The Easter Bunny Came Early!

What a joy it is to what the children have so much fun with crafts, decorating, and "hunting".  Here at Ducky's we had our Easter party this past Thursday and lets say I was sure tired by the end of the day, although the children were not because they were all on a sugar high from cupcakes!

It has been pretty quiet around the day care for the last few weeks with mom's or dad's being off of work for a while and with me hurting my back and having to cancel child care for a week to recuperate.  But along came Wednesday and I finally had an extra little one for us to do some Easter crafts with.

Wednesday we made Bunny hats, Easter Lily's made out of our hand prints. We also had some baking fun by make chicken nests with eggs and the famous "Peeps".  The girls had a blast with this project and just as much fun eating them afterwards.

Thursday was a busier day with having my regulars come in for our party.  We started off with making chicks out of tennis balls, followed by decorating paper eggs for our mom's and dad's.  While the children were having fun decorating their eggs I snuk off to the living room to hide some plastic goodie filled eggs.  I then told the children that I had seen the Easter Bunny outside and he told me he had snuk into the house early because he heard we were having our party today.  Wow, you should have seen the children's faces when I told them this.  It was priceless and I wish I had the camera out at that time.  So I continued on with what the Easter bunny told me....... he laid eggs around the living room and they were to collect them all in the baskets he left, once all were found, they had to sit in a circle and listen to me.  So that's what the children did and the noise begun!!  Every egg that was found I would here a "WOW" or "I have another one", "Look, look, it green, blue, orange..." .  We found them all and sat in a circle, they all got to pick the color they wanted and then we continued on by practicing our colors and sorting.  Them we counted everyones eggs to make sure they all had the same amount.  Now was the fun part.... they got to open the egg and see what the Easter bunny left them.  The girls got barrettes, chocolate eggs, stickers,  light up little ducks for the bath tub.  And the boys got a hot wheels car, stickers, candy eggs and a light up little frog for the bath tub.

By the time our egg hunt was over it was 5 minutes to 12 and lunch wasn't started...... So I asked the children what the Easter Bunny's favourite food was and once they figured it out they then learned that that was part of our lunch too.  They though it was funny that the Easter likes carrots and so do they!  That's all they talked about for the rest of lunch time.  We ended lunch off with some homemade chick cupcakes that I made early in the morning before the children even arrived. And then it was nap time, or I thought!  Only one child ended up falling asleep, the rest were on a sugar high from the cupcakes (let's just say I have learned to give them cupcakes after nap time from now on!).  We finished our day off with playing rabbits and coloring a few Easter pictures.  At home time each child got a little Easter from me and they got to take them home to find out what was in them.  Because I will admit it, I was just to tired to keep everyone's things separate from one another and didn't want to keep taking the candy away from the kids, because they weren't allowed to eat it before supper.  So that was left up to mom and dad to deal with!!! Sorry mom's and dad's but "Ducky" was exhausted!

Remember to take take a "hop" over to Ducky's Photos to see more of our fun filled day's

The luck of an Irish

Well we had our little party for the big green day and what a blast we had doing all sorts of fun little things through out the day.

We made our own Happy St. Patrick's Day pictures on green paper, with stickers and drawings.

Shamrock Hats

What you need:

• green paper
• scissors
• stickers
• stapler
• pipe cleaners

How to make these fancy hats:

• Cut 2 shamrocks for each child out of green paper
• Cut a strips of green paper long enough to wrap around your child's head (you might have to tape two pieces together to make it big enough)
• Let the children decorate the head band strips
• Once decorated, wrap the paper around the child's head to make sure its the right size and then staple together.
• Staple a pipe cleaner to the back of each shamrock
• Staple the other end of the pipe cleaner the the head band paper
• Once finished you might want to place a piece of tape over the staples so that they don't get caught in the children's hair, or make sure when you staple that the loops of the staple are to the outside of the head.

Each child received a green beaded neck lace today also to wear with their new hats.

While I was making lunch I found some St. Patrick's Day shows on YouTube for the children to watch (as I don't have any of my own!)

 








For lunch we had some fun also......
I cut their sandwiches in to shamrock shapes
We had cucumbers (cause they are green!)
Our juice was the "pot of gold" as is was a citrus punch
Dessert was vanilla pudding that I died green with food coloring (the kids thought this was just amazing!)









During Lunch time we listened to some Irish and St. Patrick's Day music. 








 

Our afternoon snack they children got to have fun decorating sugar cookies with green icing and shamrock sprinkles.




While the children had their nap/quiet time, I painted small clay pots so they were black.  Once dried I placed gold chocolate coins in them.  And they can take their pot of gold home for a treat for later (we all know, I have given the kids enough sugar with the cookies and icing, there is no way they get chocolate here too.  Mom and Dad can deal with that sugar high!)

Check out additional pictures at Ducky's Photos

Leading up to St. Patrick's Day

We Start off our St Patrick's Day crafts at the end of last week.  I was short on kids so I didn't want to move into the next farm animal yet so.... what better to do then more fun crafts!

Here are some of the crafts that lead us up to the big Irish Day.


