Meet Jo-Jo

The week after Christmas is always filled with happy stories of the wonderful toys and gifts that everyone received for Christmas from Santa and all of those other less important gift givers :) This year we meet Jo-Jo. Sammy got Jo-Jo for Christmas and he has been the star of the show this week. If you haven't heard of Jo-Jo he is a hide and seeking, talking, dancing bunny. The kids hide with Jo-Jo's carrot and Jo-Jo finds them and does a happy dance! The kids love it! Given Jo-Jo seeks about as well as 3 year olds hide, but it has been great around here. Lots of laughing and fun! We love that...

New Years Fun!

Well, 2010 is almost over. Time to get ready to welcome in 2011! We want to make sure that everyone can hear us as we stay up late New Years Eve and welcome in the new year so we made some noise makers :) We decorated some homemade shakers, filled them with rice and beans and sealed them tight so that we can shake and move with the best of them and make some serious noise! So much fun :)

Smells like Christmas....

Today we made Christmas ornaments. This is one of my favorite crafts for this time of year! We put applesauce and cinnamon in a zip lock bag and squeeze it to mix the ingredients together. Then we roll it flat and use Christmas cookie cutters to make different shaped ornaments for our trees. They are so cute, they look like gingerbread and smell wonderful! It's great a great way to capture the season and completely child made. They had so much fun squishing and mixing :) We ended up with Christmas trees, gingerbread men and Frosty the Snowman and they all smell like cinnamon and apples. And the best part is that these ornaments hold their smell for years to come.

Team work

This week we are working on our social skills. The kids are learning to work in teams to solve problems or create projects. To get them started I hung some large paper on the wall and put them in pairs to paint on the walls. They had so much fun! They worked together sharing paper and paints, they practiced taking turns and saying please and thank you. Seems the season to focus on that for a while :)