Happy Fall!

Halleluja! Today is officially the first day of Autumn, the season I wait for all year long.  Thank you God for this season of crunchy leaves and warm colors.  There is NOTHING that I dislike about Fall.  It is time to make hot apple cider and cozy up in our homes after a nice walk through the woods.  Yesterday I cut down the corn stalks.  My goal today is to have them placed around the house for decoration.  It's time to take the kids on a wander through a local corn maze or two.

I have my Halloween costume, Raggedy Ann.  Above is my doll from when I was two.  I got her out and she is attending group time with us daily so the kids will know who she is, and recognize my costume on Halloween. 

We created a brown bear yesterday for art!  We are still recognizing the sound of the letter Bb.

I cut out these pieces in preparation.

You can always add a stick to a project and have an instant puppet.  

The kids painted the paper plate brown.

They glued the pieces on and drew a mouth.  

This was a quick project and the kids enjoyed it!  I love when they can create art that inspires play. 

It was sprinkling outside, and while we could have gone out and would've actually enjoyed it, the kids opted for playing inside.  They each chose their own activity and just played.  There is such value in play time!

The kids learn how to cooperate, sharing, teaming up and imagining together. 

♥♥♥Happy 1st day of Fall!♥♥♥

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Beading & Music Monday

Bb is for beading!  I wasn't pleased with the craft I had in the curriculum, so instead decided to do some beading.  I found these great colored pasta beads and added them to the large pony beads. 

We used black yarn, because black starts with the letter b.

To prepare it, I usually tie a bead onto the end to keep the added beads from slipping off of the yarn, and tape the other end for easy beading.

They were busy!

See the leaves in the middle of the table?

I hole punched each leave twice so the kids could add these to the center of the necklace.

This was the idea.  I wish we had added a couple of beads before lacing the second hole of the leaf.  This would've kept the leaf more open when the necklace was completed.  The heaviness of the beads just squished the leaf up.  Oh well!

"Let's get a group photo!"  I love to gather them up for a nice group shot.

Could they get any cuter?

I love this job.

It's cloudy and wonderful outside!  It's a Loreena Mckennitt kind of morning!

♫'The Bonny Swans' by Loreena Mckennitt.  Practically perfect in every way.♫

♥♥♥Happy Music Monday!♥♥♥

Bear Hunt & Puzzle Pumpkins

We went on  bear hunt yesterday in celebration of the letter Bb!  These books were a steal from Scholastic for only $1 each. 

This book is best read when acting it out with the kids as a group.  They enjoyed it so much, I'm sad I didn't order a copy for myself. What was I thinking?

Anyway- we worked our way through the book, meandering through tall grass, a river, mud, a cave etc.. until we reached the bear! 

The art was beautiful.

Once we rushed back to our mats, the kids enjoyed thumbing through their own copies and "reading" it themselves.  They remember what the words are for most of the pages.  It's a repetitive book.

For art, we created a pumpkin.  This time I cut the pumpkin into three pieces for the kids to piece together.

I encouraged them to leave a bit of space between each piece so the black could show through.  It's a nice effect!

They each used oil pastels to draw stripes, trace around the pumpkin shapes and color in between the stripes.

I love to use black paper.  It makes the art stand out!  The tracing added a very nice glow!

I tried to give them two different colors to use for some contrast.

The result was wonderful!!  I love pumpkin art, and these were just great!

Only four more days until it is officially Fall!  We have been counting down.

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥

Red, Rain Boots & Imagination

Everything is about the color red lately.  We threw out a worksheet and created a page of red.  Sometimes I don't know why I bother making copies of worksheets.  Maybe it's just something to fall back on if my creative juices aren't flowing.  The kids colored the letters red.

They proceeded to add red dots to the page.

Finally, they added red yarn to the lines of the letters. 

I had no idea how much I would end up loving this!  It looks like graffiti.  The kids had a rough time getting used to the glue on their fingers.  Gluing yarn can be a messy task, and the yarn ends up sticking to glued fingers.  We worked through it, though.

The kids wore the rubber boots!  It has been a very long time since we have needed them, and they were actually pretty excited. 

I love to see them smiling and running outside.  I don't know why the faces are blurry, I must have hit something on the camera.  They had so much fun just running in the rain that when it was time to come inside there was surround sound moaning and protests. 

After school, this happened.  She was the "racecar judge".  She was actually yelling, "Start your engines!"

These were the cars.

"Go, go go!!"  

This was all their own idea.  It makes me happy to see that the kids can play even without toys.  

It is important for kids to be able to imagine.

The toys didn't even need to come out of the shed. 

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

2 Leaf Peepers

We cut up another worksheet yesterday.  We are recognizing the number two!

Something as simple as placing two items onto the table can help to keep the kids engaged. 

They counted them both.

After we attempted to write the number two, we created two leaf peepers.  They are peeping at us.  I was going to collect some real leaves to use, but went ahead and used some craft leaves instead to avoid crumbling.

We have been working on name recognition and those who are able are writing their names. :)

The leaf peepers needed smiles. ☺

I LOVE the use of two lines as a mouth.  It makes sense!  This leaf looks like it's telling a joke.

This was much more fun than just writing on a worksheet.  

On our way back from the morning bus stop walk, we couldn't resist collecting some of the newly fallen leaves.  I don't let the kids keep them in the house, so they have been storing them on the back porch for outside time.  They actually play with the leaves! 

Here is what I found.  The beautiful colors of Fall, aren't we so lucky that God created beauty on this earth?

I like to add them to the bucket.

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