And she's off...

Anna started preschool yesterday.....sigh.

Her excitement leading up to the first day was so contagious!  She carried her lunchbox and backpack around for days and kept talking about her "new friends".  

Hoping she has a fabulous preschool year!  

Love you my super big three year old!

Color Matching Watercolor Activity

Watercolor paints are a favorite at our house.  The watercolor name activity is a regular in our craft rotation!!  Anna really enjoys painting with the watercolors and it's so neat to see how controlled with the paint brush she has gotten.

I put this little color matching and painting activity together for her to help develop her skills of staying in the line.  The brushes that come with the watercolor set are a little large, so it's harder to stay in the line with the small circles.  Not to mention that the water itself sometimes runs.   Regardless,  it was a fun little activity and is a keeper to us!!

Supplies needed:

markers

watercolor paint set

watercolor paper

Start by drawing various shapes and various colored circles on your watercolor paper.

Then invite your little one over for some painting fun.  Encourage them to match the color of the circle with the correct colored paint.  Also encourage them to try to stay in the line, but don't make a big fuss about it if they don't.  Having fun is much more important!!

Love the circles!!

Calendar of Activities: September

Here is what our calendar looks like for September.  As mentioned in the post about Our Fall Schedule, I am trying to be super prepared and organized when it comes to activities, crafts, baking, etc.

We always run smoother with some type of schedule.  

I don't have a "time" picked out to do these activities...we will just play each day by ear.  Some days we may not do the activity and some days we may do more than one.

Some of the things I will do with my daughter, Anna, while my son takes his afternoon nap (games, baking, etc...).

Anna is in preschool three days a week so I wanted to make sure we have lots of fun things planned for her when she gets home and while Drew naps.

I have included links to each of the activities (if I had one) so you can play along with us if you'd like.  To make it a little easier to read, I have listed the activities by the day of the week/type of activity (i.e. Monday's: Play dough).

Most all of the activities require very little materials, which I like.....and most are easy and fast to throw together!

Mondays: Play dough

Play dough Monsters

Glitter Play dough

Ice Cream Play dough

Apple Pie Play dough

Tuesdays: Baking

Sugar Cookies

Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

Banana Bread

Easy Apple Muffins

Wednesdays: Painting

Mini Watercolor Book

Mess Free Finger Painting

Painting Faces with Googly Eyes

Fall Tree Cork Painting

Thursdays: Craft

Letter Pizza

Cheerio Bracelet

Bird Feeders

Autumn Leaf Craft

Fridays: Games

Popsicle Matching Game

Family Memory Game

Hide-n-Seek

Candy Land


I hope some of you will join along with us this Fall for our activities!  Drop me a note and let me know if you are playing along!  Everything is always more fun in a group, right??

xoxo

Watercolor Resist Paintings

Anna and I had fun doing some watercolor resist paintings the other day!  

I started out by drawing and writing some different things on pieces of white paper with a white crayon.  Be sure to press down hard enough so the crayon will be on the paper.

Then I handed Anna our watercolors and some water and told her to find the secret messages and pictures!

She loves trying to figure out what was on each page!

Here are our "secret" pictures.

So easy, but fun!

It could be great for learning your name, sight words or just for fun!

goodbye summer.

Preschool and our fall schedule starts next week!  Can't believe Summer has already come and gone.  Looking forward to cooler weather, changing leaves, family time and football games.  

goodbye summer.

hello fall.

Making Faces

If you've been following along, you know that most of our house is in disarray with packing, packing and more packing.  Which means that this crafty momma has had to think out of the box for our arts and crafts activities.

This is another one of those activities that requires very little supplies, but is fun for everyone.

Using one of the rolls from our bubble wrap package, Anna dipped the tube in paint and then stamped circles all over her paper.

Once the circles were dry she decided she wanted to make some faces in the circles, so I said...why not???

She is at that stage where she loves to draw her self portrait so these are all pictures of her.  I love that she is starting to add ears, hair, eyebrows and chins...

A simple activity using common household objects!  Easy enough for this momma!!

Our Fall Schedule

I don't know about you, but our days always run much smoother when we have a schedule or something planned.  "Just go with it..." days don't really seem to work for us.  

So...in order to be ready for our preschool year and this Fall, I am putting a lot of up front work in and am planning out our days.  

I'm going to try to "stick" to some sort of schedule of activities so I can be more prepared.  I love spontaneity but that doesn't seem to always fly with my kiddos.  We aren't stuck to this schedule, but if nothing else comes up, I will have a go to if needed.

Our schedule will be as above:

Mondays: play dough day.  

I plan on making a new batch of play dough with the kids and having a fun little activity for them to do.

Tuesdays: baking day

On Tuesday, I plan on having a fun little cooking activity planned for the kids.  Sometimes we will just make something easy or sometimes I will have an activity or book to go along with the baking day.

Wednesdays: painting day

Watercolors, finger paints, bubble painting..something like that.

Thursdays: craft day

I'll have a fun little craft planned for us on Thursdays.  Most likely I'll pick one of Allie's fabulous ideas over at No Time for Flashcards.

Fridays: game day

On Fridays I plan on having some type of fun game planned.  I'll probably use some of the store bought games we have on hand and then supplement with other "homemade" games I find/know (like "I spy" or "Hide and Seek").

I'm getting my calendar all ready and plan on sharing it here on my blog later this week so you can follow along with us if you'd like!!  If you don't already, follow Playing House on Facebook!  I post all my blog entries there so you'll hear about it right away!!

xoxo