Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! This place is hopping this morning. :)  We stuck a baby monitor inside one of our jack-o-lanterns outside.  Adam played talking jack-o-lantern with the kids as they arrived. 

Yesterday we created a simple project- sticker scenes!  I love sticker scenes.  They can be purchased in droves at Oriental Trading.  Easy peasy and fast, yet entertaining for the kids.  

The pouring rain kept us inside in the afternoon, but it's fun to see the boys all playing so well together.  Henle House is 90% boy right now!  Sure they will play with the doll house, as long as Spiderman is involved.   

I spent last night preparing for our spooky flashlight group time this morning.  We will have to wait until tomorrow to see the photos.   We will be playing a spiderweb game, pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern and oohing and ahhing over the glowing things in the playroom.  Have a safe trick-or-treat this evening!  We will have a load of giggly girls tagging along with our two boys. Boo!♥♥♥ Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

Leaf Pile

While we are praying for the east coast, the weather in Snohomish yesterday was beautiful!  The rain turned off and the sun kept popping out.  We took advantage of all of the leaves in the yard.  It was time to jump in the leaf pile!

"Is it ready?"

"Yeah!!"

I love the smiles and the happy noise.

It was a very windy day and the kids enjoyed throwing the leaves into the air to see the wind blow them away.  Leaves make great sensory play time!

Crunch them, pile them, spread them around, throw them up and watch them flitter, flutter down.♥

"I did it!"  Precious. ♥ 

We also created D is for dot art.  Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Skeleton Game

I saw this on Pinterest, you can see the post here.  When you get to the link, click on the photo and it will take you to another link with the print option.  I thought this would be a fun inside game for the older kids to play.

I placed a piece of clear contact paper over each page of skeleton pieces.   This is to help the pieces last a while, this way we will be able to play the skeleton game for years!  I then cut out the pieces and the rules.  I contact papered the rules to a note card.  

This is how the game is played.  All you will need is one dice.

Here they were last week, playing the game.  I think we played five rounds.  It is so simple that the kids enjoy it!  Minimal pieces, very simple idea.  

The first person to complete the skeleton, wins! They understood that if you already have the piece that the dice rolled, then the skeleton doesn't gain a piece. 

When there is a winner, the kids all cheer in congratulatory tones.  Then it was time to re-stack the pieces in the middle of the table so they could play again.  I love this game! 

I also love that it fits into a sandwich size ziplock bag for easy storage.  By the way- I don't know what I would do without ziplock bags- I use them for everything.  Happy Monday!  ♥♥♥

♫Wake Up by Awolnation.♫

Dress Up & Chippy Love

The kids played dress up yesterday. It's incredible what a costume can do to an imagination!  All of these kids are very imaginative, but the minute they don a costume they can leap much further.  We have been blessed by many a yard sale over the past few years that has helped us stock the dress up cabinet. 

This is what the floor looks like during dress up play.  I'm over it.  

I love to see what they choose.  It's usually something different each time.  ♥

"Transformer Ninja Man" was great to have around! He was ready to save the day. ☺

 What's cuter than two peanuts noticing the wildlife?  Well, Chippy, of course!  I am in love with this squirrel!  He is absolutely bossy right now.  As I am typing this, the kids are gathered at the doors watching Chippy deal with his morning peanut loot.  Sometimes he hangs around and eats them.  Other times he races across the yard to bury his nuts.  

Chippy. ♥  If I spend too much time telling him through the door how cute he is and that he should just come inside to snuggle, he will step forward a little and look at me sideways.  "Come on, lady!  Feed me, I'm starving!"  I love when he actually comes up to the glass and puts his little hands up there and peeks inside.  

I am so glad that the kids can see a squirrel up close.  What a neat outside pet! 

We saw him hanging upside down from a mammoth sunflower head yesterday.  I was too late snapping the photo and caught him right side up again.  

