Learning about Harvest

I'm so thankful for resources which help me teach my kids especially about things that are hard to describe with just words.  Here is a sequencing activity from planting seeds to selling fruits and vegetable sin the grocery.

 

I also used "How a Pumpkin Grows" sequence cards from this website.

I thought this week would be a good time to teach Addi how to shuck corn.  She is so funny about touching certain textures and was actually not much of a fan of the sticky strings.

Once we got it all clean she had a blast painting with the corn.  We eventually make indian corn cut outs as Thanksgiving decorations, but I don't think I ever got a picture of it.  Oh well.

During snack time we played a counting game with popcorn.  This might have been her favorite activity all day.

We painted paper plates, stuffed them with plastic bags, added a piece of construction paper and made a pumpkin.

Addilyn has gotten really good at sorting small, medium, and large.  Maybe soon we can add a few intermediate sizes to the mix.

I found these pumpkin dollies (50 in a pack) at the Dollar Store.  I laminated a few and used a crayon to write numbers on them.  Then I let Addi put the correct number of pumpkin seeds on each dollie.

This is the first time I've tried cookie cutter tracing.  It worked really well as long as I held the cookie cutter.  Addi was so proud of herself because of how well the pumpkin shapes turned out.

I tried a"threading" activity with fall leaves (paint samples) onto a small ring.  Each of the kiddos who tried it really had fun making patterns with the colors and it was a great hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills activity!

This video has a great segment teaching all about Harvest, perfect for this week!

We made a paper bag scarecrow.  Addi had seen one at a harvest festival we went to a few weeks back and has been obsessed with "tear-toes" ever since.

Very interesting harvest books from the library. ;)

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Letter of the Week- Letter H

Click on the link below to see my curriculum for Letter H week.  We focused on several different theme this week including horses, homes, hands, harvest, and hearts.

Lots of things we found around the house that begin with the letter H! 

Group rotating activities with friends including heart color matching, a felt house board, heart cookie cutters and play-doh, and counting kernels on the harvested corn.  

Handwriting practice and number 8 worksheets.

Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb was one of Addilyn's favorite books for about 6 months right after she started talking.  She would say some of the parts over and over again.  It was darlin' and reading it with her again brought back some great memories.

This was a really cute book.  After we read through it we had some friends come over and I taught them all the Hokey Pokey dance. Addi LOVED it and wants to sing it all the time now.

We started the week making our capital H house.

We did a little painting,

played with the felt board, 

and, of course, read a few good books.

This week I also included one of my kids favorite Baby Einstein videos.  I love this one because it goes through each room of the house and teaches the words (perfect for my little boy who is just now starting to speak) and it also teaches the sign for each word (great for my little girl who uses her words enough..ha ha).  We played a game with the video too.  As they taught about certain parts of a room I had Addi run and tag it.  For example, the table in the dining room, the refrigerator in the kitchen, or the bed in her bedroom.  We had a lot of fun!

Addilyn's lowercase h horse.

Lots of playdoh horses, hippos, and hands.

Handprint horses in the fence.  This is a keeper for sure!

Addi was chasing her brother (who apparently is taking a break from riding his horse).

We went to Chi-fil-a family night and they had face painting.  Unprovoked, Addi told the clown she wanted to be a horse.  The clown took it upon herself to make Addi a unicorn instead, but at least Addi was still happy as could be.

A few library books all about horses.

With it being fall we also talked a lot about Harvest.  For pictures and explanations of all the harvest activities we did this week click here.

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Homemade Pumpkin Puree

This fall I had lot of recipes I wanted to try out and many of them included pumpkin puree.  At $1.50 a can for 15 oz. I was thinking some of these recipes might have to wait until next year because I could not afford it, and then...it happened... I went into Kroger and they had pumpkins on sale for $0.25.  Yep, that's right; A QUARTER!!!  I bought one large pumpkin (and found out later that the medium size pumpkins are actually better for homemade puree).

 I cut up the pumpkin into slices and baked it for 25 minutes on 300 degrees.  Then I peeled the skin off it and chopped it into smaller pieces.

I plopped the pieces into my food processor and let it puree away.  I made 7 zip lock bags with 16oz in each one.  Not bad for a quarter!  I figured it out. I saved approximately $10.25. It tasted great to me (even if it was a large pumpkin) and while making a Thanksgiving dessert I used my last bag.

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Letter of the Week - Letter G

To view our curriculum for the week please click on the link below.

Here are a few of our general Letter G activities.

 Sandpaper and yarn letter creations.

 Do a Dot- Letter Find.

 Letter G stamps.

 Letter G coloring pages.

 She was making a G out of play-doh....it was just upside down.  Ha ha.

 Friends coloring capital letter Gs green!

 Friends making lowercase g grapes.

We learned about a globe and since we will be visiting family in Georgia soon we tried to find it on the globe.

We had a few friends over so we decided to all make griaffe puppets out of paper bags.  I thought they turned out so cute, but the bags I used didn't end up serving very well as actual puppets.

Letter matching.

We made a giraffe with an accordion neck and clothespin legs. In the end, it looked more like a horse. Oh well.

Addi really enjoys painting so we painted a paper plate and turned it into a giraffe.

Here are a few of our giraffe books for the week.  Addi really enjoyed the Carlo series of books.  We only had a few but I believe there are a ton.

I am so bummed that I did not have my camera out when we played all of our fun games.  We played everything including Follow the Leader, Simon Says, Leap Frog, Red Light-Green Light, Musical Chairs, I Spy, and more.  I learned that with a 2 year old you have to modify many of the rules to these games so they understand. This was such a fun day with our friends who came over to play.  Addi took a GREAT nap after all the excitement!

When planning our letter of the week activities for G Week, I thought we might have some fun exploring groceries.  Addilyn got a kitchen with tons of food and a shopping cart last year for Christmas and although she enjoys playing with it often, it usually only lasts for a short period.  However, something about making a grocery list, giving her play money, and actually setting up a grocery store for her made all the difference!  She could have done this ALL day!  The first time she "went shopping" she would run across the room to me (where I was folding laundry) and show me the item she found and explain to me exactly what it was, how much she thought it cost, and why we needed to get it.  It was adorable.  I loved seeing her excitement.

Here are two of the books we read.

She told me what we needed to put on the list and I wrote out the word and tried to draw pictures for her to color.

 For the first shopping trip I just set all the items on the windowsill and she carried around her basket picking out the things she wanted.  Of course, eventually, everything ended up in the basket.

Here is her play money.  She did a really good job counting. Each item was one dollar to make it easy on us all.  ;)

This was the 3rd or 4th time we played.  She insisted that we had to put the food in the right spot in the store.  If you look closely you can see that all the beverages are on the chair.  On the wire shelf are snacks; and, from left to right on the windowsill, are the fruits and vegetables, meats, and then breads.  She's so funny.  I love her to the moon and back!

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