Foam Party

Since our fundraisers brought in slightly more than our costs to live at COTP for the year, Nick and I are using the extra money to benefit people that we come into contact here.  Shortly after arriving here, Nick and I decided to purchase a foam climber for the children to play on.  We were surprised when it arrived in the mail yesterday, but also very excited to try it out.  The children were all taking naps at the time, but that didn't stop us from making sure it was safe for the kids to use.

Tericine tried it first, and then Nick had to prove that he was also small enough to fit through it.

Right after nap is snack, and the kids had the hardest time sitting still with this bright colorful toy staring at them.  A few kept getting up and running over to it and we would have to redirect them.  After snack they were finally allowed to play.  The kids loved crawling through the tunnel and climbing over top of it.  

After the big kids played on it for a while, they went outside and I brought the younger kids over to it.  The oldest child in the Bato room is just learning to crawl and he had a blast.  He army crawled through the tunnel and held himself up and rocked back and forth on the stairs.  The other Bato's didn't really know what to do with it as they are a bit young for it still.

The idea for this toy is to help kids who are learning to crawl and help them develop arm muscles by pulling themselves up on it.  This toy will eventually go into the Bato room for those children, but right now it's in the play area for the bigger kids.  We would like to get some foam toys for the bigger kids that they can learn to stack and move around, but we are still debating if they are worth the price.  If we decide to get those we will let you know!

We also just purchased a lot of plastic totes to help store stuff in the depot.  With the humidity, bugs, and rats, its very important to keep all our donated clothes, formula, and other supplies packed up so that it doesn't get ruined.  We currently are all out of room to store these items and so our depot has turned into a mess.  Nick is busy making a giant shelf to go along the back wall.  Once this is done and I have all the totes we ordered, I will spend several days in there organizing it all.

Thanks all for your support, we really appreciate it and so do the kids!!