Posted in Autumn

Posted in Autumn

Today we went to Aunt Valerie's house down the street and had a lot of fun doing crafts and eating fun snacks for lunch! Here are a few things we did!

*painted egg carton cut outs orange to look like pumpkins

*painted orange on a paper, folded it in half and ended up with 2 orange pumpkins! We painted black eyes, nose and mouth on with a q-tip and a green stem.

*we made cool spider webs out of black paper plates and white yarn! This took some mighty good fine motor skills!

*we read the Pumpkin Parable (with a few children still listening at this point, lol!) And Aunt Valerie cut open a pumpkin and she pulled out the seeds and pulp. Jack was the only one willing to stick his hand in and feel the pumpkin!

*we made spiders with peanut butter crackers, pretzels for legs and chocolate chips for eyes!

*we had pumpkin ice cream pie for dessert! Yummm!

Disclaimer:

I'm coming out of the "Halloween Closet" along with Lindsey over at Enjoy the Journey. I have been back and forth about all the halloween hoop-la and controversy among conservatives...and something that one of the authors of FIAR, Steve Lambert said really stuck with me. I'm not quoting him exactly, as I don't have a copy of his article. However, he said something along the lines of making a day of memories with your children is what is most important. I am choosing to take today and have FUN and make memories with my children! I'm choosing to dwell on relationships and the memories we will make instead of the evil that CAN be present on any day at anytime of the year, including Christmas. I'm not judging anyone who does NOT celebrate and I hope you won't judge me. Pray about it and decide what is best for your family! I had very fond memories of dressing up and trick or treating with my brothers as a child...my children love the dressing up part too...and of course, who doesn't love the candy? Tomorrow my plan is to do some CANDY MATH...so we'll be tying in the educational goals as well.

Lindsey also had this to say which I really appreciated!

Many of my friends (yes, they're still my friends) argue that Halloween is the devil's day. Pish posh, I say. The devil doesn't get a day. The last time I checked: This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Every single day is God's beautiful creation. The devil doesn't get his own day where God checks out and takes a coffee break. Even Halloween can be redeemed for HIS cause!

In our family, it is just another day of fun, enjoying the journey of life together. And hey, who wants to turn down Reece cups, kit-kats, cupcakes, and quarters? NOT US!
 

Posted in Autumn

I saw this idea in the latest issue of Family Fun and thought it looked...well, FUN! The girls did enjoy this craft a lot! It's the perfect rainy day craft!

I cut out squares from the only fall colors of tissue paper I had on hand - yellow, red and purple.

I watered down some regular white glue and the girls held up a square of tissue paper and painted completely over it.

We glued on tissue paper squares allll over the pumpkin! It is very bright and colorful!

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We're still waiting to see what it looks like completely dry...

Posted in Autumn

(Autumn unit)

Here are a few pictures of our painting fun today! First, we painted brown tree trunks - I helped with Caleb's and the girls did theirs on their own! Then we used our thumbs to paint colorful leaves all over the page! I think they turned out really well!

Fun Painting!

Hannah's Thumbprint Fall Tree

Emily's Thumbprint Fall Tree

Caleb's Thumbprint Fall Tree

Then I gave them another piece of paper and we used watercolors this time. All I said was, "fill up your page with autumn colors." Hannah took my words seriously and worked for quite awhile on this masterpiece! I love it!

Posted in Autumn

(Autumn unit)

I found this leaf graph online, so one day after we had picked lots of leaves from outside, we counted, sorted and graphed our leaves. The girls enjoyed doing this! And they are getting pretty good at graphing now as well!

HERE is the leaf graph.

And while you're at it, they have a lot of cute ideas for a fall leaf unit on this site, too!

Posted in Autumn

(Autumn unit)

Here is a cute song that we have been singing this week. The girls love anytime I introduce a new song to them! Especially a fun one with motions! (I just kinda made up the motions to this one as we went! for falling leaves I wiggled my fingers as they dropped from up high to down low - like rain kind of, then pointed to "the ground" and then for all around we turned around in circles.)

