After Four Days....It's The Weekend!

It's Wednesday, 23 July 2104...and while I am sound asleep...restoring my energy from the past four days :-) my niece is at daycare.  She volunteered to lead some activities for her two kids' classes!  She's a 5th grade teacher at a school with summer's off, so summer gives her the time to volunteer at her kids' daycare.

This week's focus (changes each week) is dinosaurs (one of my grand-nephew's favorite topics).  Next week's is knights and princesses.  My niece fills me in on the activities after I arrived this past Saturday.  What I missed was that she (not the day care teachers) was leading the activities!  So when she told my sister and I last night that we could sleep in, while she took the kids to daycare and stayed to do the activities--it still did not register that she was teaching versus participating.  Obviously her looking for miniature dinosaurs the prior two days or buying roti pasta during our grocery buying, did not clue me either :-)

Fast forward to me in the kitchen when she arrived back home around 10:30.  My sister is still sleeping.  Where does my niece get all her energy (I think) as she responds to my "how did the activities go?".  She describes all the activities while showing me photos that one of the teachers took for her.  Only then did it register...she's teaching these activities!

Making dinosaur footprint cookies by using pre-made sugar cookie dough and pressing a plastic dinosaur figure into the cut dough, baking, voila!

Making dinosaur bones by gluing the dry roti pasta on an outline of a dinosaur.  Then gluing uncooked oatmeal around it to represent earth.  This is my grand-niece's.  She's three years old and did this all on her own.  What an awesome job she did!!!!

Enclosing the miniature dinosaur with sand (made from a mixture of coffee grounds and sand) that hardens in a day or so -- creating a dinosaur egg which when cracked after the sand mixture has dried... has the 'baby' inside.  I never did get to see the egg cracked open :-(

And for her two kids, we made Jello dinosaurs that afternoon while her kids were playing.  With extra unflavored gelatin added (like my mother made Jello so we could hold the Jello pieces with our fingers while eating them).  The Jello dinosaurs would be an after-dinner surprise.

Then off to t-ball.  It's picture taking day.

Thursday came soon enough for my sister since she went with my niece at 8 am to take the two kids to daycare.  Then off to the sellers' pre-sale at the Kids Exchange sale.  I had the luxury of sleeping in.  And quiet.  And stillness.  Much appreciated!!!!!!!

They got lots of toys for Christmas and now.  Like this Lego block set, which my 5 year old very creative grand-nephew takes from this...

And creates this...

And here's the Jello dinosaurs...

The kids were excited about the shapes. And the texture!  I don't think they like the taste.

P.S.  We went to the first day of the public Kids Exchange sale on Friday.  Not too crowded as it is a Friday.  Even so....the checkout line went around the building before starting a S line to the cashiers!  My niece waited an hour to checkout!  Worth it because she got some great clothes for her kids.  At their age...they will outgrow them in another year, so better on the budget to spend $5 versus $40 for an item of clothing!