Giggles & Grins and Smarty pants kids

Fall has arrived, but the summer weather has been sticking around. We have been spending a lot of time outside where we got out the parachute and played with the expandable tube. We've been making new friends to share with, too! 👬
Squirrels also keep bringing us corn that we can play with, and we played with oats too. We've still been playing with grasshoppers and ants and butterflies. The kids made paintings and played with stamps. We've been working on the alphabet, counting, seasons, days of the week, and months of the year! 🪟
Changes are about to happen all around us! The tractors will soon harvest the corn from the field. We continue to collect caterpillars to watch change to cocoons and emerge when their time comes. The leaves are already starting to turn colors and come down! We'll see what comes next! 🍂

September is already here and fall is right around the corner! While all the big kids are learning in school, and the littles have started their learning as well! We have been reviewing our abcs and 123s, as well as shapes and colors. They have also started learning the days of the week, months of the year, and the seasons. 🗓️
We celebrated a couple birthdays last month with some special treats and activities and we got to spend a lot of time outside. We have still been enjoying the company and learning about of all kinds of bugs like antlions, hoverflies, cicadas, goldenrod soldier beetles, moths, and caterpillars/worms of several sorts. We have been watching 9 cocoons, and waiting to see what they become. We also found a toad everyone got a chance to hold! 🐸
Here's what we've been up to! ☀️

July flew by and the kids are back in school already! Before they went back, we tried and failed to make a clear type of slime we saw on the internet; we learned that not everything you see online is true. We did end up making oobleck and we played with that until it dried out! 🫟
The kids found some dagger moth caterpillars outside and now we are waiting on them to emerge from their cocoons! We had two more water days; one of them we had the opportunity to PET a very tired Beesley. 🐝
We've been enjoying the last bit of summer painting, drawing and coloring, and playing group games like Uno, Candy Land, Snakes&Ladders, and hot potato! We have been outside as often as we can be where the kids have been showing off their gymnastics skills, too! The first day back to school was kind of crazy, but we are getting back into the swing of school routines! 🏫
Here's what we've been up to!

June is over! The bugs were still out in full force, so we learned about more of those like the harvestman, Japanese beetle, and the inch worm! We also got to harvest our beans we grew! For fathers day, we made Dad a pencil holder and we did "about my dad" interviews! 🦸‍♂️
The kids worked hard all last month building all sorts of creations, drawing more complex pictures, working harder puzzles, and setting crazy records on the bop it! We also drew pictures of our family. We had fun making and playing with bubbles, too! 🫧
Throughout the month, everyone got the opportunity to try some different foods than what we usually have, like kiwi, dragon fruit, rambutan, and avocado! I also made homemade banana pudding that everyone loved and we have purslane growing outside that we also got to try! One day we decided to have an impromptu water play day in the rain that everyone enjoyed and then we had three water play days in a row right before our week off! 🌧
We hope everyone enjoyed the holiday and now it's time to prepare to go back to school! Here's what we've been up to!

May is over and it brought out all the bugs, so we did too! We washed our toy worms and bugs in soapy water, we made impressions in playdoh with them, and we played with them in shave cream! We played with flowers, too. We happened to find a live click beetle right after we read about them, so we got to experience that and watch it flip itself over! We had an option to handle some real creepy crawlies, too, such as carpenter bees, slugs, and rollie pollies. 🐌
We did a science demonstration with milk, colors, and sosp, everybody created vision pages about their favorite things, and some kids are working hard on drawing the things they love. We are watching our plants produce beans and our flowers blooming! Sunflowers are being planted next! 🌻
For Mothers day we made special necklaces for mom where everyone got to harvest their own pearl from a real oyster! We also did "about my mom" interviews and the kids colored a picture and made her a handprint flower all by themselves! June has already been so busy and Fathers day is next! Here is our May shenanigans! 🌷