Autumn Time is Coming (sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Red leaves falling

Red leaves falling

on the ground

on the ground

Autumn-time is coming

Autumn-time is coming

All around

All around

Orange leaves falling

Orange leaves falling

on the ground

on the ground

Autumn-time is coming

Autumn-time is coming

All around

All around

Brown leaves scattered

Brown leaves scattered

on the ground

on the ground

Autumn-time is now here

Autumn-time is now here

All around

All around

Posted in Autumn

Today the girls did this craft showing what trees look like through the different seasons. Of course, they loved the chance to use glue, so it was a hit with them.  This is one of my favorite crafts I used to do with my kindergartners as a teacher...and I found it in my "Fall" folder the other night...so I had to do it with my own girls!

The spring flowers are just construction paper, the others are colored tissue paper for the different colored leaves.

And here is a picture of Hannah's drawing of her leaves from our leaf hunt the other day! We were out of space in her nature journal so she used a piece of paper. I got new nature journals for the girls the other night...I get so excited thinking about them having used up a whole notebook over the last months drawing pictures of God's awesome creation! I'm so glad they are loving drawing...it took awhile for them to feel comfortable, but they both are eager and love it now!

Posted in Autumn

Next week we will be doing a fun, fall unit! This wasn't originally in my unit plans for the year...but I simply couldn't go through my favorite season without having some fun crafts and reading some great books about AUTUMN. So...here are the ideas we are going to be using next week! (If you notice, we are mostly focusing on fall leaves this year -- the past few years we have done big units on apples and pumpkins...so this year I decided to go with leaves. I'm sure we will re-visit the favorite units of apples and pumpkins in later years.)

Great Books We'll Be Reading...

The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs

The Biggest Leaf Pile by Steve Metzger

From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer

Why Do Leaves Change Colors? by Betsy Maestro

The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown

 Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

The Listening Walk by Paul Showers

Poppleton in Fall by Cynthia Rylant

Every Autumn Comes the Bear by Jim Arnosky

Cranberry Autumn by Wendy and Harry Devlin

The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Neat Craft Ideas or Coloring Pages...

*I think we will make a leaf collection book using THESE printable pages for each type of leaf! I love this idea!

*I think we will paint THIS fingerprint tree with paint - only using fall colors - yellow, orange and red for the leaves.

*We will do some leaf rubbings - I have never done that with the kids yet, I think the girls will love that project!

*I also want to make a leaf stain glass picture to hang on one of our doors. We will collect a few pretty leaves each, then place the leaves and a few pieces of  crayon shavings in fall colors on wax paper. Place another sheet wax paper on the top of the design and then I will iron them together - pretty!

*Make leaf creatures - glue a leaf down on a piece of construction paper. Add legs and head, face to make an animal or wings to make a butterfly, etc. We did this last year and Hannah did such a great job! I'd like to try again this year!

Other activities...

*I will print one of these fall poems to read and color. We may also use 1 line from the poem as copywork. I especially like the poem on this page entitled Leaves.

*I will print the easier version of the Autumn word search for Hannah, she loves these!

*I'm going to use THIS leaf pattern to write adjectives describing fall on.

*Go on several nature walks, hopefully in different places -- our own neighborhood, the state park closest to our home, etc. We will collect leaves and any other nature tidbits we find along the way.

*If we find enough of a variety of leaves we will sort and graph the different colors.

*I hope to help the girls identify what types of leaves we find - lots of times I don't eve know! I need to learn! Hopefully we will draw a few leaves in our nature journals as well.

Fall Tea Time ideas...

*For our weekly tea time this week here are a few ideas I have jotted down, not sure which ones we will get to or end up doing! Caramel apple cider, mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread -- yummmmm!

*We will probably read a few of the autumn poems I listed above.

*Make some type of fall decoration/center piece for our table with LEAVES!

Happy Autumn to you and yours!

(here's an old favorite fall picture of my 3 little ones from fall 2005)