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    To continue our celebration of Dr. Seuss this week, today we read "The Foot Book" & "Fox In Socks."  Part of "Fox In Socks" mentions "New goo.  Blue goo.  Gooey.  Gooey.  Blue goo.  New goo. Gluey. Gluey."  So, we made some Blue goo of our own!  I hear that some have already been asking their mom to get the "recipe" ;)  so, here it is:  equal parts white school glue and liquid starch (found in the laundry aisle, most commonly under the name "Sta-Flo").  That's all there is to it, unless you want to add in some food coloring like we did.  Just mix them together with your hands until they are fully combined.  It will go through a stringy stage right before it is done -- just keep mixing! :)  Ours was a little heavy on the glue this time, so was pretty sticky, but lots of fun!
    We also really explored our feet today, as we took off all of the silly socks we wore for the day to paint with our feet!  We have done this activity before, and it was fun to see how it evolved this time, since the kids were more familiar with it.  We got to see what our footprints looked like when we walked, danced, and even jumped!

 
 
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    Today I got to read a Dr. Seuss book that I have never read before!  "O" brought it to share with us and It is called "Scrambled Eggs Super!"  We had a lot of fun with it!  Throughout the book, Peter T. Hooper is collecting a wide variety of Seuss-creature eggs to make a "Scrambled eggs Super-Dee-Dooper-dee-Booper Special de luxe a-la-Peter T. Hooper!"  So after we read the story, we decided to try to come up with what our own wild eggs might look like.  I got out some blue and red paint, and a few painting tools and watched the creativity! :) There were speckled eggs, and patchwork eggs, patterned eggs, and some all-mixed-up eggs!

    We also read Dr. Seuss's ABC book today, and as soon as the kids have had a little snack, we are going to mix up some sugar cookies and bring out the alphabet cookie cutters!
 
 
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    All this week we will be celebrating Dr. Seuss, leading up to his birthday on Friday, March 2nd.  Today our focus was on "The Cat In The Hat."  As the kids were coming in this morning, they watched on TV a live theatrical performance of the story.  That was fun for me to see, too! :)  Then we sat down together and read the book, with the kids pointing out differences and similarities between the pictures in the book versus the live version.  Don't they just surprise you sometimes with how ob  When our story was done, I had a few different Cat In The Hat sorting and pre-writing worksheets that they could color, cut, and glue on while I pulled one child at a time aside to make the cute little "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" handprint pictures that you see above.  I love how they each take their turn squealling and telling me "it tickles!" whenever I paint their hands! :)

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    Next, we got out what used to be our candy cane playdough, but today turned into Cat In The Hat playdough (I told you this stuff lasts a looong time!) and used it to make some letters, and then faces.

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Somehow this eventually evolved into driving the toy cars and tractors over the playdough as I heard little whispers of "Let's see what it looks like when you drive this on it!"  I just love those curious minds!

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One of the kids brought some cookies to share today, so after nap time the kids will get to have a try at making those cookies into some little Cat's hats.  This probably would work much better with big marshmallows cut into slices, but I didn't have any of those on hand so the little ones will have to do.  Pretty sure the kids won't mind! :)

 
 
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    Today we searched the Newspapers for lots of letter "Nn's"!  J hit the jackpot and found the TV guide section, so everytime there was a new episode listed, she found another N!  :)  Some were definately more interested than others in this activity, but the ones who did show interst had fun searching for those Nn's, and even helping each other out! :)

 
 
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    Today we tried out a "why didn't I think of that" idea from Rust & Sunshine.  To tie into our letter of the week, we finger painted some Muddy pigs!  It was an easy and fun activity that even the littlest hands cound get in on.

    Whether they were ready to dive in with both hands,
...or just one finger, it was fun to play in the "mud!" :)
 
 
Preschool marble painting
    I've been saving this  activity for letter "M" week and now that it's here, I was really excited to see the kids try this one out!  We used some marbles in a box to make our paintings today and the kids really had fun with it.  It was fun to see them concentrate so hard on getting those marbles to go where they wanted them to.  It took a lot of concentration and coordination to figure out how to get the box to move the marbles into and through the paint.  I set the boxes on top of an overturned bowl to give them some stability while they rocked the box around.  Some found it easier to control if they just picked it up, while others used a combination of methods until they found what worked best for them.  They had a good time seeing their colors mix together, and watching the patterns that they made, and the end results turned out pretty cool, too! 

 
 
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     For those of you who have not already seen this on Facebook, I thought I would share a few highlights of our family vacation last week!  We visited the ocean, on both the Gulf and Atlantic sides, Magic Kingdom, Universal Studious Island of Adventure, Sea World, Epcot, and Lego Land!  It was the first time we have ever taken a big vacation like this and the first time my kids or I have ever flown on an airplane!  A BIG thank you to all of my daycare families for accomodating my time off.  We had a WONDERFUL time!  And now I am excited to be back to play with the kids! :)