April is over! Last month, we learned about weather and where rain comes from via the water cycle. The littles all got to pour water in bottles to make their own tornadoes, too! They drew and painted their own planet for Earth day and each kid got to choose a plant waterer to paint for someone! We made rainy day water paintings, too! 🌧
The kids have spent a lot of time outside picking all the dandelions and violets they could ever want. They also discovered that maple seeds look like helicopters when they fall! In addition, the kids have been working hard learning letters, improving penmanship, building different structures, and pretending. We've been working on writing all the letters and numbers 1-10 in order all by ourselves. 🔤
For Easter, we did a couple different egg hunts and everyone colored easter baskets and we made a bunny page with everyone's feet! We have been seeing the flowers outside growing and they're starting to bloom! We've also been watching our beans get bigger, too, and we finally were able to put them in pots so they can start producing. We can't wait to see who gets the first bean from their plant! 🌱

April is here and so are it's showers! Last month for St. Patricks day, we had a coin hunt and the winners got chocolate coins! We were able to play outside some, too. Some kids have been practicing playing soccer and basketball, other kids enjoyed playing with pasta, beans, and leaves, and almost everyone made up their own games to play. 🤾🏼‍♀
We got to do some color mixing science and everybody made a color book. The prek kids made number books, also, as they have been working on writing and recognizing them! Many of the kids traced and painted their own flowers, some practiced drawing their families, a few painted rainbows and everybody got to learn about how they form! 🌈
The kids got to explore special sand, create things out of playdoh, and discover some new things looking through the viewfinders. We got seeds started, too, and now everyone gets to watch their own flower and bean plants grow! Here's the March shenanigans we've been up to! 🍀

February is over, which means spring is right around the corner! The kids have been working hard reading, writing, and drawing. Everyone spent a lot of time building things and pretending last month. They built bedrooms, towers, houses, carwashes, and tvs! We got to look at some real bugs under magnifying glasses and a microscope, too! 🦂
We talked about super heroes and super powers, and the kids got to create their own little super heroes and houses for them. They also cut out and we put together their own "weights." We also talked about what powers we wish we could have! 🦸‍♂️
Everyone made love bugs and paintings for Valentines day. We had a party, too, with plenty of goodies, dancing, and games. The big kids also made Valentines sculptures for special people in their lives! We are always doing something around here. Here's what we've been up to! 💞

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January was too long and really busy. We talked about the significance and importance of time and place for certain behaviors, and we also discussed how germs spread and what we can do to help prevent ourselves from getting sick. 🧼
We created fireworks pages for new years and they each made their own mittens and decorated hats. Some of the kids have been working hard on handwriting and others are using scissors. We have been recreating our names with playdoh, stamps, and letter blocks! ✍️
We got to celebrate a birthday with some treats and gummy legos! The kids had fun exploring dominoes, magnets, and mirrors with each other. We also played with playdoh and everyone got to play in the snow with the ice cream toys so they could eat it for real, and we also saw what happens when you mix snow with glitter. We've been having fun and working hard! On to February shenanigans! 💕

Hello January! A new month, and a new year! December was full of arts and crafts and fun activities. We got the dominoes, etch-a-sketches, and magnet writers out to play with; and we played in soap and shave cream! We also did an experiment and learned what happens when you mix ice with salt. ❄
We watched a few movies and made many Christmas themed crafts including trees, the red truck, tape resist paintings, patterns, and gingerbread people ornaments. The cold weather brought us a hot cocoa party and the kids got to try eggnog, too! 🫖
We had plenty of goodies for our party and games to play! We got out the reindeer ring toss and the indoor snowball fight that the kids always enjoy. Thank you to Alicia and Shayla for bringing things for the kids! 🎄
We hope everyone had a safe and happy new year! Here's what we've been up to!

December is here! Last month, we explored some different types of music and instruments. We even had our own concert! We played with playdoh a lot and made all sorts of different foods, faces, and people. We got to play with the snow, inside! We have also been working on our object finding skills with I Spy and Look and Find books. 🔍
The kids got to make water colored coffee filter hanging decorations to take home and they also made acorn people, colored turkeys, and painted cornucopias. Everyone has been working hard practicing writing and all the prek kids can write their names! 📝
We talked a little bit about how to tell time on an analog clock, and we discussed being thankful. We also have some advice from a few of the kids on how they'd cook a turkey. We hope everyone had some good food for Thanksgiving and spent some time with whoever you call family! Here's what we've been up to! 🦃