Thankful in November: Day 15 to 18

Day 15: Chocolate covered pretzels for our friends, teachers and neighbors - delicious and so simple! Dipping the ends of pretzel rods is so much easier than dipping entire pretzels and I think they are just as pretty. I bought white, yellow and orange chocolate pieces and fall themed sprinkles and the end result was so pretty!

Day 16: Dylan's footprint turkey. I painted the boys hands to turn into turkeys too, but I haven't been able to convince them to decorate them yet. Guess that's for another day!

Day 17: Sorting people vs. food cutting and gluing activity from Mama's Monkeys. I can't believe how much better the boys are at cutting since they started preschool this year.

Day 18: Delivering the Thanksgiving bags that our church collected and distributing them to families in need (not pictured)

2012 Halloween Activities

Our Halloween in pictures! We had a themed breakfast, lunch and dinner, painted jack-o-lantern paper plates, played a roll-a-bat game and pumpkin bowling and made Halloween funfetti cupcakes for a snack. It was a full but fun day! 

I'm really going to try to get back to posting more frequently (and not taking another 5 months off!), so I'm planning a month full of turkey/fall/thankful activities for November. Stay tuned! For now, here are my little guys all dressed up (and dressed down!) for Halloween!

Tot School - Xx

Tot School - X is for X-Ray and foX

Owen and Eli: 43 months old

Fox books on our shelf from the library this week...

Our handprint craft this week was really easy and turned out really cute! The snack this week was a bust - for some reason my white chocolate wouldn't melt, it just kind of turned into a messy clump. The had fun assembling the pretzel sticks and mini marshmellows though. The finished snack should look like this.

Our printables this week are all from education.com, A Heart for Home and MoneySavingMom.com. We only had three days this week for school because we took off for Sea World for our last weekend trip before the baby comes. We kept it a surprise until we pulled into the parking lot - the boys were SO excited!

 

 

 

Linking up to Tot School. Next week - Yy!

Tot School - Vv

Tot School - V is for Volcanoes and Vegetables

Owen and Eli: 43 months old

Our two main activities this week dealt with volcanoes - a science experiment to make erupting volcanoes using playdoh, a glass jar, baking soda and vinegar, and a handprint craft using torn paper and a red handprint  for the lava. They turned out great!

 

We only did a few printables this week, one was a volcano coloring page (can't remember where from), another was from education.com (not showing) and the last was from Money Saving Mom.

 Here are the library books we used this week - mostly vegetable related but a couple children's research books on volcanoes too. (Confession: most of these were way too many words for storytime, so they used them as picture books instead!) We watched several YouTube videos of volcanoes erupting too, this one was our favorite.

Click here for other Tot School ideas!

Tot School - Tt

Tot School - Tt is for Trains and Tractors

Owen and Eli: 42 months old

Only a couple worksheets this week to keep practicing writing - mostly from education.com. The color by number page is from Homeschool Creations. There were tons of cute train printables out there but I thought that I'd give them (and my printer!) a break this week from tons of worksheets. 

 

Our tractor footprint craft for the art wall in the playroom! They think it's so funny that they made the pig drive the tractor : )

 Lots of playing with trains this week...

And we went on a turtle treasure hunt! These turtles were only the size of quarters and pretty sneaky in the water, but we caught a couple to hold for a little while and then put back in the water.

 

 

Great train books this week...

And tractor books too...

Hope y'all had a great week at Tot School too! 6 letters to go!

Tot School - Ss

Tot School: Ss is for Spiders, Sunflowers and Snails!

Owen and Eli: 42 months old

Lots of crafts this week, with lots of great Ss themed words. Education.com continues to have great printables for their skill level and 2teachingmommies.com has a great expanded Spiders pack to download. We used the spinner game, the prewriting pages and the numbers 11-20 puzzle this week.

 

 

I thought it would be fun to incorporate a lacing activity to make a spider web. I cut the center of a paper plate out, then added 10 hole punches and randomly assigned them numbers. I purposely gave them way more yarn than they needed, so there was a lot of pulling to get the yarn all the way through, but it opened up the conversation for how God made spiders special and that they are much more equipped to spinning webs than we'll ever be!

 

This week was a big adjustment for me in giving the boys a lot more 'free reign' over their art wall projects. They've been very interested in cutting with scissors, so I drew them two leaves on foam paper and they cut them out for their sunflowers, they colored in the stem and they cut all the tissue paper and chose their colors for their snails. I had been telling them where certain parts go that needed to be glued, etc, but this week I just let them go for it and I love how they turned out! That'll teach me for being a control freak ; )

 

 

  

 

   

We gathered several small toys and played Sink or Float. I was surprised at some of the toys that sank, and the fact that even a rock, if placed inside a plastic Easter egg, will float. The original idea is from Homeschoolcreations.com.

 

Only 7 letters to go! Click here to link to other Tot School blogs!