I bought the sweetest little book the other day to go along with our pumpkin theme! The title of it is, The Very Best Pumpkin, and you can find my story synopsis near the bottom of the post. If you have never seen it or read it, I think it is definitely worth finding, borrowing, or buying a copy (there is also a link below if you are interested in reading more reviews about it).
The tea-stained, rich illustrations especially caught my eye, and I decided we would attempt our own at some point during the week. :) And that is exactly what we did! Both my daughter and I chose our favorite illustrations in the book and attempted to make a copy of them (mine is the pumpkin one).
I took step-by-step pictures of mine so I could post them here for those interested in making one of these kinds of paintings as well. :) See below...
First we used tea (just make a cup and then use it to paint instead of drink) to paint over the entire picture. I sprinkled some regular coffee grounds on top of the wet paper but found later on that instant grounds work SOOO much better for getting those smaller dark splotches of stain (so we added the instant grounds after we tried the regular grounds).
After the tea stains had dried, we watercolored our sky and ground. When that dried, we drew our pictures and then traced over them heavily with crayon (this creates kind of a wall effect which helps keep the paint from spreading to other areas if you are using watercolors). If you have younger children, you may need to help them (as I did with mine) with this part to make sure the crayon is heavy enough, AND to just give those little brains and fingers a rest.
Then we painted our pictures with watercolors! I LOVE how they turned out - especially my daughter's painting! BTW - she needed some white for the snow so I used some acrylic paint and just watered it down a little because her small tray of paints did not contain white. This worked really well for us!
Hope you enjoy the pictures and feel inspired! :)
Story Synopsis:
Peter is a young boy who lives with and helps his grandparents at Pumpkin Hollow Farm. One day, as he is tending the pumpkins, he finds and follows a vine which leads him to a pumpkin all by itself in a field. He faithfully tends to it and is so busy that he apparently does not notice when new neighbors move in. Their daughter Meg, loves to read and quietly watches Peter from her yard as he cares for his pumpkin.
When the pumpkins on the farm are ready for picking, Peter helps various people find the perfect pumpkin for their needs. One day, Meg and her family show up. Meg searches the pumpkin patch but cannot seem to find the right one until Peter leads her to his lonely (but now beautiful) pumpkin and offers it to her, confessing he knew she was watching him all along. Meg and Peter become friends, and the next summer finds them tending pumpkins together! :)
Linking up to:
www.houseofhepworths.com
www.bearrabbitbear.blogspot.com
www.momontimeout.com
www.noordinarybloghop.blogspot.com
www.amommysadventures.com
http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/
www.whipperberry.com
http://www.jdaniel4smom.com/
http://www.sunscholars.blogspot.com/
www.tatertotsandjello.com
http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com
http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com
http://www.abcand123learning.com/
Our "Pumpkin" homeschool theme has to be one of my favorites. :) Of course, I could probably say that about almost every theme we do that is autumn related. :) Here are some pictures of a few of our activities:
When I caught sight of a pumpkin carved house on Pinterest, my imagination took off and I knew we should make one. Can't you just see all the possibilities for fun dramatic play, writing stories, etc.! :) I wasn't disappointed - my daughter loved it!
I knew a story activity would be just the thing to go along with our pumpkin home so I gave her a little writing prompt and this is where she ended up (see picture below - and yes, she wrote this herself with very little help from me)...
During the week, we also made and used three spinners and a graph to decide how we would carve the classic pumpkin face. We chose four different eye, nose, and mouth possibilities. Each day we spun the spinners and graphed the results. At the end of the week, the eye, nose, and mouth with the most squares colored were declared the winners and carved into another of our pumpkins!
I had been eyeing the dyed pumpkin seed pictures and jewelry showing up on blogs and Pinterest and finally decided our pumpkin themed week would be a great time to try making something as well. I dyed the seeds (I found that the method of boiling them for about 15 minutes in food coloring and water worked best for us), and my daughter used some watercolor paints to make a sky, ground, and bare tree. When the painting was dry, she began gluing the colorful seed "leaves" to her picture and I just love how it turned out! Notice all the leaves falling from the tree...
