Fall leaves round 2

Well the sun has come out in full force so a lot of what I had planned has been put on the back burner.  We have been outside as much as possible lately.  On one of our walks the other day we brought some buckets to collect some leaves.  The kids had lots of fun finding the leaves they likes the most. Little Princess lost most of her bucket a few times, but it didn't seem to phase her.  She also came back with way more rocks than Little Monkey.  We have also seen a lot of slugs lately on our walks....yuck!  The kids seem to love them though.  (Sorry about the picture quality....my camera and I are fighting)

'Look Mom, a G!'

With all the leaves we collected I figured we could make fall trees.  They had lots of fun with this one.  Little Princess's favourite part was painting the glue on.  I think we might need to do more painting in the near future.  I also under estimated how big the leaves were.  I think they still turned out cute. :)

  

Today we picked a bunch of acorns so now I have to go think of something to do with them. :)

It feels like Fall

Wow summer came and went so fast!  We had so much fun this summer.  There were lots of beach days, family visiting, playing at the park, and bike rides. It was a full summer and I feel like it was over way too soon.  Little Monkey and Little Princess both have birthdays in the summer so I usually feel like we just finish one and the other is upon us! We tried to get out to the beach as much as we could.  Now that the kids are a little older I find it so much easier to head to the beach.  They are pretty good about sticking close enough for me to see them and if they wonder off all it usually takes is a quick name call and they come slowly back.
It has been raining for a few days now and I fear summer is really over.  Now that we have gone from being out of the house most days to being stuck inside I have been getting back into idea mode!  Little Monkey goes back to preschool in the middle of September and Little Princess will be taking some activity as well.  I need to get organized so when it all hits I will be prepared.  I am waiting for all the orchard apples to appear in the stores.  They are our favourite.  They are so flavourful!  We will be doing some apple things as well as back to school things!
Here is a little snippet of our summer. :)

Counting leaves

I have decided to work on counting a little more with Little Monkey.  He can count great up to 14 but still does not recognize all numbers 1-10.  I figured why not continue with our leaf theme and make up some sheets with numbers on them!
Leaf counting
Little Monkey had a Little Friend over the other day so it was a great opportunity to bring this one out.  They did great with it!  They had so much fun counting out the leaves.  The higher the number the harder it was, but they stuck with it until it was done.  I got the leave stickers from the dollar store, but you could use real leaves or draw them yourselves.

Apple stamping

It seems fall has decided to settle down and stay for a while.  I was not fully prepared.  Today was full of a mix of things.  We did some apple painting and coloured with apple shaped crayons (we made them the other day and I forgot to get pictures), and lastly we played handy man.
It was a fun way to spend the day indoors.  Plus we got to have apples for a snack as well....not the ones we painted with though :)
Little Monkey sure loved painting with the apples.  He really liked that we finally got to use the 'farkly' (sparkly, he is still having trouble with his 'sp' sounds). Little Princess couldn't really grab the apples so she got to colour with the apple crayons, which she tried to eat.  So next time, snack FIRST and then craft time.

Little Monkey has been very interested in hammering and 'fixing' things lately.  When he was visiting his grampy's this summer they let him use real power tools.  He had so much fun, but I don't really want to use power tools in the house with him.  We had a big piece of styrofoam in the recycling from something we had bought, so I thought why not make it a work bench.  We raided Daddy's golf tee's and borrowed a hammer from another toy and get to work.  We even had a hard hat.  Little Princess got in on this one as well.  It would have worked better with two hammers and two pieces of styrofoam...oh well, next time!  I think maybe some tools might be a good idea for Little Monkey for Christmas!  

Up next, fall leaf counting!

 

Fall Leaves

Today we had a lot of fun with scissors!  Little Monkey learned how to use them with one hand just before we left for vacation in the middle of August.  I haven't done anything with him since.  I knew I wanted to do fall leaves and trees with his arm/hand as the tree, so I figured why not get him to cut out the 'leaves' instead of ripping them.  He had so so so much fun!  He did great.  I used foam sheets because they are a little sturdier than regular paper.  The sheets I have are also sticky on the back so I knew we wouldn't have to glue them down.  I cut them into long strips and then Little Monkey cut them into smaller pieces.

After all our leaves were cut out I traced Little Monkey's hand and cut it out to make the tree.  He then glued his tree to a piece of paper and started adding leaves.  He wanted to do more cutting, so we added grass.  I cut out a block of green foam and he made little cuts in it to look like grass. When we put it on display on the front door (because that is where all art should be), I got him to find all the letters in F-A-L-L.  We put them over top of our fall tree!  

This was such a fun activity to do.  We are going to do one with Little Princess when she wakes up from her nap.  She had to go down just after we started.  Little Monkey has assured me he will help her.