Decorating Pumpkins

Whew! The last few months have been B.U.S.Y.!

Now that we are well into fall and the long lasting Texas heat is slowly going away, we are looking forward to being outdoors.  A new backyard patio has been a fabulous addition not only providing us a nice space to sit, grill, for Sweetpea to ride her big wheel, color with sidewalk chalk and blow bubbles but it has made an outstanding spot for messy crafts. 

To celebrate fall, we have been looking at and decorating pumpkins.  I wasn't feeling quite up to carving a pumpkin into a flower or leaf, so I wasn't sure what we would do.  I ran across a great post on "No Time For Flashcards" http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2011/10/toddler-friendly-pumpkin-glittering.html about glittering pumpkins and knew we had a start! I knew that Sweetpea would be very enthusiastic about this project ;)  Once we decided on glitter, we decided to paint, marker and sticker pumpkins too.

Moving to the patio, Sweetpea paints on the glue...

Beautifully glittered pumpkin. This is my favorite!



Sweetpea painted her pumpkin with washable paint. Curiously, when the paint dried, it flaked off. The rest came off with the help of little hands.



Part way through the stickering process...

Sweetpea colored a pumpkin with washable marker. For some reason it never dried and three days later, the marker rubed off on our hands.



 Completed markered and stickered pumpkins!

A New Veggie and Life Skill practice

After coming home from grocery shopping, Sweetpea asked to eat celery. Celery? She has never asked for celery before. I asked her if she would like some peanut butter to eat on her celery and since peanut butter is one of her favorite foods, we were set!

Sweetpea loves spreading peanut butter!  She did start eating the peanut butter right out of her bowl and got pretty messy.

By the time she was finished, Sweetpea ate two whole pieces of celery!  The only other veggie she eats is baby carrots. Well, an occasional green pea too.  I am pretty happy because our veggie consumption is starting to expand!

Dino Eggs and Rainbow Stew

This morning I made rainbow stew (cornstarch, sugar, water and food coloring). The stuff has a soothing texture when you smoosh it. It is also a great way to teach the results of color combining.

 Two different colors are placed in a bag and the kiddos can smoosh them and find out what the combined color becomes.

Dino eggs were also on the agenda. Unfortunately this didn't turn out as well as I hoped.  I made a dough, placed a plastic dino in the middle and baked them.

I think I made them too big, because they were still doughy inside and didn't smash when Sweetpea hit them.



 She did think it was fun to try and smash them. I don't often give her a hammer and say "go for it!" I finally tore them apart and let her pull out the dino.

Yesterday we visited a friend who gave us a bunch of cool educational toys. Sweetpea really likes the magnetic mosiacs.  It is for ages 4+, but she did pretty well anyways.

Rain!

We finally got some rain! Well, a light rain for about ten minutes. Sweetpea immediately ran for her rainboots and we went outside to play. She also brought her wand, can't go somewhere without that ;)

After a few moments of frolicking in the rain, eh, sprinkles, we made a beeline to the butterflies hovering over our greg's mist. Sweetpea started chasing them and yelling "Arthur, come back!" We do read the Angelina Ballerina story about Arthur the butterfly quite frequently.

Sweetpea proceeded to try to catch rain in her mouth, alas there wasn't much rain to catch. She did look awful cute trying.



Maybe we will get some more rain soon. It isn't too likely, but one can hope!

Science Fun

For some time I have been wanting to start a blog about the activities we do.  Last weekend I went to an awesome conference for church weekday educators and it was very inspiring. One of my favorite classes was the sensory science class. So many easy ideas!

Today, I decided to do of the science projects with Sweetpea.  The first was "Exploding Color."  Pour evaporated milk into a bowl, place four drops of food coloring in the middle of the bowl.

Touch the center with a qtip that has been dipped in Dawn dish detergent. I let Sweetpea have the honors.

The next experiment was "Dancing Raisins"

Fill a glass jar half way with water and mix 3 TBSP of baking soda into it. Stir. Pour in vinegar until the mix bubbles over. (Wish I had gotten a picture of that!)  Put a few raisins in the mixture.



Sweetpea looking at the first floating raisin.



After a couple of hours all of the raisins were floating.