Halloween Activity - Yarn Pumpkin

This activity is perfect for Halloween! Or to decorate your home this fall. A very easy activity for old and young. My preschooler loved it! All you need is yarn, a piece of cardboard, rafia and scissors.

I used the same method as my previous posting, but instead of using chenille stems, I used rafia. If you want bigger pumpkins, just use a bigger cardboard and more yarn :-)

My plant with the little pumpkins

Diferent colors pumpkin!

This is what you need:

Yarn, rafia, cardboard, scissors

To make the green/orange pumpkin, just do the same as with the regular pumpkins but use the 2 colors at the same time.

Wrap it around the cardboard and follow the same steps as on the website on my previous posting....and ready!

Cute Fall Apples made with Yarn

The other day I found this activity on a website and it caught my eye. I think this is so cute!

That same afternoon I tried to make them with my daughter. She had the next day her "show and tell" and I thought this would be a great activity for that occasion. The only thing was that I couldn't find brown chenille stems. Neither at my local craft store. But I found orange and green yarn, so I said to myself...why not try to make Halloween pumpkins? I will show them in my next posting.

I leave you here the directions and the website where I found this so cute activity:

My daughter loved to glue the leaves on the apples! And she was so proud during her "show and tell"!

Earth Day

There was a book fair the other day near my place and I found these books which I bought. They are super cute. They are written by the same author (Jean Marzollo) of I Spy and other very good and known books. The illustration is beautiful, all made out of cut paper. Even though it is a book for a 4 years old who starts to read, my daughter loves it because she is starting to understand how things work in this world....I really recommend you this collection of books. They have several titles.

For the occasion of Earth Day, we read the book I Am an Apple (Hello Reader Science Level 1). We could learn how a little seed changes into a big tree with a lot of apples in it! We also read about all the things you can do with apples! Yammi!

Later we looked for some material so we could make our own apple tree...

I found loose fill peanuts, a toilet roll, a half Easter egg, paint, glue....

We put the half egg inside the roll to create a base.

We glued the peanuts and colored them green...(we used one of the peanuts to paint them. We painted the toilet roll using brown.

I still had some "San Valentine Day" hearts. These were perfect for our Apple Tree!

Happy Earth Day!

Looking for the High Rise Step Stool, Kitchen Helper or Learning Tower?

My daughter loves to see everything I do. When I am in the kitchen, she wants to be there and help! We have some barstools where she was trying to climb on, but I didn't let her since I thought it was not really safe. So surfing the web I found these 3 perfect options!

1.- The Learning Tower by Little Partners

2.- Guidecraft Kitchen Helper

3.- Guidecraft High Rise Step Up

I really liked The Learning Tower by Little Partners. My sister-in-law has one and it is really sturdy, easy to access (for the kid of course) and easy to clean, but too big for our kitchen.

Guidecraft Kitchen Helper was another good option because it folds so you can store it. But to store it you have to take out your tool kit, and right now, I don't have time for that....

So the last option was Guidecraft High Rise Step Up, which was a little smaller and not so expensive as the other two. My daughter loved it!

She climbs and gets down whenever she wants, and she loves it so much that some days she prefers eating standing so she can be on her stool.

If I had more space in the kitchen, I would have probably bought The Learning Tower by Little Partners, but this stool does the same function and it is light enough to carry from one point to the other...

My daughter loves to do the dishes and I let her! (Looks like I have one thing less to do, right? ummmm...No!

First I have to clean them and leave them in the sink... she thinks they are dirty and washes them again... It is so lovely to see her imitate me!)

Her you see her cleaning the dishes on her Guidecraft High Rise Step Up

MONTESSORI: This is a wonderful Practical Life activity and kids love it!

Button Caterpillars (and cat)

I had absolute no idea what to do yesterday afternoon, so we opened our craft drawer, and found some buttons, some chenille, glue and some eyes...

Since it is Spring time, I thought about creating something for the garden. (We do not have any garden, but that doesn't matter...it is the idea, right? :-)

Caterpillar Material

Originally uploaded by www.MiniCuties.com

So...it could be some flowers...a butterfly...a Easter bunny...

But while I was thinking, my daughter was already very busy putting the buttons in the chenille stem. 

We ended up making this beautiful creatures!

Take a look!

MONTESSORI: 

This activity is a great way to practice hand and eye coordination, 

concentration and fine motor skills, a skill needed for writing later on.

After the body was done, we made a little face and glued the eyes

Voila!

She had so much fun that we made a couple more...

We used all the buttons we had! And here the whole family!

This morning my daughter woke up and the first thing she did was asking for more buttons....I could only find these ones. She made this beautiful cat! 

Cute Egg Holder for Easter

Do you want to know about a nice way to start talking about Spring? Easter? Or maybe practice geometry? Or just paint? I am sure you have all the materials at home to make these Cute Egg Holders!

What you need is:

1. One toilet roll
   
2. Print one of these attachments (colored or blank available)
   
3. Paint and colours
4. Scissors / Glue
5. Eggs, if you like.

Here you can download the PDF Files.

If it is too dificult to cut the eyes with the scissors, you can use the Push-Pin tecnique.

When she was ready I asked her which ones were circles, how many were there...until she got borred of so many questions!

The best part is to put this puzzle together! And glue...

We made the egg holder with a toilet roll cut in 2 and we painted it.

All done....

How to Cut Paper without Scissors?

One of my daughter’s favorite activity is to cut paper and most of the time I give her the scissors. But sometimes she gets frustrated when she wants to cut out an object with “not so much straight lines”.... For that there is no better solution than using a jumbo pin push and a cork or felt like they taught her at school.

To push pin the outline is difficult but with a little practice we can! And how much fun is it to pull away the surrounding paper and to see that what you have in your hands is the same shape as the drawing on the paper where you have to glue it on!

After we push pin it, we glue it on the alphabet

And this is how it starts to look like...

Muakmuak!