Paper Birds and Block Cities

Yesterday was a busier than usual day around here, but it went really well! The entire group of kids (except for a sleeping Sophie) spent 2 hours in the playroom on a mission. Their mission: using all the wooden blocks and all the Megablocks they all had to work together to create a city with buildings, homes, roads and they added a park, a swimming pool, a garden and a restaurant to the other types of buildings.

After the city was complete I got out the tubs of dinosaurs and animals and those became the city's inhabitants. They all had a great time playing. Near the end, the city was abandoned and overrun by small feet crashing through and over everything while the big kids negotiated their own swap meet: seting up fees for animals and currency became other animals or blocks. All in all they had a really good time and I've had at least one request that we do that again today! Reed and Emmy also paired up with me and we did a photo shoot - I took about 70 close up pictures of animals and dinosaurs posing for the camera.

After lunch in a very full kitchen, it was naptime for the little ones, bottle time for Sophie and the big kids watched Charlotte's Web while I got the paper bird activity ready. The activity went really well for them. I had pre-drawn patterns of 9 bird pairs for each kiddo to cut out. Then we taped paper clips to the inside of the bird pair and glued 2 of them together. They all did a really good job and enjoyed it. After making the birds it was time to make the bird houses which they had a blast doing as well. Sophie enjoyed hanging out in the kitchen watching the big kids work, but before long she was fast asleep - she must have thought all this paper birds stuff was for the birds! Then it was downstairs to play with their new pets and habitats.

Everyone had a good day and got along very well. Today Reed and Sophie's mom, Katie, brought a very fun painting activity for everyone to do this morning and I think the kids will all LOVE it! Thanks Katie! Maddi and her mom also put together a bag of fun stuff for us to use today, which everyone will love - thanks Maddi and Paula! I'll try to post another blog on today's activities during naptime this afternoon or tonight sometime.