We colored numerous St. Patty Day pictures:

Page can be found at Parenting Leehansen.com

Page can be found at Craft Elf

Page can be found at dulemba.blogspot.com
 



Tie-died Coffee Filter Shamrocks

This craft came from Kaboose website, I just changed a few things to make it easier for the younger ones.

What you need:

• coffee filters
• green markers
• Q-tips
• Small dish of water
• scissors

How to make your tie-die Shamrocks:

1. Have the children color all over the coffee filter with the green makers. (Don't worry about designs or anything fancy, just let them scribble for once!)
2. After they have colored the filters dip your Q-tip in the water
3. Then on to the colored filters
4. Now watch the magic happen...... the water makes the coloring run and forms fancy designs of its own
5. Set filters to the side to dry
6. Once dry cut the filters into the shape of shamrocks and hang up for decorations!

Treasure Boxes

I found some cute little wooden boxes at the Dollar store and thought that they would make great little treasure chests for the children.

What you need:

• Small boxes (doesn't have to be wooden ones they could be cardboard too)
• Green paint
• Paint Brushes
• Gems (we used little jewels, that I found at the Dollar Store)
• Glue

Instead of gems/jewels you could use:

• buttons
• beads
• stickers
• little rocks

How we made our treasure chests:

1. Paint the boxes green
2. Let dry
3. Glue the little gems on to the box
4. Let dry
5. Now your little ones have their very own special box to keep whatever they like to in it

A Treasure Hunt

While the children were painting there Treasure Boxes, I headed to the living room for a bit and started hiding some St Patrick's Day goodies.  Also at the Dollar Store, I found some green coins and shinny shamrocks... I picked them up just because I knew the children would love them.  So I thought for a while on what we could do with these fun little items.  That's when I came up with the idea for the treasure hunt to go along with our sparkly boxes.  With having younger children, I decided not to hide our treasure in any place all to hard for them to find.  They were all located in plain sight for them to find, yet they still had to look for them.  Once they found them they were able to put their treasures in their own boxes to keep and take home.

Remember to check out Ducky's Photos for more amazing pictures of the children having fun.

A rainbow and snack

Our St. Patrick's Day craft started today with a snack and craft in one.

We made rainbows out of Fruit Loops and Cheerios. First I had the children sort the Fruit Loops by color and of course they were eating just as many as they were putting in the dishes!  This was great because we were able to do a number of activities and learning experiences at once. 

• Snack
• Learning colors (for those that don't know their colors yet)
• Sorting/math skills

While the children finished sorting the colored Fruit Loops, I was making the outline of the rainbow.  I wasn't able to find one that I liked from the Internet so I decided to do it myself.  I imagine if I took some more time I would have found one, but instead I just drew two clouds at the bottom of each paper and connected them with one big loop for the starting of the rainbow.



What you need:

• Heavy paper (card stock) in the colour you choose
• Glue
• Fruit Loops
• Cheerios
• Template of a rainbow

Directions:

1. Have the children place glue along the top row of the rainbow and place the red fruit loops long it
2. Continue the first step until you reach the final color (each row will get smaller and smaller)
3. Place glue inside the cloud and use the cheerios for this

Colors of the Rainbow in order:

1. Red
2. Orange
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. Blue
6. Indigo
7. Violet (Purple)

Of course we skipped the indigo cause Fruit Loops don't come in that color!!!!

Other ideas: 

Instead of fruit loops you could use

• beads
• buttons
• tissue paper
• colored pasta
• colored rice

Instead of the cheerios you could use

• cotton balls
• white tissue paper
• rice
• pasta
• white buttons
• white beads

Remember to check out Ducky's Photos for more pictures of today's craft

Happy Valentine's Day

So we wrapped up our Valentines' week with a fun filled day (yesterday).  These kids wore me out so much, I was just to tired to blog about our activities last night!

The first batch of sugar cookies I made just didn't turn out at all, the dough was way to crumbly and I couldn't roll it out to cut our heart shapes.  So first in the morning the 2 kids and I made our dough and put it in the fridge to set.  While the dough was setting we did a few crafts.  First was the Butterfly pencil toppers and then the stained glass hearts made of crayons. The kids were totally amazed at how the hearts turned out after ironing them and watching them melt.  It was a fun time that's for sure.  We then followed our craft session with finishing off the cookies.  I rolled some dough out gave the children heart shaped cookie cutters and let them go to town.  Once there was no room left for more hearts I placed those ones on cookie sheets to bake and then redid the mentioned steps again.  I am pretty sure I rolled that dough out a good 7 times, and finally I thought that's enough for now.  We cleaned up and the kids watched some Valentine's shows on TV and played for a while, while I whipped out a quick lunch for them.  I decided for Valentines' Day we would have heart shaped sandwiches and yet again it was a big hit, as they were something a little different then a normal square sandwich.  We rounded off lunch time with a Valentines' Story and then quiet time, to my amazement both kids fell asleep too, I must have wore them out.  After our quiet time they got to ice the sugar cookies and have a few for their PM Snack. 

I must say it was a busy day but we all had a blast!  

Our book we read was 

Clifford's Valentine's Day by Norman Bridwell