Fall

Activities, Education, Fall, Recipes, Toddlers

Pumpkin Spice Play-dough

October 30, 2018

I love anything pumpkin spice, so I couldn’t let fall fly by without making this play-dough. For some reason, it took me forever to get all the ingredients on hand to make this play-dough, but I’m glad I finally was able to make it. It smells fantastic and goes great with any Halloween or fall themed activities.

As soon as I opened the container, Rosebud said it smelled good enough to eat. And yes, she took several bites even though I kept telling her not too. I’m sure it smells way better than it tastes. I set out some play-dough tools. We have rolling pins, mini spatulas, play-dough scissors and cookie cutters. I found any Halloween related trinkets I found in my kitchen as well. I have a tiny ghost cake pan and some ghost and pumpkin rings that came on a cake.

We tried making pumpkins. Well, I would and then Rosebud would squish them.

We made ghosts, squished them up and then filled the pan again.

Finally, I made different shaped pumpkins like in the book, The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. It’s a book about a square pumpkin who saves the day for a farmer because of his differences. It’s a great book for Halloween, but the underlying theme is diversity. Even though we may look different, you can find something wonderful and worthwhile in those differences.

Here’s the recipe I used.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour,

1 cup salt,

2 table spoons cream of tarter,

1 table spoon Pumpkin Spice,
2 table spoons vegetable oil,

1&1/2 cups boiling water,

A couple drops of glycerin to add shine,

Red and yellow food coloring.

Directions:

1. Mix together dry ingredients.

2. Stir in oil.

3. Add water and stir until the lumps are gone and it comes together.

4. Kneed. Add food coloring, scent, glitter and or glycerin at this stage.

Store in an air tight container. All of my batches of play-dough have stayed good for a couple months at least.

Enjoy and happy playing. What are your favorite fall activities with play-dough? Let me know in the comments.

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Activities, Art, Fall, Parenting, Toddlers

Glitter Leaf Sun Catcher

October 15, 2018

Lately, we’ve been doing activities with leaves. I was inspired by this post from, On Your Own, But Never Alone. I thought why not use the glitter leaves as sun catchers?

What you need:

Leaves that are dry, but not crunchy,

Glitter glue,

Paint brushes,

Mod podge,

Contact paper or clear sheet protectors,

String.

What you do:

1. Lay leaves on a flat surface and paint them with the glitter glue. You can paint just parts of the leaf or the entire thing. We used three different colors of glitter glue.

2. Set aside to dry.

3. Paint leaves with mod podge.

4. When dry, arrange leaves in contact paper or sheet protector. I didn’t have any contact paper so I just glued the leaves inside the sheet protector.

5. Punch hole in contact paper and tie a string. If you use a sheet protector, the holes are already there.

6. Find a nice place to hang your creation. Some leaves will catch the sun and others will not depending on the color. Either way, you have a nice glittery fall decoration.

What are you making with leaves this fall? Let me know in the comments.

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Books, Education, Parenting

Five Fun Halloween Books for Toddlers

September 19, 2018

In the beginning of September, I brought out all Rosebud’s fall and Halloween themed books. She has been wanting to read them every night, so I thought I’d share the ones she really enjoys.

1. Five Little Pumpkins.

I’ve had this book since her first Halloween and she loves it. It’s a simple rhyme about pumpkins. They have finger plays and songs for it as well. She loves to read along and his it memorized now.

2. Who’s There on Halloween.

This is another cute Halloween book. It has hints for different Halloween related characters like the witch, ghost and spider. She has this book memorized too, but she hasn’t figured out that the point is to guess by the clues before you turn the page.

3. Boo! A Halloween Peek-a-boo.

This is a short, but silly Halloween book. A dog chases different Halloween characters in costume who say different things. Rosebud likes when I do silly voices with this book. I just introduced this one to her this year because it has paper pages, but she always asks to read this first.

4. Scratch and Sniff Halloween.

Who doesn’t like scratch and sniff books? They are fun until they lose their scent, but Rosebud has been having fun reading this one regardless. You can smell the minty witches brew, the spooky pumpkin or the sweet lollypop.

5. Big Pumpkin

I just ordered the paper copy of this one, but we like to listen to the audio version I found on Youtube because it’s sung to a song. If you’ve never read this book, the witch wants to make pumpkin pie, but the pumpkin is too big to take off the vine. The witch, ghost, vampire and others try to remove it, but it doesn’t work until a bat comes along with the solution. This book is good because it’s an actual story, but it is not too long that an older toddler won’t sit through it. Rosebud is growing out of the simple board books. Although she still loves them, I think she’s ready for longer stories.

What are your favorite Halloween books? Tell me in the comments.

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Activities, Art

Leaf Painting

September 18, 2018

Here’s a simple painting activity for the fall.

What you’ll need:

Paint,
Paper,
Leaves,
Tray or some other way to set up the paint.

I just took a cookie sheet, lined it with foil and put some globs of paints in different colors on it. Then I put one leaf in each color of paint so they wouldn’t be mixed at first.

All you do is cover the leaf with paint and stamp it on the paper. I showed Rosebud once and then she got to work, creating her pictures.

I didn’t have much paint so by the time we got to our third picture, I showed her how she could use the leaves as paintbrushes.

I’m looking forward to doing more fall activities. What are your favorite fall crafts and activities? Let me know in the comments.

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