We enjoyed some free printables from www.2teachingmommies.com and www.homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com and used some fun pumpkin marshmallows for one of the graph activities. Of course, sampling these delicacies was a must following the activity's completion! :)
For a fun and simple math activity, I made a pumpkin patch out of candy pumpkins and some twisted green pipe cleaners (I wrote the words on the plate using food safe markers). Each day my daughter would have to brainstorm an idea of how one pumpkin was lost or taken from the patch. I would write down her idea on a story form I had made up beforehand, and she would write a number sentence to match it (see pictures below). Then she would eat the pumpkin! :)
For a bit of science and computer fun, we made a pumpkin book from a piece of thick cardboard, and my daughter typed out words describing the inside and outside of a pumpkin. We then printed, cut, and glued the words into the appropriate places of the book. My daughter also added some yarn for pumpkin strings and real pumpkin seeds onto the portion of the book depicting the inside of a pumpkin. Finally, we added the sticker letters to the front to make a title for the book. I was super pleased with how cute it turned out! :) See for yourself...
We also completed an art activity to go along with one of our pumpkin books: "The Very Best Pumpkin". This is such a sweet book, and I love the tea-stained style illustrations! We each chose a favorite picture or part of the story to illustrate and then made our own copy of the picture using real tea and paints and crayons! I hope to post a more detailed tutorial later this week...
This is a picture my daughter painted of her favorite illustration in the story! I LOVE it!
Definitely a keeper... :)
Need some good book suggestions? Take a look at some of these! :)
Linking up to:
http://www.abcand123learning.com/
http://www.cleanandscentsible.blogspot.com/
www.gingersnapcrafts.com
http://sweetpeasandbb.blogspot.com
www.bearrabbitbear.blogspot.com
www.momontimeout.com
www.houseofhepworths.com
www.noordinarybloghop.blogspot.com
http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/
www.whipperberry.com
http://www.sunscholars.blogspot.com/
www.tatertotsandjello.com
http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com
I know camping is sometimes considered more of a summer activity - but if you lived where we do and stepped outside into the intense heat of just one summer day, you would probably turn tail and wait for autumn's fine weather as well! :) Thus, we found ourselves planning a camping trip with some friends, and I knew a "A-Camping-We-Will-Go" theme would be just the right one for this particular week! See for yourself...
To get us started off on the right foot, I slipped a "map" into one of my daughter's workboxes. Not just any map - but a map directing her to a campsite in our very own living room! I selected a special spot and there I secretly placed a real cooler, a flashlight, a campsite sign, a faux fire, sleeping bag, and items to make a tent. This went over VERY well when the map was followed and the camping treasures were discovered. Thus, our camping week began with a flourish! :)
Our fishing pond near the campsite... :)
Of course no camping trip would be perfect without a little stargazing, so we made a few of our own constellations using glow-in-the-dark paint (I printed some dot-to-dot constellation pages on black paper and we just used the paint on top of the dots/stars. If I could not find a printable page for the constellation I wanted, I just tried to draw the dots/stars myself).
It is always wise to be aware of your surroundings and know a little about what NOT to do when camping, so we made a little folding accordian book titled "Be a Safe Camper". Some "DON'T" pages were: Don't touch poison ivy, leave snakes alone, don't eat berries and mushrooms, etc.
Another fun camping themed activity was to identify and make animal tracks using some free printable cards from http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/.
Of course, the culmination of our week was when we went on our family camping trip to a beautiful park! Joining up with some friends, we had a wonderful time! :)
Below are some books we read for our theme as well as some that seemed like they would be a good possible addition for the future. I also added a camping game and a play set that looked like a lot of fun! :)
Check back Friday for our first "Friendly Friday" post which goes along with this theme! :)
In honor of our theme this past week (camping theme - I'll post thematic activities/crafts in just a few days...), I made this fun little plate of snack/lunch items.
Snack Details:
Fire: Large pretzel stick logs and fruit roll-up fire.
Muffin Cup #1: Baked apple stuffed with walnuts and dried fruit.
Muffin Cup #2: Snack/Trail mix.
Muffin Cup #3: Hot dog slices.
Muffin Cup #4: Miniature Nutella smores.
Details: Fall leaf confetti and Scrabble Cheez-It crackers.
As promised, here are some pictures of an acorn activity we completed together! If you only have boys at home and really wanted to do this activity - by all means, DO IT! Grab the chance to teach them a lesson about being unselfish, chivalrous, etc. by having them make one for grandma or a cousin or a friend or a woman at church. You get the idea! :)
ACORN NECKLACE:
You will need: acorns, buttons, thread or jewelry wire, and a hot glue gun.
HOW TO:
1. Make sure your acorn tops are secure. If not, hot glue or super glue them to the acorn body.
2. Wrap some wire/thread as tightly as you can around the acorn stems. Hot glue or super glue it in place and make a loop with the other end (this is how you will hang the acorn on your necklace UNLESS you are handy with a drill).
