Happy Birthday Lemonade

Wow! We started out the day with some yoga mats. They became our choo-choo trains, our napmats, our blankets, our magic carpets, and our um...yoga mats. Koichi was having fun jumping from one mat to the next, while Ivy, Alanna, and Paislie decided it was nap time. Teo became their teacher and gave them some pats while Paislie rolled around and played peekaboo with her "blanket." Theo and Teo started dragging the mats away and Annabelle found a nice comfy one on which to do her pouring and measuring. Ben also joined the fun, finding comfy ones to sit on as well. Once the whole gang was present, we went inside to enjoy snack. We talked about Teo's birthday and Joey, Ivy, and Annabelle sang the happy birthday song for us. We transitioned to circle time with a few blocks on the carpet, and then learned about how today is Wednesday and sang the days of the week song. When we sang our "What's the weather?" song, every one was so enthusiastic to answer "sunny!" It was great to hear them accurately name the weather without any help! The song goes like this:

What's the weather?
What's the weather?
On this Wednesday
On this Wednesday
Let's look out the window
let's look out the window
it is SUNNY!
it is SUNNY!

set to the tune of farajaka.

We had tons of fun singing the alphabet song. Many of our friends love to sing along. Wren joined the fun and introduced his new friend, "my cat" to every one. We all got to say hello to Cat.

When we went outside, the weather was nice and breezy. Koichi immediately found some bubbles and started blowing away. He and Teo shared the bubbles. Theo found a large tin bucket and started using it as a drum. Wren and Alanna followed him around helping make loud sounds on his drum. Soon it was time to sell lemonade at our fantastic lemonade stand. We hung up a banner that said "DRINKS" and filled three large pitchers with water. We found cups and took turns pouring water to serve our "lemonade." Soon after, we filled the sensory table with water and mixed pink and orange paint with it. We each had a sponge to use as we saw fit. Wren and Ivy got busy scrubbing hard and saying "i'm cleaning" Annabelle mixed pink water with leaves to make soup. Joey was interested in sticking the wet sponges to the playscape and watching them defy gravity. Alanna and Ben used the sponges to transfer colored water into Theo's old tin drum. Asher got busy cleaning the lemonade stand. Every one had something to do.

After this fun filled morning, we went in for lunch. Paislie was one of our last one's to finish up. She looked like a very cute zombie before she washed her hands (oh, spaghetti sauce). After nap, Teo's parents came bearing strawberries, blueberries, watermelon and ROARsberries. Koichi was showing them his cool death metal Koichi/Lion/Dinosaur roars, and soon Ivy was showing off hers, too. Piggy and Cat also joined in for the celebration and boy was it a hootenanny. Wren's mom came during the celebration to pick him up, and they decided to stay to enjoy Spanish time together. We gave Ms. Leona a warm welcome after a very busy time washing berry faces and hands, and we were all in very high spirits. It was a very lively Spanish time with 6 adults and 10 kids all singing songs and dancing together. By the time Spanish came to a close, every one was exhausted (or maybe just the adults!) We continued with a Spanish dance party as we told Ms. Leona goodbye. What a fun-filled day!


Love,
Jackie