Keeping Babies Safe

We had a welcomed visitor on Monday! Mr CW’s school was closed so he was able to come back and have a play day. The kids played so well together. It was fun to see the excitement the kids had towards him.

This week we have been learning about keeping babies safe. We learned about how some animals and most parents are protective parents to keep their little ones safe. The mamma bear would defend her cubs to protect them. We actually played the Would you rather? game and one question was, “Would you rather come across a Momma Bear or a Momma Alligator?” That was a difficult decision but we even let our Mommy’s and Daddy’s join in the voting game. We talked about what keeps us safe in our house. Some ideas mentioned was: our mom’s and Dad’s, locking our doors, smoke detectors. We also played a game where they got to pretend to be a protective momma/papa bear and fed their baby bear fish with letters. They had to tell the baby what letter they were getting. The kids enjoyed a teddy bear hunt. It was a friendlier version from the online version (which can be a bit scary if you don’t like bears.)

We made a herd of sheep in the Invitation to create center. They got to glue/paint the paper and then stick the “sheep,” “clouds” and “grass” on the paper. The babies had fun feeling the different textures of the cotton and grass materials.

With all of the baby talk around here the little ones are in heaven! They absolutely love playing and being “mamma” to the dolls. Here is a cute shot of CR sharing her water bottle with her baby!

The toddlers got to have their own music time. They’re usually pretty happy to get to dance to the fun dance music choices of the big kids. But this week we found some snappy Tot Tunes to play and dance to. They were moving and a grooving. I broke out the instruments to entice the big kids to play with us. We played together with the monthly CD from MGT. It worked for a while then they went off to take advantage of distracted tots and played Lego’s. The babies loved the music.

The big kids were excited when the play dough box came out! I really should get it out more often because they are so creative and there is a lot of learning that takes place at a play dough table. We have added the cookie cutter letters that comes with the MGT each month to help with the letter recognition. Z has discovered the Kids Youtube app. He really likes watching the product reviews that people put on there about new toys. Some of them show a “prize egg”. But it is a big plastic egg that is covered in scene or character made of play dough. So they are pretending to make them and guessing what was in them. Z also has some homemade flubber? I don’t really remember which gooey substance I made. But they are having a blast.

One of the highlights of our “cooped-up-all-winter” activities is the Monthly Spangler Science kits Z got for Christmas from Gma/Gpa Calvin. We have only received two boxes but we are in LOVE! This month is Instant Snow. It’s like we haven’t had enough of that outside we had to bring it inside too. You can check out Steve Spangler Science here! I discovered the website and products in a Science for Early Childhood training I took. It’s amazing.