Preschool Journal: Big and Small

This is another entry in our preschool journal.  

Anna and I were talking about big and small things one day and we decided it would be pretty cool to trace our hands to see the size difference.  I traced our hands, but she filled in our names and wrote "big" and "small" at the top of the pages.

Making Monsters

This kind of wraps up our Halloween-type crafts.  This simple painting craft is from Learn.Create.Love.  If you haven't visited them you just have to!  The site is awesome for printable painting crafts!  

Mike the monster was fun to paint and assemble for our Halloween activities!!

Hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween!!  We sure did!!  My two cuties had so much fun! 

Spooky Ghost Counting

Happy Halloween to everyone!!  We are busy having Halloween parties, making pumpkin cupcakes and eating lots and lots of candy!!

I still managed to sneak in a little learning fun at our little Halloween get together today!  I found the haunted house printable at Sarah Jane Studios.  I just cut out her template and traced it onto black construction paper.  Then I cut out and numbered some yellow windows and some numbered ghosts.

I covered both the house and the ghosts with contact paper so I could use tape on the back of the ghosts.  

Both my kiddos have loved playing with the little ghosts and the house.  Drew loves taking off the ghosts and putting them back one.  Anna loves matching the numbers up!!  

Hope everyone is having a fabulous Halloween!!

http://sarahjanestudios.com/blog/2012/10/halloween-traditions/

Preschool Journal: My Favorite Things

These pictures are probably Anna's most favorite thing ever.  She loves the pictures and she loves looking at them in her journal.

Her preschool class had each child create an "all about me" page using their favorite "things" and Anna requested to add one to her journal book.

All of the images are just printed from Google images.  I printed a thumbnail of each one and then cut them out for her.

She carefully placed each picture in her journal.

With her favorite...the mermaids....front and center!!

The journal has kind of turned into her own little "scrapbook" and I love it.  I'm sure it will be fun to look back through all her pictures, words, letters, drawings, etc.  in a few months!  They grow fast, don't they!!

Five Little Pumpkins

The "Five Little Pumpkins" story has been repeated numerous times over the past few weeks in our house.  Seriously....like every other minute.

So I decided to just enjoy it and Anna and I made a little picture to go along with our story.  

I drew some pumpkin shapes onto a piece of paper and she drew some faces and colored in her pumpkins.

While she colored away, I cut out a "gate" for our pumpkins to sit on.  Then Anna colored some grass, sky and a moon on our picture.  And of course...it just had to have a witch (please excuse my awful representation of a witch!)

Then we told the story using the pumpkins!  

Anna loved this!  We've done this little activity too many times to count!  Hurry up Halloween!!  :)

And in case you don't know the Five Little Pumpkins, here's our version...

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first pumpkin said, "Oh my, it's getting late."

The second pumpkin said "There are witches in the air."

The third one said "But we don't care."

The fourth one said "Let's run and run and run"

The fifth one said "I'm ready for some fun"

Then whoosh wind went the wind

And out went the lights

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight

Making Pumpkins: A Color Mixing Experiment

I love trying to incorporate some learning into craft activities and this one is perfect for preschoolers.  

We have done lots of color mixing activities, but I figured with Halloween right around the corner we could do some mixing to make some pumpkins.  Mess free pumpkins, that is!!

You only need a ziploc bag, some yellow and red paint and a marker if you want to give your pumpkin a pretty face!

Have your kiddo squeeze some yellow paint into a ziploc bag.  (I'm pretty sure the squeezing part was Anna's favorite!)

Then add some red paint.  And squish away.

Soon you'll see your orange "pumpkin" appear!  

After we mixed our colors to make orange, I handed Anna a sharpie marker to make her pumpkin face.

Simple, easy, but educational!  Love it!

Our Fall Family Tree

Drew and I painted leaves for our fall family tree one afternoon.  It turned out to be such a cute little project and the kids loved looking at all of our family.  It was pretty simple to complete too....you know my style...simple and easy.

Here's how to make one:

Start by painting some "fall colors" onto a piece of paper.  Just let your child paint away (unless you have an older child who could actually paint leaves freehand).

While your child is painting, cut out a tree with some branches.  Tape it up to the wall and then tape a piece of contact paper over the top with the sticky side out.  

After the painting has dried, cut out leaf shapes from the paper.  I think it's pretty cool how the colors are all mixed. 

Then print off some pictures of your family members, tape them onto the leaves and laminate the leaves.

Stick the leaves up on your tree and then play around.

My two really loved seeing all of our family!

Happy Fall!