Kid Friendly Fall Decorating

Connor and I have been doing some fall decorating around our home!

First he helped me create this wreath. By help I mean hand me the colors when I asked for them... hehe! All you need to do is make felt roses, and then hot glue them to a Styrofoam wreath!

We also took some leftover white fabric I had laying around, and made some ghosts to hang in our tree outside! To do this we crunched newspaper into balls, and wrapped the balls into grocery bags (incase it rains). After that we tied some ribbon, and made glitter eyes!

Connor thought it was so cool that we were hanging them in the trees! Now that they are there he loves to look at them through the window!

Then to decorate the front door I mixed white tempra paint with a little dish soap, and then dipped both Connor & Logans feet in it! I held them up and put their little feet upside down all over the door to make ghosts!! I love how they look, and we've gotten so many compliments on how they look!

What are some ways you include the kids in decorating for fall/ Halloween? I love to hear some more ideas!!!


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Easter Decorating

So I have been on bed rest for premature labor. It just ended, and I decided last minute to host Easter for about 13 people knowing I could go into labor at any point. I came up with some last minute decorating ideas, and wanted to share :D

Bunny Napkins

Peeps Center piece for adult table

Kids table all ready to go

It was fun! :D

WayBack Wednesday

For today's wayback Wednesday post.. I felt like thinking about last Spring! :D The weather has been a tease lately going from hot to cold! Yuk!

We made some colorful flower pots with acrylic paint! We even made one for Grandma, and mailed it to her for Mothers day!

St. Pattys Day

So, usually St. Patrick's day is one of my favorite holiday. When I used to teach preschool I would make a big deal of it. The day before we would always create a leprechaun trap, and the next morning we would find his clothes in it!! (he used his special magic to escape!) He would make a mess of the classroom-- leave green paper shamrocks & glitter trails etc. I figured the boys were still a bit young to really get much enjoyment out of this idea. So, I decided to just focus on the colors associated with it! Such as the color green, and rainbows! I pretty much put green food coloring in everything we ate today!

We made leprechaun hats, wore green, and made some rainbows!

(the trick was to only give them one paint color at a time, and let it dry a bit in between colors, otherwise it would have been a big brown mess!)

For the letters I used my Sizzix Die Cut Machine. This was one of the first personal die cut machines. It has been around for a while. I don't have much knowledge about other machines out there, but I love mine! They don't make many new dies for it though :(. I have had it for a good amount of years now.. and truly feel I've gotten my moneys worth :D

Happy St. Pattys Day!

Happy Ground Hog Day!

Today is groundhog day. Connor, and the others are a bit young to fully understand the concept. I have a lot of ideas that can go along with this day, but will do most next year. For now, we made groundhog hats, and talked about shadows. I brought out flashlights, and they learned what a "shadow" was! Most importantly, they had tons of fun shining lights everywhere!

Rodolph the Reindeer

This can make a cute Christmas card, or a gift! As you can see its a combination of a footprint, and both hand prints! We used brown paint and once dried add some eyes and a nose!

Gift Bow Painting

For free art Friday we used gift bows dipped in paint to create a picture :D It made some pretty cool designs, and kept the Christmas spirit going!

This is an easy project that even really young ones can enjoy! Its great for hand-eye coordination and those little fine motor skills!

Christmas Trees

We had an hour to kill before bedtime the other night. Connor and I were hanging out in the classroom, and we decided to make some Christmas trees! I had a foam cutout of a tree! We glued,used stickers, and lots of glitter! What a great decoration :D

Quick candy canes

I needed a quick easy project today. So I decided to work on our fine motor skills, and make candy canes. I cutout a cane shape out of red paper, and then gave everyone white strips to glue on. We practiced using glue sticks. They make cute decorations!

Gingerbread Cookies

Today I have a 11 month old, 18 month old, 16 month old, and a 3 year old! We are going to have a gingerbread cookie day!! Yum! Who doesn't love a good gingerbread cookie?!

To start the day we read a classic book-- The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth. All of the kids got really into the book. They loved screaming "Run Run as fast as you can, you cant catch me, I'm the Gingerbread man!!"

This gave us a bit of an idea of what a gingerbread man is. Then it was time to practice. I gave each child a gingerbread man cutout, and we used a white paint pen to decorate and draw designs on the paper.

That one is Connors. Which is similar to how the younger ones looked. The 3 year old of course drew actual buttons, etc. Then it was time to make some cookies before nap time! Everyone helped pour ingredients, and took turns mixing!

When the little ones went to nap. The 3 year old and I rolled the dough, and baked them! After nap we all decorated our own, and ate them up! We even made a few extras for everyone to take home!!

That was our gingerbread day :D

Christmas Cookie Cutter Art..

Welcome December!!

We are entering one of my favorite times of the year.. Christmas! Although, I do admit.. I am not a fan of the cold that comes with it!(which makes Summer still my number one). I love the endless amount of project ideas to do with little ones. Unfortunately, it makes me kind of anxious for Connor to get a * tad * bit older so we can do even more! Until then, there is still plenty we can do!

Since we still have a while until Christmas, I wanted to start of slow, and save them more extreme Christmas ideas until later on in the month! So today we just dipped Christmas themed cookie cutters into red & green paint. (Obviously those will be our colors this month!)

The kids loved seeing the outlines of the different pictures the cookie cutters created. Perfect for little hands! Great for hand-eye coordination!

Pumpkin Pies

What's your favorite part of Thanksgiving?! Mine of course is all the food & family! One of my favorite foods is pumpkin pie!! Yumm!! We made pumpkin pie slices today, and then ate some real pumpkin pie!! Don't forget the cotton ball whipped cream!

Feathery Turkey Fun

Today we made turkeys using paper plates, feathers, google eyes, and a turkey body I drew, and lots of glue! Basically the kids used their fine motor skills to glue feathers and the body to the plate! We talked about the colors, and counted feathers too! Afterwards, I put the leftover feathers in a bin and we had a feather sensory tub! The kids loved they way they felt! We also learned a new word "soft!"

Handprint Turkies

This is a great keepsake, that is more about the product then the process! When doing hand print projects I always take two sheets of paper out! One for me to capture my product, and another for the kids to free paint on. Look how cute our turkies turned out!

Turkey Tracks

This project was a hit! Since Thanksgiving is coming up I decided to talk about "Turkies" this week. Today we talked about their feet, and the tracks they make when they walk! Then I took straws, and cut it to make three 'claws.' We dipped the straws into brown paint, and made turkey tracks! This would be great for kids who were a little older. It can be turned into a whole lesson on animal footprints! However, for now with my little ones, they enjoyed just making them! Afterall, its the process not the product!

Candy Corn Handprints

Paint the top of the fingers white, middle of the hand orange, and bottom yellow. Viola.. and candy corn hand print! How cute is this?!

Could even do it with a foot! OO how cute would it be it it were a baby foot??

Skeletons

I love open ended art that results in something related to a theme! With Halloween around the corner, we decided to make skeletons today! This is a great one for all ages! Little ones enjoy just dipping q-tips in glue.. and older ones can really get detail orientated by adding lots of "bones!" This would even go great with a lesson on the names of bones, or the human body!

We read Skeleton Hiccups Margery Cuyler to go along with our craft! This book is so silly! Connor(almost 18 months) really enjoyed helping me make the "hic hic" sounds!!

Ghost Feetprints

How precious are these ghost footprints? Simply take a print with white paint on black paper... turn it upside down and add some google eyes! We even mailed one to Grandma & Grandpa! (Grandpa uses it as a bookmark!)