Candy Canes & Christmas Trees!

Marble-painting a candy cane - a smaller box/tray would probably work better!

Carlie had fun with some container painting!  We used a large, plastic Christmas ornament instead of a marble inside hers!

Haddy's candy cane (sorry so blurry!)

Carlie's candy cane (sorry so blurry!)

Similar to something I saw on pinterest, we used a marker to color foil to make a Christmas tree.

Instead of bending it into a triangle, we fluted them up like trumpets and stacked the layers.  H had fun re-stacking them!

This was a fun tree made using coffee filters.  I showed H how to color colored circles on the coffee filters & then I helped her scribble over the whole thing in green.  We sprayed with a water bottle & laid out on towels to dry before folding & taping them down (and adding stars and other stickers for decoration)!

Thumbprint Christmas lights cards!

H painted her salt-dough ornaments all by herself!

A popsicle stick Christmas tree!

We used a bingo-type dabber to paint them (she did this all herself!)

We added star and smiley face stickers for decoration!

A special card for the girls' special librarian!  Haddy helped by putting the yarn on the glue in the manger!

Both girls liked watching the plastic Christmas ornaments wiggle and jiggle inside the muffin tin!

This has been a favorite pastime of Carlie's for the last couple weeks: She loves to watch the balls roll around inside the metal bowl & then bang them on the side!  She also likes to look at herself in it when it's turned upside-down!

We painted the bottom of the paper plate green & then added dots of other colors for decorations.  I cut it out in a spiral and...

voila!

Christmastime is here!

Sorry for the lapse in posts again! No real reason, the little one has just felt like building with blocks and her kitchen rather than doing any crafts!

This is a build-your-own-snowman that I printed off of this website - Even though it says you can print right from their site, I found that the pic was much too small! I copied the pic and enlarged it in a Word document first! I laminated the pieces with lamination

Bathroom door snowman!

Moved the arms to look a bit more realistic! He still needs a hat, though!

Making (and throwing) snowballs from paper! Great fine-motor work!

Carlie likes to make snowballs, too (though she was more interested in trying to eat it!)

Tortilla snowflakes - I used the small (soft taco) size tortillas and folded them in fourths.  I used a cheese spreader to make small cuts in the shapes that H told me to!  I tried to get her to try also, but she wasn't interested!

We sprayed them with cooking spray then H sprinkled on the cinnamon sugar.  We baked at 300 degrees for 15 minutes and they were baked to crunchy perfection!  Great "cookie" activity for non-bakers!

Monsters, Ee, Ff, & Fall

Sorry for the absence! Between the hurricane & the power outage that ensued (not to mention having Daddy home for 4 days because of it), we kind of got out of our routine.  Throw in there transitioning to a toddler bed & we're all messed up!

Mommy made some monsters by putting paint on paper & blowing at the paint with a straw & then adding sticky eyes once it dried!

Haddy made some monsters, too!

We made Indian corn by dot-painting with a pencil eraser

Indian corn!

Really bad pic, but this is our Thankful Tree made from recycled cereal boxes.  I cut up pieces of paint swatches & each member of the family writes something they are thankful for each day (well, Mama helps out the small ones!) & adds it to the tree!  By the end of the month, our tree will be BEAUTIFUL!

Stamping elephants on an Ee.

Handprint elephants!

Hopping on squares!

Color sorting! 

Fingerpainted Ff!

More fall themes, pumpkins, letters Cc & Dd

Dots I drew on the contact paper before peeling the sticky, so that she knew where to put the triangle eyes! (though she still needed some help!)

Our sticky paper triangle pumpkin!

Cotton on Cc!

Dots on Dd!

I found this "blast from the past" book in my teaching stuff in the basement - it's one of those paint with water books - it was a book of dinosaurs (for the letter Dd) - of course she chose the only non-dinosaur in the book! :)

Carlie played with her doll for Dd while big sis painted!

These are our family palm-print pumpkins!

Making the puffy ghost (equal parts shaving cream and white glue)!

Sorry for the sideways ghost!  BOO!

Triangle flowers!

Triangle (paint sample) leaves on our tree!

Our triangle tree!

Autumn Leaves & Pumpkin Time!

Haddy is counting the pumpkins! I attached them to my fingers with double-stick tape while we recited "5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate."  A video can be found here.

We used Mama's pie-crust leaf cutters to make some really neat fall shapes in our play doh!

We marble-painted some leaves on a piece of paper!

After they were dry, I cut them out, threw them in the air, & sang "Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down, Autumn leaves are falling down, red and yellow, orange and brown" to the tune of London Bridges!  She kept running around picking up the leaves to bring back to me saying, "MORE, MORE!"

We painted with mums as our paintbrush!

It was a fun sensory activity, as well as a great way to practice color mixing!

The end result was a really neat artwork with little pieces of petals stuck onto the paint!

Baby C loves to play with the pumpkin while her sister paints!