On Monday we started off with a Halloween inspired coloring page. It was of a pumpkin and a cat so I knew she'd be interested. We colored a little bit before moving right into our next activity!
My mom sent us a lot of fall themed craft items for tot school and on a spur of the moment I remembered she had sent us these felt leaf stickers. I quickly grabbed a piece of construction paper and a project was born. We traced Mara's arm for the trunk, which she loved, and then stuck the leaves to the top to make our own tree! I think tracing her arm was her favorite part of this activity but she did enjoy sticking the leaves as well. The stickers had very small sticky points so in the future I think it would be better for the entire sticker to be sticky.
Right after nap we got in our bible verse for the week. Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. She was so cute as I read the verse and said, "woah" afterwards like I had just blown her little mind. :) We then used our brown stamp pad to stamp her hand prints all over a piece of paper. Again she loves anything related to stamping her hands or tracing them. We did so many hand prints and then she refused to let me wash off the ink afterwards! When she was done I went back in and drew in the veins and stems of the leaves. We added a few of our felt leaf stickers from earlier to make it complete!
Tuesday was apple day and we started with an apple do a dot worksheet. I've been trying to fit in a little of the alphabet into our activities so I printed off one that said, "A is for apple." She then used her markers to fill in the circles on the letter A and the apple. She wasn't satisfied with the red marker I gave her so we also grabbed green and yellow because those are apple colors too!
I broke out the contact paper again today and made a simple tree. I drew the trunk on the paper and cut out where the "leaves" would be. Then I tore up red sheets of paper. I taped up this activity on the window and as always left it there for the day. She continued to come back and add her "apples" as the day went on.
At a play group we went to a few weeks ago, Mara did some apple "picking" and painting. She loved the picking which was really just an apple hunt so I wanted to recreate that at our house. She quickly found the apples and the asked for me to hide them again! We had big plans to wash them later using baking soda and vinegar but she decided they looked to good and we ate them instead.
Wednesday was a busy day for us and we were out of the house all morning. On days like these I sometimes feel like it's hard to recover and do some tot school. Mara's naps tend to be hit or miss which means I don't have a lot of prep time. I had hoped to do a day filled with pumpkins but was only able to get to one activity. We did a pumpkin invitation to play. I made a pumpkin out of her play dough and gave her googly eyes, pipe cleaners and brass buttons. From there she was able to make her own jack-o-lantern! She really had fun with this project and in the end we had a very smooshed pumpkin with about five eyes.
On Thursday we tried to pick up where we left off on the pumpkins. I printed off a pumpkin do a dot for her and laid it out. She wasn't too interested and preferred to have some free play instead. She did come back to it when I showed her how she could mix yellow and red to get the color orange. I ended up doing the entire worksheet for her but she did pay attention.
Originally I wanted to have a leaf raking activity but we don't own a kid size rake. Instead I gathered all the leaves from my fall decorations and we just played in them. It wasn't enough to make anything that looked like a true pile but she really had fun throwing them into the air. She also loved to have me pile them on her head.
We finished the day with some pumpkin knuckle painting and Mara got to create her own pumpkin patch!
Friday we didn't really have any type of theme but wanted to wrap up some of the remaining projects we didn't get to. I started with a spider web discovery. I used yarn to create a spider web throughout a clothes basket. I then put some of her stuffed animals at the bottom. I told her she needed to save her friends from the spider!
She was so cute! She went for her favorites immediately. Mickey and Minnie were saved along with Ballerina bear and kitty. She gave them each a squeeze and kiss when they were safe in her arms. The funniest part of it was she didn't care at all about the two stuffed animals that were still in the web. She rarely plays with them normally so I guess it was ok they stayed with the spider! She asked to do this again and again all day. It was great for motor skills!
The rest of the morning was spent listening to autumn songs. She loves music and constantly asks to watch children music on my computer. I figure it's better than her disney shows so I usually let her. I only wish she would play while the music was on instead of being enthralled by the video. We also colored some Halloween puzzles that Grandma had sent.
After nap we did a fall play dough invitation to play. I put a ball of play dough down along with some of my fall decorations and let her go at it. This was a hit as well!! She loved stamping the acorns and pine cones into the play dough. In the end we ended up with what looked like an acorn pie. This activity was awesome for encouraging imagination and she played with it for over an hour.
We usually don't do any activities on Saturday but I had prepped one last painting activity that we didn't get to on Friday. I cut out fall shapes from contact paper and adhered them to a piece of construction paper. I then let her paint the entire paper. At first she didn't want to paint it all. She really likes to paint but likes to dab and never paints the entire page. I helped her a little and then she was off. We let it dry during her nap and then peeled back the contact paper to reveal the shapes.
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