Sensory- Pumpkin Gut Scooping

Felt "Build a Jack-o-Lantern"

AKA Halloween Tot Trays, Week 4.

I hear you now, complaining that after four weeks of Halloween activities, there has been NO FELT???
  My favorite medium is felt!! I sell felt items. I give felt items as gifts. Everyone is making felt "build a face" Jack-O-Lanterns.   What gives?
Well. Have no fear.  There was felt.  :)
 I just forgot to post about it, since I actually made this game for Kenna last year. 

 Such an easy project- one piece of felt to make a giant pumpkin, and glue or sew on a stem.  Then use a piece of black felt to get creative with different features.  There are a billion felt pieces to choose from, as I went a bit felt face crazy, but here are Kenna's favorite faces. Worried pumpkin at the top. Happy in this one!

 And the one that makes her explode into giggles- The "daddy face".  She insisted this guy needed a mustache, despite the fact that her Daddy has NEVER had a mustache.  Weird.

 I only put out a few options a day, and rotate them each day. Otherwise all the facial feautres would overwhelm Kenna.  (Did I mention that I have made waay too many??)  The strange little bits at the top right are eye brows.  They are silly!

 Aside from our felt pumpkin game, we had even more fun with our awesome spiders that I purchased a couple weeks ago. I set out the pole part of our Rainbow Stacker, and an assortment of spider rings.

Kenna's job was to lace all of the spiders onto the pole. I have to say, the fit was PERFECT!! A little tight, but not too tight. She had to really work to center the ring over the pole to get it on.  She LOVED doing this.

 Kenna crammed over 20 spiders onto the pole, and then pulled them off and did it again. What fun! Gret fine motor work, and also hand-eye coordination.

 Another activity I set out this week was a "small space" activity.  I put out a breastmilk storage container (Love these things!) and some spiders. Kenna had to really poke and prod them into the container, and then use an awesome finger grasp to get them back out. She enjoyed this as well.  I didn't have to give her any instructions- it was like that container was screaming for spiders- she saw the tray and started stuffing!

Since it is 41 degrees out today, Kenna washed our pumpkins in the laundry room. I gave her warm water, an ikea scrub brush, and two of our pumpkins.  She loved it and was very meticulous about scrubbing them, including their "bottoms".  She wanted soap in the water, so I squirted a few pumps of our foam dispenser, which has castille soap and water in it.  (Castille soap is totally green and foams really well. Plus it is uber-cheap to refill our soap dispensers, since a tiny squirt is all you need.  Oh, and if you haven't switched to foam with your toddler, consider this your wake-up- DO IT NOW!! Foam is a thousand times less messy than goopy, slimy, impossible to wash off hand soap.)

 I didn't get any other pictures of this activity, because right after I took this, I had to throw the camera down and pull Little Man out of the bowl of water. ( He had been sitting across from kenna with a pumpkin and his own scrub brush to amuse him, but alas, the water was too tempting.) Awesome.

Halloween is tomorrow!! Hooray for Trick or Treat!!

Handprint Bats

Fold a piece of construction paper in half, trace around your hand. Open it up to make wings!

Add a circle of construction paper and decorate with ears, a painted mouth, and some googly eyes. Instant bats! These three bats are my kids' hands- 3 months, 13 months, and 33 months.

Kenna wanted Mommy and Daddy bats, so we obliged.  She also wanted to do her own hand tracing, and then proceeded to cut them out. She basically recreated the whole project on her own- paint, googly eyes and glue.  I didn't get a picture of it, but it looked fairly bat-like when she was done! Sometimes I underestimate her... I am so glad I let her do it on her own later that day.  I get hung up on perfection- I wanted these to look good, so I didn't want a lot of her "help". I find it hard to let go sometimes. How about you?

Spiders and other Halloween fun

 Whenever I get free time, I always find myself at Target or Walmart. Because really those two stores are best tackled alone! Anyhow, I escaped babyland over the weekend and grabbed a couple of necessities at Walmart... ahem...

 What?! These were necessary!!! Cool spider rings and cool color-coordinated bracelets!!

 Right. So when I got home, I was bombarded by babies, my husband, and, when she spotted the spiders, an especially delighted toddler!

 I have big plans for these two "Learning Manipulatives".(heheh, my husband didn't buy it, either...)
 Our first tot tray was a cookie sheet filled with the bracelets, lined up in ABAB pattern.  I asked Kenna to fill each circle with a matching colored spider. Delighted toddler complied. Yay!

 I also found some awesome "learning stamps" :).  I wrote out numbers 0-10, and Kenna chose a stamp and counted as she pressed. She was engrossed. She loves stampers. She loves the caps that snap on, she loves the pictures, and she loves to smooosh them hard on the paper.

 Hilariously, the stamp that was her favorite was the one that said "I heart vampires".  Um, yeah, if only she knew what a vampire was!!

Back to the spiders- they also made their way into the playdoh tot tray- I set out murky purple playdoh (murky thanks to some great color mixing), some ghost cookie cutters, and a few spiders. Kenna made a big rock for them to climb. This is the only time of year that I refrain from screaming when I see a spider in the house- I just assume it's a fake.  Sometimes my assumption is wrong, though... AACCK!!

I may not get a chance to update this post, but here are my other tot tray ideas for the spiders and bracelets:
make an ABAB pattern with the bracelets, across the floor, or on her baby doll's arm.

