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!

Apples, bubbles, buttons, & pretend play

Apple-covered Aa!

Our apple story & finger/felt play!

Haddy with her apple pie spiced playdoh apple (complete with pretzel stem and mint-leaf) before our pretend and real applesauce making!

Mama planted seeds inside so that Haddy could do all the same steps as she made the real applesauce!  Haddy cut the apple in half with a small butter knife and picked out all the seeds!

Then, with a little help, Haddy cut the halves into small pieces! (Love the tongue-action on all of these shots!)

She got to sprinkle in a little real cinnamon (she loved that part) while Mama added the other spices (she loved sniffing each kind as Mama put them in)!

Waiting in the kitchen, singing songs, while the applesauce cooked in the microwave!

Watching Mama smash the apples into sauce with a fork!

Button begins with Bb (gluing buttons onto our Bb)!

We've been learning about bubbles for the letter Bb, so she's stamping (toilet paper roll) bubbles onto the B!

Ooh! A bubble snake! (Made by rubber banding an old dish towel or sock over the cut-off end of a water bottle! We dipped the towel into dish detergent mixed with a few drops of water!)

Cautiously eyeing the Bubble Snake!

Chasing the Bubble Snake!

Baby Tummy Time with her Princess friends!

Giving baby a bath & dressing her

Just monkeying around with the baby gate

Apples & Funny Faces! (And so much more)!

Finishing up the paper plate apple from last week with a little bit of lacing.  It was very free-form ;)

Finger-painting the apples on our apple poem print-out - she actually did really well getting the paint inside the apples!

www.teacherspayteachers.com/Download/Apple-Poem-Finger-Paint

Printed out, colored, & then finger-painted

I cut out a bunch of eyes, noses, & mouths from magazines.  I laminated them & added magnets to the back!

Making magnet faces!

This one is my favorite!

A new discovery bottle! A Jellyfish!

 The Discovery Bottle Jellyfish

Water beads discovery bottle

Making noisemakers! 

Our noisemaker! We put popcorn and rice into toilet paper tubes & stapled & duct taped the ends shut!

Popsicle stick shape puzzles

Making an apple sun catcher!  Tissue paper pieces on contact paper!

The finished product!

Peeling stickers is great for fine motor!  I got a bunch of Disney movie stickers in some junk mail - perfect for this activity!

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!