Happy Friday!♥♥♥

Sweets For Sweets

I don't usually buy Peeps, but I found a great idea on Pinterest.  See the pin here.  I thought this would be a fun way to give the kids their trick or treat on Halloween.♥

The bag includes two graham cracker halves, one Peeps ghost, and two mini chocolate bars.  Being a stickler for freshness, I put the two graham cracker halves into a snack size ziplock bag and then placed them inside the treat bag.  There is nothing worse than a stale cracker, and that wouldn't be a very nice trick.  Besides, I made these ahead of time so I wouldn't have so much to do on the day of our little party. 

We added a small note that is visible from the back of the bag. 

Sweets for our sweets! 

Meanwhile, something was worth watching. 

They were all still and watching intently.  

Adam was chopping wood.  Every time he is busy doing something, the kids are not far behind.  They just like to see what he is doing.  Happy Thursday!  We have no school today in Snohomish, so the house is bursting at the seams with joyful noise.  I have not forgotten to thank God for that noise, we are really blessed! 

'I Need You Now' by Plumb.  ♫  Turn it UP!!  Especially when the song is for the Lord!

4 Birds

We were supposed to create 4 witch hats, but as I said before, I am done with Halloween.  I wanted to create something bright and colorful that might remind us that it is fall.  We see birds all year long, but they have been around us in force lately thanks to the giant sunflower heads that are bursting with seeds.  We created 4 birds!

I gave them each some bird shapes.  The kids glued them onto a paper wherever they chose to place them.  I added some tacky glue for them.  I only have two bottles of it in our supply cabinet, so I can't let them each have their own.  

We got out the feathers!  Feathers are so fun to use.  The bright colors keep the kids' attention and make art pop.  I purchased a giant bag for around $6 from Oriental Trading.  Worth EVERY penny.

The kids spent some time adding feathers to the glue for each bird.  They added beaks and one eye to each bird.  We constantly took the time to count each bird, as well.  

Each child used a marker to draw bird legs.  

I LOVED this project!!  Sometimes the ideas we create on a whim are much better than the ones that were planned ahead of time.  

The kids glued on the number four.  Look how cute that bird is.  I am so glad that I took photos. ♥

These are just adorable!!  I knew immediately that they would all be taken home.  I was right.  They are gone forever, the empty art wall remains.  (Insert sad face here.)  I suppose that is a compliment.  I would've loved those colorful birds to hang around for a bit! 

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

Patterning Necklace

Yesterday we worked on remembering the sound that the letter Dd makes.  When we were finished completing the worksheet, we moved on to patterning.  A necklace is a great way to help kids see and attempt to create a pattern!  We chose noodles and cheerios.

I set this example out of the table to help them remember to use one cheerio, and then one noodle.  They all did a great job!  

We used paper plates to help the kids contain their pieces.  I don't know what we would do without paper plates.  They have so many uses. 

They recognized when they were finished that there was indeed, a pattern.  

Seeeeee?  Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Torn Paper Mosaic

We had a ghost project planned, but for some reason I feel ready to move past Halloween.  (What's wrong with me?  This is new..)  SO, we created something beautiful.♥

We gave the kids some construction paper in red, brown and yellow.  They were each given the job of tearing up their paper into small pieces.  They didn't know why, yet.  

This was great for the little ones!  We are usually trying to keep them from tearing the project, but this time it was no problem. 

I liked that this took some time and thought.  They had plates to store the pieces on. 

Beforehand, I cut out some yellow construction paper leaf shapes.  To keep things simple, I added glue for them so they could focus on the placement of their paper pieces.  The idea was to cover up all of the yellow. 

This was easy for the little ones, too.  The only problem we encountered was that the kids did not like getting the glue on their fingers.  Because I had squeezed it out everywhere, it was inevitable that they would touch it.  That's ok because we had one more excuse to go wash our hands.  Boy have these kids all been fighting off illness lately!!

They worked hard to try to keep the pieces inside of the shape so as not to lose the leaf shape. 

See??  We glued each leaf to a green piece of paper. 

♥♥♥Beautiful!!  Happy Monday!♥♥♥

I hope you all had a great weekend, we sure did.  We were blessed by a wedding and then some dear friends were baptized after church service.  God is doing amazing things.  I pray that all of our eyes are open to see them this week. ♥