Thread spiders onto a pole:

Use our Rainbow Sorter base to thread the spider rings onto.  (You could also use a dowel, or a stick from outside.) Encourage threading the spiders in a pattern, or all of one color, or draw a number card to decide how many spiders to put on the stick.

Sort by color into a divided tray.  (Posted HERE)

Make impressions of the spiders in playdoh.

Can you think of more fun things to do with $4 worth of party favors? :) I'll keep a set for myself, and give the rest out with candy on Halloween night. (mostly so I don't have to store it all...)

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Halloween Tot Trays, Week 3

Halloween is getting closer, and Kenna and her Mummy are having so much with spooky themed trays! :)

Found a squirrel coloring sheet in our Kumon workbook for Kenna to color. She loves squirrels, especially after our cat brought in a live one- one that ran like crazy all over our house for a couple of hours before Daddy came home to catch it.  She thought he was sweet, and after he tore around her room, she was so pleased, squealing, "Mommy, he LOVES my room!"  Oh lord. I barely survived the experience, especially after he ran right across Quinn, who was in tummy time.

I gave Kenna some awesome new Halloween crayons to use this week (yes, she broke one instantly...) She really likes them and they are inspiring more coloring than usual. (She's been resisting coloring for the last month or so. I guess it's just a phase.) Each crayon is so spooky and features a mummy, vampire, witch, jack-o-lantern, ghost and bat. I think I got these at Target last year in a clearance bin. 

Each day one of her trays had the Halloween crayons and a coloring sheet from a Halloween themed "jumbo coloring book" . She really liked the different, spoooky sheets!

Sorting with our spiders and bracelets. I put one colored bracelet in each section of a shallow, little wooden box. Kenna sorted the spider rings accordingly.  She liked putting all the spiders in, and then slamming the box shut. 

  Color sorting is really simple for Kenna(33 months) but pulling apart the spiders was a little tricky, and I challenged her to match them up as quickly as she could. 

Another Tot Tray this week featured our pumpkin ice cube tray and some orange pony beads. Kenna tweezed beads into the pumpkins, counting as she went. I found that she lost track of counting really easily because the tweezing took so much concentration. It was a good challenge for her, but she was not able to complete it independently. I made this activity self-correcting by providing only 55 beads, and I tried to explain that if she messed up somewhere, she would have too few or some remaining. Hard concept.  She really just liked tweezing the beads.  :)

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Monsters!

I'm no artist, but this was a fun and silly glue activity for Kenna and I.  I drew heads in different shapes, added bodies and arms.  Kenna told me what shape mouths and noses to draw.  Then I gave her a bowl og googly eyes and a bottle of glue.  I told her mpnsters can have lots of eyes! 

Monster matching:  Got these erasers at the Dollar Tree. I lined up matches on our dry erase board, and Kenna used a marker to draw lines between each match.

Sorry- camera died and I resorted to my cell phone...  After we played it this way a few times, I added a twist. I lined up erasers on one side only, and drew squiggly lines to the other side. Then she had to follow the lines and put the correct matching eraser at the end of each line. (does that make any sense?) It was fun!

And of course we made Frankenstein's Monster! I found a tutorial online and we whipped one up with a toilet paper roll, a do-a-dot marker, and some googly eyes.  We looked at pictures of him online,and we spotted some other decor in the house that features Dr. Frankenstein's Monster!  :)

I have a few more montster activities planned before Halloween gets here, so be on the lookout! It's my favorite holiday! (You should see my house, all decorated and scary-like. I have more rubbermaid bins of Halloween decor than I do of Christmas. And that is saying a LOT. )

Shaving Cream Ghosts

Gather your materials:

1/4 cup white glue

3/4 cup shaving cream

sharpie

brown paper bag

big bowl

Measure out your glue. Sqqqquuuuueeeezzzze!

 Then measure out the shaving cream. PUUUSSSSHHH!

 First exploration into the gooey mix.

Kenna started to smoosh shaving cream onto her ghost.  She was totally into it!

 Little Man (13 months) was more hesitant, and started with one finger!

 Daddy got into it, too!

 You get the feeling things started to get messy when Daddy grabbed the shaving cream and offered Kenna more!

 High five, messy people!

It took over a day to dry, but when the fluffy parts were firm to the touch, I cut out the ghost shape and glued on a mouth and eyes. 
Spooky!!
 

Jack-O-Lantern paper plate craft

Cute craft, super easy, and great for both my big kids! (33 months and 13 months)

Kenna painting her jack-o-lantern face with orange paint. (Little Man painted his when he woke up from nap, with his hands.)

I simply took a paper plate and drew a face on it. I asked for Kenna's input on what shape to make the eyes, nose and mouth.

I only give a little paint at a time, thank goodness! She decided the scrape and pour method was the way to go...

While her paint was drying, I gave her a piece of black construction paper to cut up into big squares. She is really good with scissors, so that was all the direction she needed. I painted with Little Man while she did this. I asked her to put her squares into the clear container.

Once the paint was dry, I cut out the facial features.

Kenna glued the black paper onto the back of the plates, completely covering up the cut-outs.  I added a stem, and then in a last minute creative moment, Kenna added some yellow dot stickers. 

Cute, cheap, easy.  Who could ask for anything more?!

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