Tractors!

An extra cutie to add to our preschool lesson today....sweet Ella!  I don't have as many pictures of today's activities because I was outnumbered 4:1 and needed my hands and eyes more than the camera did :)

We talked about farming/tractors today and read the book "Driving my tractor"  We talked about letter "T" and then made this "T is for Tractor" craft found here

Start with just making the letter "T" then add wheels, a seat, and a steering wheel and there you have a tractor........

 

 Do-A-Dot activities are awesome!  Ella knew what to do aright away!  We 'dotted' our number 3 and letter T.....

Then some farm fun

 And tractor fun.

Candy Corn Fun

How do I get so behind on these blogs?  Yikes!  Well, let's see how caught up I can get before the beauty of naptime ends......

Since there is only two days before Halloween, I thought we'd do some fun things with Candy Corn....that disgusting little candy that so many people think is delicious.

Working on a candy corn craft...........

This is a game I found on pinterest and tweaked a little bit.  The charts in front of them have number 1-12 on them.  We used a large die and rolled it, counted how many dots there were and then put a piece of candy corn on that number.  Obviously, we could only go through numbers 1-6, but a second die could be used and the numbers could get added together to use all 12 numbers.

 I chose to stick with just numbers 1-6 because the second round we did, they then got to eat which ever candy corn piece the die landed on.  Six pieces of candy corn.....definitely enough to have at 10am!

Next game....Feed the pumpkin.  Object of the game was to thrown pieces of candy corn into the dish.  We then would count how many pieces of candy corn each pumpkin ate.

I can't tell you how many uses I've come up with this 3 section dish from the dollar store......

Here's an easy learning activity that anyone can put together....... 

Write the alphabet on a magnetic chalk board or dry erase board and let the kids match alphabet magnets to the correct letter.

In addition to our fun games/activities we were learning to write letter "p" and number "3" (using the poem 'around the tree, around the tree.  that's the way we make a three!')

 

Leaves!

 It's Fall!!  My favorite part is seeing the leaves change colors.  It reminds me of my wedding day!  So, needless to say we learned about leaves/fall this week.

After talking about what happens to leaves in the fall, we went on a fall walk to see if we could find leaves in all different shapes and colors.  Here they are with their bags ready to go!

 

 Pretty sad, but this is the ONLY tree in our yard, and as you can see....it's still green.  We weren't going to get very far with our one tree so we walked through the neighborhood down to the park where there are, well, more trees.

Stopping for berries along the way from our neighbors tree

Just what I was hoping to find!  Beautiful orange and red leaves from this tree at the park..

 We took our leaves home and dumped them on the table to see what colors and types of leaves we found.  We also got out the magnifying glasses to explore them a little closer.

 

Using contact paper and craft sticks, we made little leaf hangings so they could display their findings...

 (excuse the 'oranginess' of these photos....totally wasn't viewing my pictures to see if my settings were off....just kept on snapping)

 

Hang it in a window and ta da.  Now they can be reminded of God's creation and how everything he makes is uniquely beautiful!

 

Apple lesson (part 2)

It is apple season!  And we finished up last week with another lesson on apples.  I picked a few fun crafts and activities I thought the kiddos would enjoy and I hope you do to.....

For our craft, I found this cute idea here

 Again, couldn't take pictures during the project but here's the after pictures. 

My kids love to help cook, so I like to plan time for them to do just that.  I had seen an idea on pinterest to make individual little apple pies using crescent rolls.  Sounded yummy to me!

Can't get that boy to just smile anymore....he thinks this is the funniest pose ever!  LOL

 

 Here they are spreading melted butter on the crescent roll, sprinkling on some cinnamon, and rolling up an apple slice inside.

Ta Da!

 

Here's the after baked photo.  They were pretty good considering we didn't even add any sugar to it!

I got out our foam craft sticks while I cleaned up snack messes.  They used the sticks to build shapes and letters

We played "hot apple" and if they had the apple when the music stopped they had to answer a question about apples (where do they grow?  what's inside? what can you make with  them? etc)  This probably works better in a large group setting where you can actually pass the apple around in a circle without everyone's hands already on it.  haha

And finally...they now know all there is to know about apples!! (At least at a 2&3 yr old level).  So they earned an apple tattoo.  Here they are showing it off.....

No more dirty chairs

Finally we have clean dining room chairs!  We no longer have to be  completely embarrassed or bring up new chairs for our guests to sit in just so they don't have to sit on this......

 And this......

 Yes, totally gross, disgusting, stained beyond help chair pads.  When we would apologize for this disaster and offer a different chair, most people just laughed (and then willingly accepted a new chair), my mom friends sympathized and to family it just became the norm.  But you know it's bad when other KIDS come over and don't even want to sit in 'those chairs'.  

How did they get this way you ask?........................

AND......................

 

Yep, as cute as they are those little boogers can make any meal a mess and will use anything (yes anything including a chair pad) as a napkin.

It was really just their chairs that were beyond disgusting, but when you change one, you might as well change them all so they match.

So, we ripped off the seat cushions and got to work.................

 

 We didn't get too funky with our material although we had hoped to something more fun and bright.  We found a lot of cool fabric that we really liked, but it was either way more $$ than we wanted to spend or it wasn't meant for upholstery.  So, we stuck with the basic boring beige.  A little darker than what we had, but we stain guarded the heck out of them this time.  

 Wow, you're impressed I can do this right?  I mean this required screwdrivers, nail guns and a power drill.  Well, I have a secret weapon...........

 Yep, that's my hubs who can fix or repair just about anything!  Best thing is, he likes to help with things like this and has a way better eye for detail than I do.  I did do a few staples with the gun just so I could say I've used a staple gun, but most of the work I can't take credit for.

Here's the final project.  A new, clean chair pad.  Not to exciting, but not dirty either!  The whole project cost us less than $20 which was exciting though!