Autumn

Theme: Autumn

Honey Pot is 2 years and 5 months old

Little M&M is 7 months old

Books

We borrowed a few books from our library about autumn, and read them throughout the week. Here is what we got:

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic – by Steven Schnur

Clifford The Big Red Dog: The Big Leaf Pile – by Josephine Page

Every Autumn Comes The Bear – by Jim Arnosky

Felt Board – Autumn Tree

I finally did it – I made a felt board! I just used a piece of flannel and a poster frame. The sheets of felt from Michaels stick well to it. So for our first felt activity, I cut out a bare tree and leaves in yellow, orange and red.

When Honey Pot woke up the next morning, she went right over to it and played with it.

“It’s a leaf!”

We returned to it throughout the week for random play, arranging the leaves in various ways.

Later in the week, we also used it for math practice! Keep scrolling to see how we did that!

Leaf Crowns

These are all over, but I found my inspiration from Heart Felt. First we went for a walk so that Honey Pot and I could gather some leaves.

And you never know when you’ll happen upon some alphabet practice! Look what she found on the street. She identified the ‘H’ and the ‘I’ perfectly.

When we got home we spread them out on her craft table, along with two strips of paper and some glue.

Honey Pot squeezed some glue out all over the paper.

Then she chose some leaves, and pressed them down onto the glue.

When they dried, we put them on and acted like royalty. Here is Edward the elephant modeling my crown…

And Honey Pot wearing hers:

The next day we took them back out again for more play. They had started to get crinkly and old so we threw them away after this.

Baby Play

I wanted Little M&M to experience our autumn theme too. But real leaves aren’t really safe for him, as he puts everything in his mouth. I have two strands of fake leaves that we use for seasonal décor, so I decided to break one apart for him. He enjoyed exploring this new texture in their fall hues.

And one thing I emphasize to Honey Pot is how some leaves fall off of the trees in autumn, so I threw them up in the air to fall on Little M&M too. lol.

Leaf Cookies

On Pinterest I had come across this fun project from Country Living, where you tint the cookie dough with fall colors and then piece the dough back together again. Honey Pot was a huge help cutting out the cookies into leaf shapes!

Here they are about to go into the oven. I’m afraid I forgot to take an after picture!

Shaving Cream Painting

I have seen this painting method all over, but take a look at this wonderful result from Little Wonders Days. First I cut out leaf shapes from cardstock, and squirted some paint into shaving cream.

Then Honey Pot swirled the paints around with a toothpick.

She placed a leaf into the paint…

And lifted it up…

Now this was my first shaving cream painting, so I was a little confused as to which gizmo to use to wipe the shaving cream away. We tried two methods: a sponge and then a food scraper. I love how the previous looks, but I’m fairly certain the latter is the way to go to get the marble look. Here though, the food scraper leaves aren't as vibrant, because those leaves went into the paint swirl second. Next time, I’ll do that first and I think we’ll get a great result as Little Wonders Days got!

And while you wait for your leaves to dry, feel free to stack up your supplies and “build a castle” because that seems to be the thing to do!

Leaf Banner

We wanted to put our pretty leaves on display, so I decided to make a banner out of it. We were able to add in some letter recognition and super fine motor skills too! First I wrote the letters in the word “AUTUMN” on the leaves. Then I let Honey Pot match up some letter cutouts onto their corresponding leaves. We identified each letter along the way.

Then I used a hole punch to make a hole in each leaf, and Honey Pot threaded a piece of string through them. She did awesome!

Here it is on display on our fireplace. The letters are hard to see; I had let Honey Pot choose which color letters to use, and unfortunately she chose a light one! Still very cute, and now we can enjoy her craft all season long.

Felt Board – Autumn Tree Math

I cut out some numbers from felt, and made a counting game for Honey Pot’s felt board. I chose a number and placed it next to the bare tree. Then I asked her to identify the number, helping her with the ones she didn't know. And then she placed that number of leaves onto the tree.

Happy autumn!

Spoon

Theme: Spoon, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Age: Honey Pot is 2 years and 5 months old

This month the Virtual Book Club is featuring Amy Krouse Rosenthal! We took out the only three of her books that our library had, and decided to choose Spoon for our activities. Keep reading to see what we did!

Spoon Girl Craft

First we made our own spoon girl! I found a cute plastic one that she could decorate for under a dollar. I provided the glue, googly eyes, snippets of yarn and one chenille stem for arms. She put on a dab of glue for the eyes and placed them on the spoon:

Then added a little more for her hair:

And I added a mouth with marker and tied on the arms. Then we enjoyed our craft with a little bit of pretend play (Honey Pot’s very favorite thing to do).

Spoon’s Family

In the book, we are shown a picture of Spoon’s family.

I thought it was so cute, I had to incorporate it into our activities today! I grabbed a few spoons from her kitchen and mine, and we played with them for a bit. They had a short conversation then we gave a few of them names such as “Brother” and “Aunt.”

We lined them all up, and I asked Honey Pot to count all of the members of Spoon’s family. She counted twelve, pointing to each one as she counted. She did great!

Then we sorted them by size – big and small:

And finally, we sorted them by color – pinks, grays, browns and blues:

Writing Practice

On Pinterest I keep seeing adorable worksheets for preschoolers to practice their writing skills. Lead the pig to his pen by tracing the line…for example. I just had to create one for Honey Pot. First I made the page in Photoshop Elements, based on a scene in the book. Spoon’s mother told him how special it is to be a spoon because he can dip into a bowl of ice cream, clink on the side of cereal bowl and relax in a hot cup of tea. So Honey Pot could lead the spoon to each of these places. I let her choose between crayon, marker, pen or pencil…she chose a pencil. I guided her hand along each line first, to give her and idea of what I was asking her to do. Then I had her try it herself.

She did fairly well for her first time!

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We are linking our activities up to the Virtual Book Club!
Check out what some of our blogging friends did with this month's theme: