Let's Trace Ourselves!

I have learned that children love tracing themselves and drawing what they look like, no matter the age. I'm 22 and still enjoy it haha. So for today, we traced ourselves on huge paper and colored it!

This kiddo colored himself red. I can't get over how cute he drew his face. When he saw it hanging up, his face lit up with excitement and he started petting his creation. 

When this little one was coloring himself, he decided to color his shirt. He actually made it look like Batman! (see below picture)

See! How cute is his Batman. It's a Lego Batman. It even has the claw hands. And a Batman symbol. 

On a random side note, she wrapped herself in a nap may and thought it was hilarious. She walked like a penguin 😄

And this little one. She hugged the picture of herself. 

As I have said a ton of times, I can't get over how cute these kids are. 

Preschool Play!

Let me tell you....this morning, I was really stressed trying to think of how I was going to manage kids ages 1-6 in a classroom designed for young children. Somehow, I managed with the awesome help of one of our preteens. 

My helper of the day took it upon herself to make an awesome enclosure to our ballpit so the balls did not go all over the room. I think we have a future engineer on our hands!

The little girl had fallen and hurt herself. The boy came to her and started telling her a story from the book to help her calm down. How sweet! 

We had a long music session! All the kids joined in on the percussion instruments and danced away. Talk about cute!

Our youngest tater tot played for the longest time on the piano. He would start dancing while playing. Every time I went to get a video, he quit. But oh man was it cute!!!

Tambourines are truly meant for hats, right?

We found some alphabet magnets and used it to play with! This crazy smart kid was able to tell me what the letters were and their sound when putting it on the board. 

My helper decided to play basketball with the ball pit and it's container. I love their creativity!

Volunteer Groups

Groups are such a blessing!

They entertain kids with games and activities such as crafts and nail polish and doing hair. They fix things up around our property such as weeding the crazy amount of weeds that grow, or fixing appliances and building cabinets. Don't even get me started on all the yummy food they make for us! You name it, and groups will do their best to help.

In these pictures, a group member had taught our kids to lasso. Several of the kids absolutely loved it and started to lasso toys and dragged things around, thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.

But as mentioned before, groups that come to Naomi House as a mission team are amazing and help us do things we normally wouldn't be able to do! Praise God for these people.

Park's Sharks

Though Naomi House has a playground, we occasionally take the kids to a neighboring town for their playground since its something different and the playground is a lot more fun.

Today, all of the kids (13 in all) played Shark on the playground. It's very rare to see all the kids join in on a game so it was really fun to see this! Just try to watch 13 kids ranging from ages 2-15 run across a playground at the same time. There is nothing else like it.

One of the kids climbed a tree (using a trash can to hoist herself up) and the kids worked really hard to hoist each other up to try to catch her. It was very unsuccessful, but so funny to watch.

With us living in the desert, we normally don't see grass. This playground is surrounded by grass and several us went on a scavenger hunt for 'wishy flowers' .

All in all, a good day! Now to get food at McDonald's. Have a great day :)

Summer Shenanigans

Summer break has officially begun here at Naomi House! Along with that comes long days, and tons of time to think of things to occupy kids that are fun. Pintrest has become my best friend during this time!

Today, we made homemade sidewalk paint. And it is a hit with the kiddos!

We made it in a muffin tin in order to make a lot of colors. We mixed it with corn starch, water, and food coloring/washable tempera paint. Make sure to use more corn starch than you think is needed. 

The paint dries really quick and is brighter than normal sidewalk chalk. 

What are some things you do in the summer to entertain your little ones? Let me know in the comments :)

I will never get over how blessed I am to call Naomi House as my work, as my home.

Quite often, I think that I am absolutely and horribly wrong for this job. But then I see how much my preschool children have grown in every aspect of life, and I realize I helped in their development. I have positively impacted their life, and that is exactly what I came here to do.

My little girls love love love to help me do anything...especially cooking and baking. Anytime I mention it, they run to find chairs to stand at the counter with and help me. Today, we made cookies and scooped the batter up with our hands and put them in a muffin tin. Perfect bite size for children!!!

Seeing their joy with getting to scoop dough, lick it all off their fingers and arms, and even watch the cookies bake in the oven just helps reassure me in where I am supposed to be.

Just look around your life. What is positive? Find that positive thing and hold on to it. There is a purpose for it :)