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!

Fall, Halloween, Orange, & More!

Coloring our fall acorn (after singing "I'm a Nut" together, of course!)

I added white glue to the top of the acorn & spread it out & then she sprinkled used coffee grounds (dried) over it.  We shook the excess off and allowed it to dry (while Mama cleaned up the inevitable mess!)!

The finished product is really cool looking & turned out better than expected!  It almost looks like velvet & doubles as a sun catcher when displayed up on the window!  When Haddy saw it, she said, "cool!"

Cc is for Candy Corn!  We made this using cut up pieces (triangles for the shape of the month!) of paint samples! You could easily use construction paper, but I love the color effect that the paint samples give it, plus I have a million of them to experiment with!

Here is Hadley proudly displaying her work!  I have a huge stack of paint samples from my dad (hardware store manager). He told me that about once a month, they take the paint sample from the front of the stack out and (usually) throw it away, to counteract fading in the samples over time...I foresee many creative uses for paint sample crafts in our future!

The finished product!

Handprint ghosts for Halloween!

Haddy's been obsessed with the moon lately, but we haven't been able to see it because it's been cloudy, so Haddy's making a cloudy moon scene for the letter Cc!

Cc is for cookie!  Inspired by her recent love of tea parties, we played a quick memory game to see if Hadley could remember which tea cup I had hidden the cookie under!

We also made Honey Peanut Butter No-Bake cookies together (for Cc)!  Recipe found here!  We read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" while they were setting up!

We also mixed up some orange "cloud" shaving cream for a sensory activity.  H is afraid of shaving cream (I think she doesn't like the way it moves) as far as touching it goes, so for now, we'll stick with the bag mixing technique!

Mix away, little one!

Letter C, cats, clouds & finishing circles

It's been hectic around here with a baby who hasn't been sleeping well & therefore a mama with no energy to do much during the day (as far as planned activities), plus with a toddler who is hit or miss on whether or not she wants to participate in crafts/activities, things haven't been going according to plan!

Building blocks has been the activity of choice, as of late - It's been neat to watch her problem solve to get blocks onto the top of the tower that she isn't able to reach! She's both used a stool & also taken a small stack off the top & then added blocks to it before replacing it on the top of the tower!

For the letter Cc, we read the story Copycats from the Alphatales series of books by Scholastic!  We then made masks & copied  the actions of each other!

I pre-wrote the letters, but she found them in the pile & put them in order on the glue, as I told her what letter came next in each name!

This was our circle collage on contact paper!  Lots of circle cut outs from magazines & stickers on both sides!

In this game, I gave her a bunch of different cut-out shapes & asked her to find only the circles to put on the circle-shaped lid!

We read a book on clouds (actually I paraphrased it for her) & then painted clouds on our paper for the letter Cc.  This is made using white glue mixed with shaving cream!  It's dries 3-D puffy!

Finished product!