Tuesday morning, and we heard a truck pulling up on the street.  It had parked in front of one of the neighbours houses and began to pour out concrete.

This was not to be missed!  We quickly put on our shoes (I would say they were faster than one of our fire drills!) and we walked over to the boulevard to watch the action.

After watching some pouring, shoveling, and smoothing for a few minutes, we ventured back to Jennie's place to play in the back yard.  There we stayed most of the morning, as it was really a wonderful day to be outdoors!  We made forts, played on the swings, and took turns watering with the watering can.

For lunch we made french toast with Jennie's secret ingredient.  I give the children tiny dipping cups for their syrup, which gives them the impression of having more syrop to use than when we drizzle it on top, but they infact are getting way less.  Less sugar is more when it comes to sugar.

This afternoon we may be baking muffins after working some more on our Father's Day crafts, which should be ready to take home on Wednesday.

Have a nice day!

Monday we went to the local school playground after the school students had gone home, and the heat cooled down a little.  It was one of the hotter days in June so far.

This was our newest one's first time going here, so all the other children were happy to show him the ropes.

They had a great time exploring together.  This is such a fantastic playground that was built through the community KABOOM playground project, sponsored by the Home Depot.  Although I could not personally volunteer to go onsite to help build it, I am happy to have been able to help out in my own ability by providing free child care for the volunteers who were building the playground.  This was due to the build taking place on my slower days when I didn't have as many children to take care of.  I was glad to be part of this project and see what a difference it makes for the children to have another playground to play at.  Before it had been built, all the children in the neighbourhood had only one park to play at, plus the small little playground at the other school down the street when school was out.  For how many children there are in this area, it got quite crowded.  Now there is plenty for everyone.

I've just heard this morning from a neighbour passing by that there is also another park being built just up the street, and completion should be done in or around the next month.  How exciting is that!  It's a little longer of a walk than we might venture on a hot day, but if we go early in the morning with some freezies packed in our cooler bag, it would be fine.  I think it would also be great for the spring or fall to walk to, and we'd get to see plenty of nature on the way as we would cross the pond to get there.

The other thing we did today, was go down to the pond behind Peach Blossom (via the pathway) to investigate tiny bugs by the pond.  The children had such good listening ears on!

I'm sorry to say that I did not have our camera for this nature walk.  It would have been fun to show you all the very tiny bugs we found just at the water's edge.  The children and I sat on the edge of the grass, and I took their hands one at a time to make shadows over the water.  When our hand shadow moved along the water, all of the camouflaged water bugs began to stir and swim away.  It was an intriguing discovery!  Then we stared at a patch of mud that looked like nothing was happening.  When we were quiet, and sat patiently, little things began to happen... something that looked like just a pebble began to move!  You could just barely see it's legs!  Then we watched some more, and saw what looked like the tiniest speck of dirt began to move across the mud!  This time we could not see any legs, just a little dot moving!  It was amazing to see just how much life there really was in one square foot of land that appeared to not be of much consequence.

On the way home,  we played eye spy with different colours of flowers, and were interested to spot out some grass that had grown even taller than Jennie!

Here is a list of our newest library resources.   This does not include our favourite books we have at Jennie's Place that we read on a regular basis.

Educational DVD's:  I picked some of these up at the library for quiet time or a rainy day movie.

We usually have lots of arts & crafts on rainy days, but sometimes a rainy day movie is a fun treat.

Number sense [DVD] / produced by Stone House Productions ; executive producer, Andrew Schlessinger

Canada for children. The culture of Canada [DVD] / produced and directed by Redcanoe Productions

Sign-A-Lot. The big surprise [DVD]

Books

Let's make letters : ABC kids / Janice Behrens. --

Five little ducks / illustrated by Ivan Bates.--

A prairie alphabet / text by Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet ; art by Yvette Moore

Alphabet under construction / Denise Fleming. --

Music

The frogs of summer [compact disc]. --

Racing to the rainbow [compact disc] / The Wiggles

Love you forever [compact disc] : the best of Robert Munsch. --

Nursery-rhymes [compact disc]. --

Classical music [compact disc] / [song compilation by Kim Mitzo Thompson & Karen Mitzo Hilderbrand ;

Nonsense stories and poems [compact disc] / by Edward Lear

Canada is for kids. [Volume 1] [compact disc] / Michael Mitchell. --

My first adventures [compact disc] / Fred Penner

We were very happy yesterday to have a mom and her little boy here for a visit.

They will be starting here in two weeks, and we had invited them over for a getting acquainted visit.

The other children were quick to make friends with them, and showed them the ropes.

We played in the back yard on the swing set and teeter totter, and some of the children made their own tents to play in.

This week our theme is Camping.  We are doing camp related activities, like making smores, treasure hunting (ok, so that's more like pirate activities, but as it involves using a compass and following directions, it's a smililar skill so it counts), and fort building. 

This morning, we didn't stay out for too long, on account of the strong winds.  It felt a little too chilly, but we did enjoy a brisk walk around the block before coming in.  We were looking to spot the different colours of flowers in the neighbours gardens.  One house had a whole rainbow full of colours!

