Now a full week into 2015, I have so enjoyed looking back on what an amazing year 2014 was! I was blessed enough to spend MANY special moments with some super special kids, and thankful that some of those moments were even preserved on camera. I have chosen my very favorite photos from the past year, and I hope you all will enjoy getting a glimpse of the joy, learning, friendships, and excitement that we have experienced together. As with all photos, what makes them great is the story behind them, so I've added descriptions to some that explain why they are my favorites. Just click the post link to see all the photos!
Shhhhh...don't tell, but we worked hard today on some resist-paintings for our Moms! Using an idea from The Educators' Spin On It, we started off with the book "Mouse Paint," and then worked on painting softly, like little mouse feet, on our papers so we could reveal a fun surprise at the end! The story, "Mouse Paint" is about three little mice who discover some color mixing fun, so we too started out with only the three primary colors and had fun mixing!
 For our last official day of Dr. Seuss week, we read Yertle the Turtle and used a fun idea from Strong Start when we played with these egg carton stacking turtles.  We also had fun painting some of our own turtles!
It is day 3 of celebrating Read Across America and Dr. Seuss's birthday. This morning we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and then of course we had to follow that up by making some Oobleck! If you've never made Oobleck (cornstarch & water) before, there is a great explanation and demonstration of it by Scientific American here. Oobleck is so much fun because it has properties of both a solid and a liquid at the same time. When you apply pressure, it gets firm and when you relax, it runs through your fingers. I can't keep my own fingers out of it, and the kids love it, too! :)  Today was also our "Green Eggs & Ham Day!" This year the kids ALL ate their Green Eggs & Ham (at least most of it!) and they enjoyed hearing the story as they ate! After trying their meal, they were quick to offer advice to the book's character...."He should just try it!" "They are good, he will like them!" They are so wise. ;)  It's Read Across America Week and we are having a blast celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! Today we read the Lorax and then "drip-dyed" some Truffula tree-tops! The pipettes we used are one of my favorite fine-motor tools, great for exercising those little hands, and great for hand-eye coordination, too. You should have seen their little faces concentrating! The kids also enjoyed mixing lots of new colors for their beautiful creations. They may take all week to dry, but we sure had fun!!  We carried that fun into snack time by making our own edible Truffula Trees (pretzel sticks and mini colored marshmallows) and having some Brown Barbaloot Bears, too!  This week marks the annual celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America Week! It is a time I always look forward to, since it is filled with so many fun activities and so much fun reading! So far, we have enjoyed a Cat In The Hat beanbag toss game, lots of red and white patterning, some Red Fish Blue Fish decorating, and a fun lunch of "Lorax pasta" complete with a blue Humming Fish "river" alfredo sauce, broccoli and asparagus "trees," and mini Lorax (pineapple) "mustaches." A fun start to a great week! 
Facebook has made it way too easy for me to NOT post here! If you are on FB and haven't found us there yet, be sure to check out Hilary's Home Daycare there, too! It is so much easier for me to add a quick photo there so I do it a bit more often. Anyway, today is our very last day before school starts here and we lose our school-aged friends! We are going to miss them SO MUCH!!! But, for today, we are just focusing on having one more fun day together!  We got out some paint and various painting tools: stamps, rollers, brushes, etc. and made a big group painting. I also had some sheets of paper available for those who wanted to make something to take home. They painted, and painted, and painted some more so I think it was a successful morning! :)  We had so much fun last week celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! For the past couple of years, I think it has been the favorite "holiday" around here! This year I brought out some old favorites (like painting with our feet, and then reading the Foot Book) as well as some new activities, art projects, and fun foods. The kids had fun using tissue paper scraps to fill in their Red fish & Blue fish, and loved dipping cotton balls into colored water to make colorful Truffula tree-tops!  In addition to the fun art projects, we enjoyed some great Dr. Seuss themed games and activities, too. The kids did some impressive building and patterning with our new Cat In the Hat foam stacking blocks, sharpened their fine-motor skills with some Tuffula tree beading, and even got to Hop on Pop!  Of course we can't celebrate Dr. Seuss without having some Green Eggs & Ham, but we also had fun with lots of other Dr. Seuss themed meals and snacks. One of their favorites was the fish cracker graphing along with some Pink Ink Drink (also from One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish). We had colorful Lorax pasta with broccoli and asparagus "trees" and a blue alfredo river, played with Brown Bar-ba-loot bears and built our own Truffula trees (from the Lorax) using pretzel sticks and mini colored marshmallows, and at the suggestion of one of the kids, we even had a birthday cake for Dr. Seuss!  We enjoyed celebrating Dr. Seuss once again and are now looking forward to lots of rainbow fun in the next couple of weeks, building up to St. Patrick's Day!
It's not very often around here that we play with something that leaves the area cleaner than when we started! 
Today we learned and experimented with bubbles! I got out a few bowls of soapy water and some straws with holes poked near the top (to help prevent the soap from going all the way UP the straw and into mouths!), and we got to work blowing bubbles. We learned that you have to blow soft and slow to make BIG bubbles, 
...and blow fast and hard to make LOTS of little bubbles. 
We learned that if your hand is dry, it will pop your bubbles (aka, breaking the surface tension), but if it is wet, you can put it (and just about anything else!) INSIDE your bubbles! 
And since the letter list that we're working on right now is the letter B, we got out our Bugs to Blow Bubbles around and came up with lots of relevant words to add to our list today!
A couple of the kids have been very interested in the letters of their names lately, so today I set out a pile of all the letters in each of the kids' names. They sorted through them to find "their" letters. 
Next, they glued the letters down onto their papers like a puzzle, trying to get them in the right order to spell out their names and were very proud of their work!
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Welcome!Welcome to Hilary's Home Daycare & Preschool! Take a look through these pages to get a glimpse of what our days are like! If your child is currently enrolled in Hilary's Home Daycare, be sure to check out the "Look what we did today!" section often to join in our fun! Childcare Openings:Currently, Hilary's Home Daycare has no childcare positions available. If you would like to be added to our waiting list, please submit a message under the "Contact Me" tab. Be sure to include the words "waiting list," your child(ren)'s age(s), and the best way to contact you for an interview, should a spot become available. Thank you! Archives
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