Playdough and Pansies

Hooray for sunshine - this past week has been a blast! As the weather gets warmer, our solar-powered kids have turned on. This week has had a lot of great outdoor play, and with the sun, the bugs and the flowers have come back into our children's lives. This week has featured a lot of hunting for worms, finding the last of the puddles in the sun, and asking questions about the changes in the different plants in the yard, with more to come as the rainy weather comes and goes. Patti brought some fantastic work for the kids this week, with the kids painting butterflies working at one big table together, and coming back to the project with glitter and glue after the paint dried. You'll get to see those hanging up this next week. We had a great finger paint activity, which I hope to repeat soon. You may see some art coming home soon with rice the kids picked out colors for and spent time working the dye into inside Ziploc bags. And at the beginning of the week, we had a morning making green playdough, and working all the sticky out of it - ask your kids, they can tell you, sometimes it takes a long time to get it done!

I've just returned from around the corner with a flat of pansies to plant with our friends in the planter box behind the porch, and taking care of them is going to become another job I ask kids to help with. More plants are incoming, so keep this warm weather coming! I've picked flowers without more than buds, so watching them bloom and watering them on sunny days should be great fun, and everyone will have a turn digging a hole and placing a pansy, but the garden is there for everyone to enjoy and take care of. I will be heading out to the Thyme Garden this next weekend instead (rats!), but more suggestions for flower/vegetable favorites (edible/nontoxic, please) are much appreciated. Please make sure your child has extra clothing in their cubbies, and check with me to make sure we have their rain pants in the box and ready.

Some parents have volunteered to help out around the daycare (thanks!) and you may see them around helping out, too. Abbie has been a huge help this week, and will be working every day this coming week (maybe the week after, too) along with Patti and I.