For Arts & Crafts time today, we got out our new package of Crayola Color Surge paper, which is part of their Super Bright Colour System.  We got the deluxe set with special markers.  When one colours on the paper with these markers, the colourful pages turn the markings into neon bright pictures.  The kids really like it.  I think it really gives their art a WOW effect.

Did I tell you that our new blog is up and running over on Blogspot?  I love it!  It's so much faster to post to, especially when uploading photos of our adventures!  Please go check it out here, I'm sure you'll love it, too!

I would appreciate any feedback you have for me regarding my blog.  Which one do you prefer to read?

I've been hearing a lot about geocaching, and thought it might be

something fun to do with the children. Really, who doesn't like

treasure hunting?

So I registered on the official geocaching website, and found the

coordinates of the nearest geocache, or treasure. The rule for this

game is 'take something, leave something'.

We got together a few items we were wanting to leave as our treasure

for someone else to find, and put them in a container to guard from

the elements.

Then we armed ourselves with Off Skin-tastic Mosquito spray, and set

off on our adventure!

We stopped along the way to look at this interesting plant growing in the swamp,

and had just mentioned how we hadn't seen Mr. Muskrat since last summer.

Then we noticed something moving among the brushes...

we were so thrilled to see him again!

We watched the muskrat as he swam

back over to where his home is, then went on with our adventure.

My GPS device lead us to a nearby spot, where we then ventured a short distance into

the woods.

nothing yet...

The hint on the website said, "Don't STUMP on it."

We looked around every tree stump we could find in that vicinity, although there are tons of stumps in the woods.  

So we didn't find the treasure today, but the children weren't

discouraged as we found many other natural treasures...

While in the woods, one of the children found what I consider to be a

provincial treasure; a gathering of Trilliums!

Did you know that if someone were to pick a trillium, it would take years before it would

flower again? That's one reason why they are a protected species.

We also talked about how the white flowers turn pink as they age.

Neat, eh?

We even got to do a little bird watching.

The children love to spot birds that we don't often see.

We were so fortunate to catch this one in action!

On our return, we spotted a Painted Turtle on a log. What a good

view of it! They are usually smaller, and farther away.

We worked up a good appetite, so it was time for lunch!

Stay tuned for our next geocaching adventure, where we are determined

to find the treasure!

The indoor yard sale is a fundraiser run by the kidsat Monday Club.  Children have donated their well-loved toys to besold, and the money will be donated to help pay for the therapy costsof one of a little boy who goes to Monday Club with us. 

We went there with a budget of a few dollars for each child to spend, butthere were so many cool toys there... and after all, the money wasgoing to a great cause... so we got more and more toys.  For the kids,I imagine it must have been like a shopping spree!

DidI tell you they even had a bake sale? Mmmmm... cookies! Thanks forletting your children be a part of this with me.  It feels great to beable to bless others, and the children get to see how FUNdraiserswork.  I can't believe how we were able to fit all those toys in thetrunk...

UPDATE:  I was told we raised enough $$$ to help pay for a whole week of this little boy's therapy costs!  That's wonderful!

The family will be having another garage sale in New Hamburg this weekend at the town's giant garage sale event, but I won't be going to that.  I think we have enough stuff for now...

Today we had a fantastic day!  We all had teddy bears (or favored stuffed animals) to go with us on our picnic.  We started heading out to the woods.  The idea was to take a tour of our local little forest with our stuffed friends, then go to a clearing nearby - or our back yard - for the picnic part.  We had our food, our stuffed friends, and our blanket as we headed out.  As we were nearing the woods, we stopped to watch the Canada Geese and their new goslings cross the street.  Then the children decided they would rather have a picnic at the park, than to explore the woods today.  I decided to hold it to a vote... and the park won.  So we chose a nice tree to spread out our picnic blanket beside, and enjoyed sitting there with all our teddy bears while eating our sandwiches.  We took a few photos of our teddy bears, too.  After our picnic was over, the children were quite happy to play at the park.  

On the way home, we stopped to talk about car safety, and did some safety drills.  We talked about what would happen if one of our toys were to accidentally fall on the street, and how we are to wait for a grown up to help go get the toy for us.  Some of our brave stuffed animals volunteered to be the 'lost toy' waiting to be rescued by a grown up.  I tell the children that if one of their toys is dropped while crossing the street, they are not to stop and pick it up.  A grown up can go back for it after the children have safely crossed the street.  If their beloved toy were to be run over by a car, I can always buy a new toy, but not a new "insert your child's name here".  They did very well with our safety drills.  We came home and played with the new doll house;  funny how well the super hero action figures get along with the polly pocket and Barbie-type dolls.

Hi everyone!  Hope your week has been going well.

I've chatted up a blog on our alternate blog site, and will try to paste it here in the morning.  I can't seem to copy and paste in one  browser, but can in another.  

So if you don't want to wait, here's the link.

Tomorrow I hear might be rainy, so we'll be pulling out some of our rainy day activities.

Have a nice day!

Jennie