Wild Things

This week we are reading Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Awesome book. I read it over, and over, and over and never tire of the greatness of this book! It is so imaginative and fun, and I keep using the phrase "I'll eat you up, I love you so" as I pretend to eat my children alive! They find it histarical! Yesterday we made crowns from leaves from the tutorial here by Maya of Mayamade: So we got to be the King of the wild things for the afternoon while playing in the freshly raked leaves. This was a GREAT toddler craft as Ana could stick the leaves to the crown herself. Bel was very wild and ripped hers to shreds after she immediately pulled it off her head:

More wild, fall and Halloweenie crafts to come!!!

Halloween Tickities

Sorry I have been delinquent in posting lately! We had a week of catch-up in other areas of our life after the grandparents came for a visit. Hopefully we are back to normal! Ana calls our activity trays "tickities" and this week I had a few new Halloween themed ones to share: I found the above sensory tub at Chasing Cheerios who found it at No Time for Flashcards. So it isn't mine, but I think it is an AWESOME idea. I am already coming up with ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas! Woohoo! And below is a pom-pom tonging tray. She tonged the pom-poms into the pumpkin ice cube tray, green on one side and purple on the other:

It was a huge hit despite the fact she hasn't really been too into her trays. We also did a spider tweezing activity and she can sort the spiders into orange and black (the two bowls are stacked and this activity is pictured backwards!):

I also painted some lima beans like pumpkins and ghosts for Ana to spoon:

Like I said though, she really hasn't been much into her trays. But I did put some creepy crawlies in her jars which she opened, retrieved and played with for a while:

The jars and specimins would probably go well with the sensory tub as well, just as an added element of interest! We are also reading Where the Wild Things Are this week for our book! Hopefully I will have more to post on that soon!

Some Bats!

I got this idea from Family Fun a while ago, but instead of making finger puppets, I tied string to them so we could hang them. I didn't have black pompoms on hand, and couldn't find any locally (there is such a lack of craft stores around here!) so I made some out of yarn. There is a popo tutorial here. I actually planned on making these with our playgroup the other day, but the kids were playing so nicely we didn't want to interupt them for a craft. So Ana and I made all the leftover bats together. I did most of the glueing and she did everything else!

PS- I changed Anastasia's name to Ana for this blog to make it simpler and calling the kids A and I was just too confusing! So Ana is Anastasia and Bel is Isabel.

Decorating Pumpkins

Toddler style... I don't really like markers much, but they do have their uses. I saw this activity on A Bit Of This and A Bit Of That last fall and Ana loved it! We just colored on the pumpkin with WASHABLE markers. And, she can wash it off with a sponge and start all over! Brilliant. Just brilliant!

Happy Columbus Day!

In the year of 1492... Columbus Sailed the ocean blue.

Today we made little boats from egg cartons, Columbus style via a tutorial from Kaboose. I had to glue the sails to the toothpicks, but A did everything else including decorating the sails, painting the boats, putting in playdough, and putting up the masts! As you can see from the picture some of her little animals even went for a sail across the Atlantic! And here is a funny vintage cartoon we watched on YouTube.



I know Columbus is quite a controversial individual, but you have to admire his courage and adventurous spirit.

Water Transfer

I picked up these cute Halloween pails in the dollar section at target for sponging water from one pail to another. Cute idea, but the cheapy, tin pails leaked! So I switched to little cups instead. A did this one time and then wanted to play in the water.

Jars and Lids

I have been meaning to do this activity with A for a long time. Its really easy, just get several jars of varying sizes (I used some plastic and some glass) with lids and place in a basket. This kept A occupied for atleast 20 minutes! She would fit smaller jars, in bigger jars and try to stuff all the lids in 1 jar. Then she ended up stacking several jars on top of each other.

For older kids you could put a rock or small animal in each jar, have them pull the lid off, and even turn it into some sort of matching game (like each jar have a different habitat/food/etc on the lid.) Just some ideas. As is, it was fun for A, but adding more interest as she gets older would be a lot of fun too.

More Mice

Because of our cats death, and I's party and all the other insanity in our lives last week, school fell to the wayside. So I am picking up where I left off and doing "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" crafts this week. Today we made mouse puppets from a paper bag: I cut out the mouse face, arms and overalls from cardstock and used yarn for whiskars, and black beans for eyes and chocolate chips to add some texture. Anastasia really LOVED this craft! It was really torture for her to wait for the glue to dry! We printed the "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" shadow matching game and the cookie matching game from the Homeschool Share Page. We don't really know our numbers, but this is a fun way to learn. Cookies make everything fun don't they?