Caroling and Celebrating 10 Years in Daycare!

What a fantastic weekend!  The hand-made Christmas gifts are coming along nicely.  Shannan and I enjoyed the mall early Saturday morning.  We went before the crowds, and I picked up a few little things for Christmas.  I enjoyed browsing through the Christmas cards at Hallmark (another thing I collect...vintage greeting cards).


Yesterday, we went caroling!!  That's something I haven't done since I was in high school Luther League.  A bunch of us from our church got together and went out to all of the FEMA trailers around our church neighborhood.  We sang and gave away homemade treats.  It was so much fun and I think some people really enjoyed being carolled to. 

We were asked to bring 2 dozen baked treats to the church, so I made NOELS!  They are my favorite Christmas cookie.  My goal is to make more and give away to friends and family before Christmas.  Yum!

This week marks the 10th anniversary of my Daycare being open.  I started in our old house, then moved to Williston.  I continued my daycare in Williston and was so sad when I had to leave the wonderful kids and families that I had gotten to know there.  We moved back to where we are now and I now have a new wonderful group of kids and parents.  I've been so blessed to always have awesome families!         





My recipe box of preschool ideas has been with me since the beginning.  Confession:  while I was substitute teaching, I used my free time to search through the teachers' idea books and would copy ideas onto notecards that I could someday use in a preschool classroom or daycare.  I still use many of those ideas!



This was my storage system for preschool and books BEFORE Shannan got me some good-sized cupboards to keep everything.  This worked nicely for awhile and I had a bulletin board above the desk with a calendar, days of the week, etc.

NOW I keep everything in these enclosed cupboards. The corner looks much less cluttered.  That's the cat's little door (the little square hole in the wall) that leads to his room, the laundry room.

It's lookin' a little messy, but at least I know where everything is if I need it.  My teaching certificate is on the door.  I still have it and always renew it!  I'm not teaching, but I'm also not letting go of all those years of hard college work go to waste!  That certificate will always stayed renewed because one never knows what God has planned for them right around the corner.

This is how I organize my worksheets and craft activities.  I use a different color folders and label them by THEME.  We usually spend a week on a theme.  Sometimes we spend more on themes like "The Farm" and "Bugs-n-Butterflies".

An easy way to create a "bulletin board" when you don't actually have one.  I took a big piece of tag board, painted the edge red and used it for both the farm theme and apple theme :)  It's fun and easy to make!

Oh, I could go on and on about Daycare organization and ideas, but maybe another time.