Great topic because I have 4 school age daycare kids and my own 3 school agers. I would like to get some more different ideas from others.

Things I have done with them so far is a penny hunt (I hid pennies around the house for them to find...may be hard if you have little one though because if one gets left behind that's not good, bigger objects will work also)....scavenger hunts (just hide certain objects and give them a list of the things they need to find...you can team them up if there is enough and give each team a different list to find, first team finding all their items wins). Use a hula hoop on the floor for a target, stand back, and use an object to try to get it in the hula hoop circle (in the summer we used a paper plate, today I had a small blow up pumpkin that we used)

Find printable templates...print them and trace them on cardboard to use it as a stencil for the kids (I used a cereal box for my cardboard)...printed out Halloween templates....a bat, ghost, pumpkin, ect...traced the templates on the cereal box cardboard to make a stencil so all the kids can use it to trace a shape.....cut out and let them decorate it.

I have a craft cart full of things that keep them busy on a whim...stamps/ink pads, construction paper, foam shapes with sticky backing to make pictures, beads, crayons, glue, coloring books, string, googly eyes, ect.

Now having said all that, my school kids STILL cause a lot of chaos and some argue A LOT and I wish I could find a way to contain them all. They get loud and I find myself reminding them over and over to settle down....or I will have 2-3 issues going on at once and someone else is tattling on another. It gets crazy at times.

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