The week we played inside

Ok, so it hasn't been a week yet, but it's not looking promising. We have a policy of not letting the children out for recess when it's 0 degrees out, including wind chill. Well this week it's been close to zero, actual temperature. Brrr!! So we've been inside and have yet to make tracks in our wonderfully snowed in yard.

The kids haven't been complaining, though they have been looking longingly out the window. Instead we've played with the parachute, done a lot of Simon says and just played with some toys in general. The kids are really in to building with these cardboard bricks we have. They're about a foot long and there's enough that they can actually build a pretty decent fort. It's funny though because there's almost as much squabbling over who gets to put the bricks away as to who gets to play with them in the first place. Don't ask me why, maybe they're fun to carry or something?

Anyways, today though the apparent big hit was limbo. I turned on some music, held a pole for them to walk under and the hilarity ensued. Children crawled under the pole, they belly slid, they crab walked, they wriggled and giggled and had just a great time. Oh, and nobody got stepped on either, yes! The best part though was right after when I lined up the older children to go back to the classroom and as they walked out they were all still dancing a little bit and saying 'thank you'! A pretty awesome end to what might have been a stuffy, boring indoor recess.

Except now I have to top that tomorrow...hmm....

The play yard the children are just itching to get out and play in.
Now it it would only warm up enough to go outside! 

Mini Minnesotans!

We have some true Minnesotans in the making at our school, I don't think I heard a single kid complaining that they were cold! And it was cold today, I wore my snow pants, I'll admit it! I also had to double check what our 'stay inside' cold temperature is, because that windchill was pretty nasty.

But outside we went. There were hats, mittens, snow pants and jackets all scattered throughout the coat room, and yet somehow 22 children got ready. And I think we only lost one hat...or was it mittens? I sometimes think that a school is more of a clothing vortex than the washing machine and dryer. I think that's pretty impressive actually that we have kids as young as 3 who can not only keep track of their own things, but get it on basically independently (except for those darn mittens, especially that second one!). Plus the fact that they're surrounded by a pack of other children doing the same thing. Our coat room and boot shelves are both very busy locations!

Amazingly it also took us the same exact amount of time that a day without snow pants, go figure. I think it had to do with the shear excitement of a dusting of snow. Technically we got more snow last week, enough to actually make a few snowballs with, but I think the fact that nearly everyone had snow pants put the kids in the winter mood.

And to cap it off we played the animal game and picked all cold weather animals. What kinds of cold weather animals can preschoolers come up with? Well we were, big lumber polar bears, waddling penguins, fish (hey, they live up there too!), and swooping snowy owls. I also got requests for snow bears, and snow birds and tried to explain that we'd already done those. Unless there's a snow bird I don't know about?

We definitely had a few kids with this problem today!