!

paper plate frogs 

frog jumps and then measured whose frog went the fathest 

froggy lunch

turtles

big kids made frog cupcakes for snack 

little turtles

A little 1st Day of Summer Treat to go home!

What's Poppin' At the Popcorn Shop

I must have already deleted a few pictures off the computer of the popcorn shop... We had a fun filled 4-days! They were busy selling tickets/popcorn. We set up the puppet theater for the "movie theater". We made popcorn balls, popped popcorn on the floor in the popper so they could all watch, figured out if poporn kernels/seeds sinked or floated; had popcorn olympics-- had to transfer popcorn with a toothpick, seen if we could catch popcorn in a cup, dropped popcorn into a cup, seen who could blow the popcorn off the table.

For more inspiration-- check out my pinterest board!

Update

I won't be updating this daily anymore, in case you haven't already noticed! I have made a facebook group just for my daycare parents/family that I update instead. Those of you that still follow, I will try to post a little bit about our week activities at the end of the week.

Minions

Last week we did a theme on Minions... played a game of freeze rays with squirt guns, made footprint minions, had an obstacle course, watched Despicable Me 2, the big girls made a minion cake... I'm sure I'm forgetting something! Here's a link to my pinterest board for more inspiration!

Sharpie Shirts

The last day of school, the girls made sharpie t-shirts. They simply colored on the t-shirt with sharpies and then we sprayed rubbing alcohol on them. I think they turned out pretty nifty! Here's a  link to see further directions!