Thanksgiving

Theme: Thanksgiving

Honey Pot is 2 years and 6 months old

Magnetic Pom Poms

We haven’t done this fun activity in so long. I found the free printable from DLTK. Honey Pot had so much fun with this! She placed the turkey’s feathers so meticulously into the circles. And when she had finished, she took them all off and did it again!

Then we made a pattern too!

Alphabet Turkey

This activity also comes from DLTK. Honey Pot can use some alphabet practice, so I thought this would be a fun for her. First she glued the turkey together.

Then I wrote the letters of the alphabet into each space so that it could be a matching activity. She enjoyed matching and gluing the letters for a little while. We came back to it often throughout the week until it was finished!

Thanksgiving Bingo

DLTK also has these customizable Bingo generators! You can choose your theme, your size, even the letters on top. So I created a small Thanksgiving Bingo game and we played this at our first ever Family Game Night!

Honey Pot is still quite young for real board games, but this was a nice introduction. First I punched out some circles from scrap paper (in Thanksgiving colors) to use as markers.

We had Honey Pot choose each picture from a bowl, and then asked if it matched any of the pictures on her card.

She did pretty well with this. She was winning all by herself, but starting to lose interest toward the end. So we cheated a bit and rigged it so her final picture was drawn next. She was so excited to fill her last space!

Fist bump with Daddy to celebrate her victory!

Scented Turkey Hand-Print

I found this idea at Preschool Daze. What a nice twist on the usual hand-print craft. This one is scented with Pumpkin Pie Spice! First I mixed together some brown and orange paint to get a good turkey color, and then I had Honey Pot sprinkle on some spice.

We painted her hand, and made one nice print. Then I allowed her to paint her hand and do several other prints for fun. It smelled lovely! She even dug both hands in and smeared it around like a sensory bin.

I cut out the first hand-print, but noticed that the paint smell was pretty overpowering. So I sprinkled a really lot of pumpkin pie spice on top of it. Finally, it was just right. I then added a couple features with markers. Here is the final product!

Thankful Tree

There are so many thankful trees out there. I wanted a simple one to print out, and I found such a cute one from a blog called Love The Day. Throughout our Thanksgiving theme week, I talked to Honey Pot about what it means to be thankful and offered some examples. I asked her probably daily if she could think of anything for which she is thankful. Here is the list she had by the end of the week:

-        Cookie Monster and Elmo

-        Grams and Pops

-        My toys

-        My room

-        My house

-        My family

-        My nose

-        My mouth

Some pretty unique choices! Instead of making another glue craft of this I simply attached a piece of con-tact paper, sticky side out, to her felt board. And she placed the leaves on the tree by herself.

I love how this came out!

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The Night Sky

Theme: The Night Sky

Honey Pot is 2 years and 6 months old

Little M&M is 7 months old

Books

We borrowed a few books from the library about stars. Here’s what we got, in order of Honey Pot’s most-requested:

The Berenstain Bears and the Wishing Star by Stan and Jan Berenstain

Half a Moon and One Whole Star by Crescent Dragonwagon

Mouse, Mole and the Falling Star by A.H. Benjamin

What The Sun Sees/What The Moon Sees by Nancy Tafuri

Puddle Moon by Mari Gayatri Stein

Starry Bopper Headband

I found this cute idea from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots. I quickly put it together during Honey Pot’s nap and she wore it during our first activity of the week! She loved it!

Constellations

I took some scraps of black paper and drew three popular constellations onto them with white chalk. Then I took our star stickers and asked Honey Pot to put one onto each white dot in the constellations.

She loved doing this! When all of the stars were in place, she tried connecting the stars to form the shapes.

Then I gave her a blank piece of paper and asked her to make her own constellation. She took a few stickers and put them all near the top. Then I asked her what she wanted to call her constellation, and she said, “Love.” So that is what it was called!

Star Sensory Bottle

I wanted Little M&M to participate in this week’s theme, so I poured some star beads into a bottle and gave it to him to explore.

He loved rolling it…

Investigating it…

And shaking it around!

Even Honey Pot enjoyed shaking it up.

Star Snacks

Little M&M had a star-shaped snack…puffs! …which he has just about every day, lol.

And Honey Pot enjoyed some cheese and crackers!

Catch A Falling Star Song

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is our daily nap and bedtime song, so it seemed redundant to include that as part of this theme. Instead, I introduced Honey Pot to this popular song, and she requested it over and over again. By the end of the week she tried to sing along!

Starry Glow Bath

Finally, we partook in the phenomenon sweeping all of Pinterest…glowing baths! We placed a few on the walls and threw a few into the water for her to play with. And she loved when we turned out the lights! Sorry for the poor picture quality, but here is a glimpse!

Stars from Play Dough

We used our homemade play doughs and star cookie cutters for some hands-on play. Honey Pot enjoyed cutting the stars out, slicing them up, squishing them together, etc.

Rhymes with Star

We’ve been talking about rhymes with Honey Pot for a little while, and it seems a hit or miss as to whether or not she understands them. So I created a few sequences in Photoshop Elements, and asked her which in each strip rhymes with star. She needed a bit of help with these, but it was a great start to this new concept!

Star-Gazing

On a clear night this week, we also bundled up and took Honey Pot outside for a look at the night sky. It was so cold though, so we didn't stay out too long!


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