A Change of Seasons

Here are some pictures taken near the end of October. The kids and I have thoroughly enjoyed a glorious fall season.

Leila is not into going to the playground much lately. She is much happier (they all are actually) when we go for walks around the block. On these walks, Thomas never sees anything he doesn't want to climb!

We have been making it a weekly habit to visit the Annette Street Library drop-in program, and the Indian Road Public School "Early Literacy and Parenting Program". We usually just refer to the latter as "Leslie's", since she is the one who runs the program, and she is wonderful. She makes the program what it is. Here she is in the photo below, reading a story to the kids during circle time. You can see Leila and Thomas there on the carpet. (Dea is hidden). This kind of thing is so great for getting kids ready for the idea of school. It also gently, and gradually helps them become a little less shy, develops social skills, listening skills, and well, I could go on and on and on, but you get the picture. ;)

Our time there each week involves snack time, story and music time (circle time), a trip to the school gym (for a variety of gross motor activities), and some play time.

During play time, the children can play with the regular toys in the room, or they can line up at the learning closet, and select a special learning activity from Leslie.

Here, the kids have chosen a sorting activity. Leila is sorting by animal type. Amadea later sorted them according to colour.

Thomas's favourite activity lately is playing with the big soft blocks.

Amadea and Thomas also love the water table. On this day, Leslie had coloured the water blue, just for fun!

I tried to get the kids to stop eating for one moment, so I could get a picture of them, but this proved to be impossible. Between 11am and 2pm, they are constantly eating! And there is something about being outdoors that seems to make them that much hungrier. Little monsters! :)

Some days, we visit the upstairs part of the Annette Street Library (as opposed to the downstairs area, where the drop-in program is located). Here is Leila looking so scholarly. Do you know that last week, with a little help making individual letter sounds, she blended them to read two words (map and hug)?! Thomas is sounding out and reading individual 3-letter words like a champ. And Dea is learning more and more letter sounds. I will try to devote a blog post to describe the ways we work on reading. It is probably the most exciting part for me, in running the daycare.

With the very chilly weather that has hit Toronto, we have had to break out all the winter gear. Funny how much smaller the wagon seems when the kids become so much.....puffier.

I love this wagon. I just popped off one of the sides, and they were instantly comfortable again. Notice that some days, we also need room for their babies.

We made a couple more trips to Dollarama last week. It is a fun excursion in and of itself. Apart from getting Christmas lights for my tree, we also picked up an enormous plastic candy cane, and blinking Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer noses!

The kids always come out of the wagon to walk a little. Thomas was eager to taste some snow after the first snowfall. We managed to find him some clean stuff!

Okay, I am not always this keen for Christmas. It just sort of happened this year, that the decorations came out so early. We also found our children's Christmas CD, so the kids have already started listening to Christmas music.

I apologize to the parents, who upon coming to retrieve their child at the end of the day, are bombarded with Christmas music and decorations. Too early, I know. But it's just so much fun to have an exciting occasion to focus on!

And this is nothing Christmas related. Just a cool dude sitting at the table.

Love him! :)

I had completely forgotten about our interactive snowman wall, until Leila noticed part of it peeking out from the back of our storage closet. This is something I put up every winter. The kids can take off and put on all the different snowman parts, which are just attached by Velcro.



It's good for teaching about shapes, colours, and sizes. They can also make the snowman happy or sad.

Here the kids are doing the activity together.

Dea decided to wear her light-up nose for the activity. She's really getting into the spirit!

Here are a few pictures of the kids at Indian Road Public School today. These two photos were taken on our way to the gym (Thomas's favourite).

They know they are to hold hands as they walk down the hall, lest one of them gets lost in the shuffle, when the hallways get busy. This picture is so cute. Amadea sure looks happy!

While doing a learning activity with Leila at the table, I glanced over to see Dea in the book area, and this is what I saw. Isn't this awesome? She really knows how to take it easy!

Once I had taken a picture of Amadea, I showed it to her, and she laughed. Then these two monsters said they wanted their picture taken too. All of them are unbelievably adorable and amazing in their own ways. (MOST of the time - had to add that!) I am so lucky to spend my days with these little angels. I really am.