Sunday Funday

Hello blog readers! It's Sunday, which is typically the day I plan out the daycare activities for the week and today is no different. This won't be very long, because it's a Harry Potter weekend on ABC family and I have a lot of rearranging to do, BUT I may or may not have went a little daycare shopping crazy today. I keep seeing awesome sensory bag tutorials on pinterest (color you surprised? nope, you're totally aware of my obsession) and I decided Emory and Nevaeh needed to be the proud baby owners of one of their very own. It's a very very very fantastic sensory tool especially for little babies. The basic gist of the bag is to give them different textures to feel while making it pretty and squishy. All you have to do to make your own is grab a gallon freezer bag, two bottles of hair gel (I mixed clear and blue because it gave it some color), whatever knick knacks you want to add to it for texture and some duct tape to give it a little color. Make sure the knick knacks that you use aren't sharp though, because it could possibly rip the bag and who wants to deal with that goopy gooey mess? Not I, that's who. Just throw all of it into the gallon bag and duct tape around the edges and you have yourself a super awesome, super entertaining sensory bag!! CAN I GET A WOOT!?! Thank you. I basically just grabbed whatever I could find in at the dollar tree and I really like the way it turned out and so does Emmy Mae. I mean, honestly, I think I like to squish it around as much as she does. I'm sure that

Check out those super awesome bouncy balls!!

surprises nobody though, right? Another awesome daycare discovery of mine is a play plastic mirror that my girls just SUPER love. I lay it on the floor and I swear that they don't leave that spot for an hour. They either means I'm awesome for figuring it out or they're really vain. I might be leaning more towards vain, because let's face it... they are my kids. It's a super great recognition tool for Emory and Nevaeh as far as learning their faces and features. I'm super proud of my level of awesome daycare providerness lately. I seriously super love this job and I think it's setting me up to succeed at potentially homeschooling Emory and Lily when the time comes. Speaking of which, guess who is going to preschool come fall!? LILY!! On Friday we're going to sign her up and pay the semester fee and then I'm gonna sit in my living room in my rocking chair in an old robe, eating ice cream and crying because my little Lily isn't so little any more. It seems like I go in circles with that one, eh? I guess I'm never going to accept that she's getting bigger. She'll be 30 years old with a family of her own and I'll still be trying to hold her hand to cross the road or something insane like that.
  What with her being a big kid and not, today we made the leap into the world of responsibility and bought her a chore chart. I had to sit her down and explain to her that the whole family relies on each other to function like a well oiled machine and even though she's little, she has to be a part of the team now and set an example for her little sister. She was SO excited about it. We picked out her chores together and she's even completed two of them already. Mind you, they're things we do every single day together anyways, but you gotta start somewhere right? Right. I think we're going to set up some kind of reward system with her as well. We were thinking a nickel for each chore and then using that money to teach her the responsibility of not only saving money, but donating to help others as well. It's never too early to start her off right and hopefully that will rub off on to Emory as well.

MOM! WHO IS THAT BABY!?!

Alright blogger world, it is time for me to get my activities all together for tomorrow. I have PCS care to do for the cutest little 3 year old ever and I wanna have some fun while I have more than just Lily. Hello finger and sponge painting!! Wish me lucky and pray for my patience. Goodnight and have an excellent Monday y'all.

-Amanda

Almost wordless Wednesday

HAPPY 4th Y'ALL!! (I couldn't do the 4th in white, so we're changing America's colors to red, black and blue. Keepin' it classy. no big deal.)


Two things. I found this picture of this person that couldn't possibly be me, because check that sweet stache... oh and that sweet hair. NOPE NO WAY THAT'S ME!.... or is it.... DUN DUN DUN!

All I know is that's one good lookin' bro dude in those Besty Johnson specs. Hanging out in that SWEET craft closet with that hot pink kitty cat. I'd totes hit that. . . Looks like that person dyed their hair black too!! OW OW!! Man I wish I were that cool. . . . I'm so lame. ALSO! My MO FRUCKIN SWEET ASS HARRY POTTER SHIRT SHIPPED TODAY!!! AHHHHHH!!! I srsly cannot wait to have my hands and body all over that thing. 

So beyond cool right? Fuckin' a right it is! Alright, that's all for ALMOST wordless Wednesday. Be safe and GOD BLESS 'MERICA!!!! and your heart, god bless that too ya heathens.  

Runnin shit since 1776

Honey! I'm teaching the kids!

  As many of you know, I run a FCC (family child care). I'd like to say that I'm THE best at it, but I'm not. I love my job and I love the kids I have, but I want to do more, so I'm ALWAYS on pinterest looking for new ideas and guess what!? I found some. I wanted to share my recent discoveries with you, because I know how awful it can be to have to search for a billion years for something that hasn't been done a million times.
  This website is AMAZING for preschool packs! Everything is so eye catching and just so stinking cute I can't even stand it! 1+1=1 . I spent all day yesterday printing, laminating, cutting and prepping these awesome packs for when Lily gets home from gymnastics camp. I figured since I'm about 3 modules away from lesson planning, I might as well get a head start right? Not to mention I'm seriously considering home schooling my ladies since I found out that even if they are home schooled, they'll still be able to play sports in the school district that we live in AND attend dances and what not : )

My Peter Pan preschool pack. Kind of makes you wanna go to Neverland right!?

  In addition to lesson planning, I needed to find an alternative to time out, so once again I turned to the all mighty pinterest. I kept seeing the "Mind Jar" floating around and I pinned it a billion years ago, but I just never got around to doing it... until... yesterday! I found the tutorial here : Mind Jar Tutorial and it was so simple and easy to follow. I simply used a medium sized mason jar (I'm from the south, so giving up a drinking glass was hard for me :p) two cups of HOT HOT HOT HOT water, pink food coloring and about 4 table spoons of glitter glue. I may or may not have went over board with the glitter glue, because I may or may not REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY fucking love glitter. Yes the "f" bomb was needed, deal with it. BACK TO THE MIND JAR Y'ALL! Making sure your water is really hot is key to this, because the hot water helps dissolve the glue and cause the glitter to unclump and fall the way its supposed to. Um... I just realized I never told you the purpose of the mind jar! Way to go team scatter brain Amanda. Basically when your child does something that would normally be time out worthy, instead of going to time out, they have to shake the mind jar and get their thoughts and frustrations out while watching all the glitter settle at the bottom of the jar. Once all the glitter has settled, they are allowed to get up and rejoin the fun. I know Lily despises time out and will ask me a billion times when she can get out. This way she gets to look at pretty glitter, gather her thoughts and she'll have a set time of when she's allowed to get up again. Here's a picture of my awesomeness!!

I seriously love looking at the glitter fall myself, because I'm a child. 

  My life has been 100% daycare filled the past two days and today is no different. I luckily don't have any babies for the next three days, but I'm spending my day rearranging my "centers" to make room for a quite book area. I put the cutest little blue couch and chair on hold at my lending library since I believe it was the last one and I'll be picking that up later today AND IM SO FUCKING EXCITED!!! So that's my day. I'm really just trying to fill the time that Lily's been gone to her grandmas. She's there for summer camp and love love loving every second of it. We were actually gearing up for t-ball season and I got a call last night asking me to be the coach for her team, which I so wanted to do, but we decided to not avoid t-ball all together this year and put her into gymnastics since it's something she really enjoys doing already. You have no clue how much it killed me to turn down coaching. There's always next year right? Right. 

  Well looks like I should probably go rescue my books from Emory's distractive grasp. YES I STILL HAVE REAL BOOKS! REAL BOOKS FOR LIFE!!!

-Amanda