Gingerbread Dough Cut Outs

                             
Cruising around Pinterest one night I saw a felt gingerbread play set and
                                   was instantly inspired.
          I decided to make a family of gingerbread people with 3 sizes.

                                   
I sewed two sheets of brown felt together, traced my cookie cutters, sewed around them twice and cut out the shapes between the two lines of stitching. 

 
                    It’s part of our bakery dramatic play area. 
      The children can cut it out and bake it as often as they want.

A Tooty Ta

We’ve learned a new song this year, “A Tooty Ta”.  It’s a silly song that includes echoing and dance.  Today we did the song together in gym.  There were 40 children present plus their parent, grandparent or caregiver.

It goes like this….

 
Chorus:
A tooty ta, a tooty ta, a tooty ta, ta!
Verses: Repeat after me
(start with the first action then continue to add an action and the song continues to get longer.  The chorus separates each verse.)
Thumbs Up!
Elbows back!
Feet apart!
Bottoms up!
Tongue out!
Eyes closed!
Turn Around!

The Vet Clinic Tour

 
    Today we visited a vet clinic and saw some amazing things.
 
It started in their waiting area when we met Carrot the Parrot fish.  It likes to
follow the children from one side of the tank to the other and if you were lucky
he would give you a fish kiss.
 
We met Sarah and Nipper and they gave us a scavenger hunt of things to
look for while we walked around the clinic.
        
  
Behind the scenes we saw a technician getting a dog ready for surgery.  Sarah pointed to the tube in the dog’s mouth and explained it helped the dog go to sleep and breathe while it was in surgery.

Next we visited the xray room and Nipper pretended to get an xray.  We saw an xray of a cat’s ribs.  Sarah talked to us about keeping our small toys away from our pets because they might try to eat them.

There were a lot of dogs and cats, in separate rooms, that were recovering from surgeries.  We quietly walked past them so they wouldn’t be scared.

We also saw a cat that had just been neutered and now they were tattooing it’s ear.  In case it gets lost and someone finds him they can call the vet to try to find the owner.
     
Before we went back to the examination room we were able to
peek into the surgery to see the veterinarian operating on the dog.
    
One last thing Sarah showed us was some of the problems that cats
and dogs have, like worms.
       
We got a good look at a tape worm and some fleas, in containers of course. 
Sarah reminded us how important it is to wash our hands after playing with a cat or dog or when you come inside from playing in a sandbox. 
We were impressed by all that we saw at the vet clinic this morning. 
It would be a fun job to work with all the animals.

Pet Visits

We are finishing off a month of Vet and Pets with a tour of a vet clinic this morning.  During the past month several families brought their pets in for visits.
        
We first met two little foster kittens. The family was caring for them and their mother until
they were old enough to be adopted.
 
       One was adventurous and the other a little shier.

 
Then we met a snake.  We let it loose on a table but it kept slithering away.

          
        We brought out some props and it quickly hid away.
       
        But not before we had a chance to get to know it better.


Then we had a very soft and white dog visit.  He loved to be petted.


Lastly we had a cat visit that looked very similar to one of our stuffies,
which we introduced to him.
         
But once the cat saw the fish that was all it was interested in.

Wrap a Star

                 
A simple craft that the children enjoyed doing was to wrap yarn around a cardboard star shaped cutout.

I liked how he used the whole art space to make his star.  He wrapped and wrapped.  His goal was to cover every bit of the cardboard.
 
Then he took it to the main table and found the pipe cleaners, adding an extra touch.
        
   His mom was inspired to make a family star.

A couple of more wrapped stars then the children became busy
at the art easel and decided to paint the stars.

Then used them to decorate our branch that stands between the two easels. 
An early touch of Christmas.