Please don't bring your toys from home to "share"!!

Some of you may ask, "why don't you allow children to bring toys from home to daycare to play with?" My answer is the children have a terrible time actually sharing them. Despite the thought that it helps them share, it really creates the opposite effect! For example, a child came the other morning with this huge hot wheels steering wheel toy. It was really cool. It had lots of buttons to push and many different sounds happened. You could turn the handle bars and it would sound like a car gunning. Here's what happened.
The child walked in holding his prize. All of the kids immediately converged on him. OOH! AAH! etc. And they all wanted to hold it or touch it. The child fell to the floor crying. His Dad realized that he wasn't going to share the toy. He told him he was going to leave it in the car. The child cried, "I CAN SHARE THE TOY!" He's crying as he said this. "DAD, NO! I REALLY CAN SHARE THE TOY!" More crying. .... Clearly he could not share the toy!
It really is best to leave those favorite toys at home. No matter how big or small, the child who brings it has a hard time sharing it! Now, we do work on sharing here at my home. But, it's best not to create any situations that make it all that much harder!!

Preparing for Christmas ALREADY??

I've been working with the kids on some Christmas songs. You're probably thinking, "already?" But, it takes the kids several times of going over the songs, again and again! ( And the songs cannot be too hard!) I'm thinking, thinking and more thinking about how they can all sing for you.....but logistically I'm not sure how to make that one work. Any ideas here? I will have a Christmas party for the kids in December. But, that will be when it gets closer to the holiday.

Here's the list of songs we are working on: Away In A Manger, Three Great Kings (Fingerplay)
Here Comes Santa Claus, The Chimney (Fingerplay), When Santa Comes (Fingerplay),
Christmas Is Coming, and We Wish You A Merry Christmas.

So far, the kids seem to remember the fingerplays the best! But, the older ones REALLY like to sing and act! Who knows, maybe one or more of them will become actors?!! HA HA HA you're saying....they already are!