3. Lay out your buttons and acorns as you would like them to look on the necklace - patterned or otherwise.
4. Thread your necklace and tie it closed - you're done! :) If you are using jewelry wire, check for sharp ends when you cut it. You may want to consider putting hot glue on the ends to keep it from poking your child's neck.
Consider making matching necklaces if you are doing this with your daughter and wearing them out somewhere together! :)
Autumn is a favorite season in our house! The gorgeous colors, crisp air, cozy sweaters, steaming mugs, and of course all the fun activities! :) Recently, we completed some leaf and acorn activities together in school. Today I will post pictures of two leaf activities and later in the week I will post an acorn activity. :)
The poor weather in our area may have ruined our chances of finding brilliant autumn color outdoors, but it certainly could not dampen our attempts to recreate the beautiful colored leaves indoors. We borrowed the idea of painting our own leaves from this blog: http://lovelydesign.blogspot.com/
Hers are perhaps far more realistic, but we like ours just fine too! :)
To make your own, collect leaves from outside (or use a leaf cutout/stencil/cookie cutter/etc.) and trace the shapes onto thick paper. Cut these out and let your kids smother them with paint - reds, yellows, orange (just mix your red and yellow together), etc. Don't forget to paint both sides. Once the leaves are dry, hot glue them onto a real branch and display in your home!
Leaf rubbings are fun and one of those classic fall activities. I decided to try something a little different with my daughter this year and we made some using only black and white colors. I love the way they turned out - great contrast! Tip: if your white crayon rubbing does not show up as well on the black paper, use your white crayon to trace over some of the lines that are more visible after you have done the initial leaf rubbing.
BTW - If you would like a simple explanation of why leaves change color, this site gives a great one:
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/leaves.html. I am thinking we will go into more depth regarding this next year!
With all of the fun surrounding Apple-onia last week (our apple visitor - see earlier posts), one might wonder if we got around to any other "apple" theme activities. Yes, we did! Here are some pictures of a few - take a look...
Making patterns with free apple printable cards (from 2 Teaching Mommies blog) and using those same cards to play "Apple Splat!"
APPLE SPLAT Directions:
1. Write apple related words on the back of apple cards and place on the tree.
2. Child turns an apple card (on the tree) over and reads the word as well as gives a definition for it.
3. If correct, the child gets to pick the apple and place it in his/her basket.
4. If incorrect, parent takes the card and places on the splat pile - basically showing that the apple fell off the tree and "splat" on the ground. (Make sure you or your child says "SPLAT!" when you do so.)
6. Game ends when no more cards are left on the tree.
5. Optional - at the end of the game, the child counts the apples in his/her basket and trades them in for the same number of M&M's or Skittles (think mini apples) or stickers.
Speaking of M&M's - we sorted and graphed a package into "apple" stacks of red, yellow, and green. The others we munched on (come now, wouldn't you?). :)
One of the apple books we read was The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree. For a follow up activity, my daughter made her own "The Seasons of A_______'s (here is where you would insert your child's name if you were making this) Apple Tree" book.
The supply tray.
The four seasons of her apple tree. :)
The book cover - how do you like those silly stems (I think that is the word she used). :) Make apple fingerprints for your border or just let your child dip a finger in red paint and dot some apples around the edges.
IMPORTANT: Don't forget to change the word "Arnold's" into your child's name instead (ex. The Seasons of Jerry's Apple Tree").
The inside cover (NOT shown) boasts a storage pocket containing a small felt figure (this is my daughter) attached to the book via a ribbon (keeps the figure from falling out and getting lost). Now my daughter can maneuver her way through the pages as each is read and admired, adding her felt figure to the story. Note: one side of the figure is dressed for cooler weather (think red snowsuit and cap) and the other side is dressed for warmer seasons.
This paper was from an "Apple Variety" hunt we came up with. We used a sheet from a FREE printable pack (2 Teaching Mommies blog) to look for different kinds of apples in the store. When we found an apple that matched one of the labeled types, we would mark it on the sheet and eventually color in that square.
In addition to the above activities, we worked on some FREE printable packs from 2 Teaching Mommies blog and Homeschool Creations blog and went on an "All Things Apple -y" hunt in the grocery store (writing down the items we found that had apples in them or were apple related).
We read books too, of course. Below are ones that I have either read or might one day like to add to our collection based on review. Feel free to suggest some more in the comment section or share some apple craft ideas! :)
