Day #1: Birthdays!

We had our first day of Joy School today and it was great!  

We have such a fun little group of kids.  

All five kids (+ Annie) for a quick picture before we got started.  :)
(Jack, London, Ethan, Lucy, Mason)

Our "Jump for Joy" banner!  The kids enjoyed jumping for joy.  :)

 Our picture tree!  We sang a song and welcomed each child to the group.

Everyone had a turn sharing a toy with the group for show and tell.  This was so cute seeing how proud each child was of their very own item to share.  Jack shared his airplane, Ethan shared his gun, London shared her white block, Mason shared his dragon ball, and Lucy shared her new goggles.  :)

We learned about the letter "A" and "appreciation".  During my "A" speech, Ethan told us that his gun was going to kill the big bad wolf.  And then the fact that "ant" starts with "A" reminded Mason to tell everyone that we had maggots in our house a few weeks ago.  Lucy helped me demonstrate the word "appreciation" by helping me pick up some toys that I dropped and I appreciated it very much.  ;)

Mason needed to go potty and so then of course almost everyone else had to take a potty break.  After everyone was rounded up again it was time for snacks!  (Olives, carrots and goldfish-everyone likes goldfish, but not everyone likes olives and carrot sticks.  Haha!)

After snacks, we learned all about birthdays.  We talked about how each of us was once a baby and now we're so big.  London and Lucy decided to show each of us their pretty princesses and polka dots on their "big girl" underwear.  Haha!  After talking all about our birthdays, everyone got to decorate their own birthday cake.  

I completely forgot to take a picture of the kids decorating their cakes but here are the finished products.  They colored and glued the shapes however they wanted.  :)

Each child was measured and here are the measurements: 

(I don't know how exactly accurate they are)

Mason: 37 3/4 inches

Ethan: 39 3/4 inches

Jack: 37 3/4 inches

London: 36 inches

Lucy: 39 inches

After we played another game, we celebrated Lucy and Ethan's birthdays by eating rice crispy treats!

We had some play time at the end.  We loved learning about the letter "A", appreciation, our birthdays and how old we are today!