High Park Home Daycare: Christmas Crafts, Christmas treats, and Everyday Cuteness

I love these pictures of the kids doing puzzles. It looks like, and felt like, a lazy Sunday morning while they were doing this activity. Perhaps it's because Leila is still in her pajamas. Hey, at least she changes out of her pajamas before we go outside these days! That's progress!

Here she is all dressed and sitting on a bench in the gym of the school (Indian Road Public School), taking a break. We all bring our slippers, as was suggested by the lady who runs the program (lest you were to think Leila won a struggle to keep a portion of her nightly attire on).

And there are Thomas and Leila running around like crazies, while everyone else is lining up at the door to leave. Dea, though not in the shot, also enjoys this activity, to finish off her gym time!

Back in the classroom, they enjoyed their time with learning materials. Leila was very impressed with the tower she built. So sweet!

Last Monday was an insanely busy day at the Annette Library Drop-in. We had to keep adding tables to accommodate all the children during snack time. The more the merrier! You can see Leila. Amadea is further down the line on the right. (She's proactive and finds her own chair, promptly, when snack time approaches. Smart girl!) You can't see Thomas because he usually acts as my shadow. ;)

Although we still go to the drop-in at the library once a week, we also go once every two weeks or so to the upstairs part of the library. We return our books, hang out, and bring some new books home.

And the winter/Christmas crafts are well underway! We decorated the door with the children's snow paintings.

We also painted the outer ring of paper plates green....

...and when they were dry we added stickers, glued shapes on, and decorated with Bingo dabbers as well!

All their hard work resulted in some delightful wreaths to hang in the apartment!

One day, the kids worked together to decorate a gingerbread house. The logistics of getting all the children access to the one house was a little tricky, but we managed somehow!

Ta-da!

Then there was the holiday baking. Sugar cookies, of course!

They almost had as much fun playing with the flour, as they did making the cookies!

And the dough....oh did they love the dough. They are so good at bargaining. They'd plead with me if they could eat one little piece of dough, only to ask me the same thing every two minutes for the next 30 minutes after that! Can't blame them for trying. Actually, they succeeded, for the most part!

Just some of our beautiful Christmas cookies...

Of course, we had to do it all again with Noah the school boy, on the weekend!

With his highly competitive nature, he was not pleased that Leila got to do the activity twice.

When we reminded him about all the things he gets to do that Leila doesn't, he felt a little better. ;)

On to the day of icing and decorating the cookies!

They are always allowed to eat one of the cookies they decorate. Surprisingly, they ate the very first one. ;)

Thomas decorated a few cookies, then sat back, grazed on the icing left on the table (they were all trying to eat whatever they could get away with, of course!), and watched the girls decorate more cookies.

He finally left the table to go and play, while the girls continued to decorate cookie, after cookie, after cookie. It was quite impressive!

And if you're wondering when Noah will get to do it, it's next week, when his buddies come over! Actually, Amadea will still be here for that (Thomas will have started his holiday), so I guess the girls will get even more cookie decorating time! I'm sure they're up for it.

Here is another craft that we do nearly every year: the snowflake Christmas Tree ornament.

We glue Popsicle sticks together to make a sort of star shape. When they dry, we glue gems on to make them look pretty.

And then we hang them on our tree! They are all very proud of their art work!

We also did a stocking craft using red construction paper and fur trim.

The kids glued the white fur to the top of the stockings, and then added festive stickers.

We also decorated green construction paper trees. Yes, that is Riley you see in the background. She was back as our special guest one afternoon. The kids were so excited! When Riley was done her craft and came down from the table, Thomas stated he was done too. Noah followed suit. But Thomas was so cute....he was shadowing Riley, and Riley looked at him, a little confused. He said, "I'm going where you're going." They love and miss her so much!

Anyway, here are the finished trees!

Amadea did two of them. She really is very dedicated to her art work, still.

The craft below is the first Christmas craft we did this year. I've just forgotten to post it until now. They are pipe cleaner candy canes, which the children hung on our tree a few weeks back. Here I'm showing Thomas's on the right, and can you guess who wanted to make a baby candy cane? Yup. Dea. Another give away is the blue. She is crazy about that colour!

This little Cookie Monster kept coming into the kitchen one morning, while I was cleaning up, to ask for more cookie (All Bran Bar). Would you be able to say no to her?

And I took these shots of the girls playing so nicely together one evening after dinner. They were working so well together to build the little stack properly, again and again.

Last but definitely not least, we have some pictures of the kids enjoying their first sledding experience (at least with the daycare) of the season!

Leila was scared at first, and kept saying she didn't want to go in the sled. My helper and I assured her that she didn't have to go in the sled if she didn't want to. Before we got to the hill, I asked her if she wanted to come in with Tommy and Dea, and I would just pull them for a little bit. She was okay with this. I didn't want to give her too much time to think over her anxiety about the hill, so when we neared the hill, I gave them a quick push and down they went. (Really, I'm not a horrible mother. It's a pretty small hill).