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!

Red, Apples, & Circles - oh my!

The color of the month is red, so I threw a bunch of random toys into a box & had Haddy sort all of the red items out onto her red "Mem-mem."  She needed a little help, but I thought she did pretty well!

We looked through magazines together and pulled out pages with red things on them!  While she napped, I cut the pictures out & then we used a glue stick to glue them onto a page later on.  I put the page into a sheet protector so that we can make a color book over the upcoming months.

We are reading/learning about apples this month!  This was the first book that we read!

I pulled out a bunch of different circle-shaped items for her to stamp with.  We used toilet paper rolls, pill bottle lids, yogurt cups, empty masking tape rolls, etc.  to stamp red, yellow, & green "apples" on our paper.

This was supposed to be a red apple, but since we were discussing how apples could be red, green, or yellow, when she said she wanted to make a green apple, I just kind of went with it.  She's coloring her paper plate with both green crayons and markers.

Now we're adding some green paint on top for our green apple!  We'll add the stem and leaves later!

Several months ago, I tried this activity that I saw on Pinterest where toddlers are supposed to manipulate long pipe cleaners into a colander.  It didn't go so well because once she got them in, she didn't really know what to do with them!  We tried it again yesterday using tiny pieces of pipe cleaners & I was amazed at how dextrous she was with feeding them in until they disappeared & then she lifted the colander up and started the whole process over again!

Our work is never done!

Felt letters on a small piece of felt in a pencil box.  I love these boxes ($1 or less at Walmart) because they are stackable, but also easy for little hands to open and close!  She pulled out the C for Carlie & I finished it, but the H-A for Hadley was all on her own!

This activity was similar to yesterday's pipe cleaner ABCs, but she was a little more into this one!  Funnily enough, she kept asking me to make letters out of the pipe cleaner pieces - apparently she was paying attention yesterday!

Practicing gross motor skills by walking down "stairs" and jumping off of the stool!