Halloween Fine Motor Activity: Making a Jack-o'-lantern Mask!

Eve's tiny hands worked so hard to make a jack-o'-lantern pumpkin mask.  First, Eve cut out tiny pieces of orange construction paper.  Eve loves to use scissors so she was quite excited to make this Halloween project!

After Eve cut the pieces of orange paper, she glued them onto a paper plate to make her pumpkin.  Eve chose triangle eyes, a triangle nose and asked for a smile with "five teeth" for her jack-o'-lantern.  After gluing on the features Eve laughed and told me that she wanted to name her pumpkin "Jack!"

Here is Eve's finished "Jack."  Isn't he cute?!!  :) 

Loving Autumn

I love this picture of Grace because it perfectly captures her spirit!
This pumpkin picture of Grace reminds me so much of THIS picture.
 

Dining Out...

It is becoming a tradition of ours to "dine out" on the weekends.  We build a fire in our back yard to prepare and cook our dinner.  We all enjoy sitting around the warm fire to eat together.  Grace, Jack and Eve love being outside and this is such a special way to spend our weekend evenings.    

The End of the 2013 Soccer Season...

Today was the last day of soccer.  The soccer season has ended (and just in time for it is starting to get cold outside!).  Our last day of soccer was a full one - our Saturday was filled with soccer from beginning to end.  We had two games this morning and award ceremonies all afternoon.  This picture of my three amazing soccer players was taken this afternoon at Scarborough High School following the soccer award ceremonies.  Grace, Jack and Eve all received soccer trophies and they have them proudly displayed on their dressers this evening.  Their trophies will serve as a reminder of their fun-filled 2013 soccer season.  I am so proud of all of my children for having been such tremendous team members and for all of their hard work.  I will be posting pictures of the award ceremonies as well as lots of practice and game pictures that I took throughout the soccer season.  

Making Coffee Filter Maple Leaves

We made autumn leaves this week using coffee filters, markers, marker dots and a spray bottle filled with water.  We have made these leaves for several years now and we love just how much they resemble real autumn maple leaves that we see outside on our trees!   

To make the leaves Grace, Jack and Eve colored coffee filters autumn colors of brown, orange, yellow and red with a variety of washable markers.  Next, they sprayed the colored filters with water from a spray bottle.  When wet, the colors on the filter all blend together.  Once the coffee filters dried Grace helped me cut them out into the shape of maple leaves.  We hung the leaves above our kitchen sink where we will enjoy looking at them until Thanksgiving.  After that, we'll have to replace them with some snowflakes!!

Jack spraying the colored coffee filters with water.  This was, by far, Jack's very favorite part of this activity!

Grace spraying the coffee filters with water.  

More spraying by Jack!

 Grace coloring the coffee filters.  Grace worked really hard to color the majority of the filters.

Here are our finished autumn maple leaves.  The picture doesn't quite capture how unique and pretty each leaf is but they look lovely hanging in our kitchen windows.  These leaves will serve as a reminder of just how beautiful early autumn is for soon all of the trees will be bare as the leaves outside fall to the ground in preparation for winter.

Sensory Activity: Rainbow Colored Rice!

 

In our playroom I have a sand box that I use for a variety of sensory activities with my children.  Most recently we had the box filled with corn kernels for sensory play.  A few weeks ago Eve asked if we could replace the corn kernels with rice.  Eve worked hard over several days to color bags of rice a variety of bright colors and she was extremely excited to make a rainbow rice box!

I always add a variety of containers and measuring items to our sensory bins/boxes to aid in fine motor skills like scooping, pouring, etc..  This time I also added letters into the rainbow rice box for Eve.  This rice box allows Eve lots of opportunities to play and explore but also includes some opportunities for more directed learning.   Here are just a few things that I love so much about sensory play/sensory bins: they are visually, texturally and audibly appealing, they help develop fine motor skills, transferring skills, counting, sorting and matching, classifying and provide lots of opportunity for imaginative play.  It's also a fun way to target specific skills - in this case letter and sound identification.

 Eve enjoyed experimenting with putting rice through a funnel.

Eve practiced scooping and pouring.

Eve loved counting how many tablespoons of rice it took to fill her yellow container.

 Here is what the rainbow rice bin looked like when Eve first poured in the rice.  Eve did a great job choosing the colors and pouring the heavy rice into the sensory box.  It's so pretty and cheerful!

Catching Falling Leaves

I took Grace, Jack and Eve to this peaceful spot yesterday to try to catch autumn leaves falling from the trees.  I have always heard that if you catch a falling leaf it brings happiness and good luck.  We tried and tried (and tried!) yesterday...it's actually much harder than you would think and so much more fun than it sounds.  We found ourselves smiling and laughing uncontrollably while running from tree to tree.  We had the best time with this and catching falling leaves has become our new favorite autumn activity.  You should give it a try!  When you are out walking, keep your eye out for falling leaves.  It guaranteed to make you smile and as soon as you try it you won't be able to stop!   :)

Our Nature Scavenger Hunt along the Eastern Trail...

As I had mentioned in a previous post, last week we went on a nature scavenger walk along the Eastern Trail.  This was a fun event to kickoff the Great Maine Outdoor Weekend.  We had a list of twenty items to find along the trail.  In the picture above Grace, Jack and Eve huddled together at the beginning of our walk to review the list of items we were searching for. 

The beginning of our scavenger hunt walk....Grace, Jack and Eve were very excited!

For most of the walk, Eve was in charge of holding our clipboard and scavenger hunt paper.  Eve was a great little leader!

Grace, Jack and Eve opened up milkweed to examine the seeds inside.

Grace spread all of the milkweed seeds along the trail. (We were so sad this summer not to have seen many monarch caterpillars and butterflies.  There was a dramatic drop in their population this year.  Grace spread milkweed seeds all along the trail hoping that the seeds would grow next spring to help bring the monarchs back to Maine!).

Here is Eve checking off several of the items that we found along our walk.

We spent lots of time on this part of the Eastern Trail.  It's a small bridge that crosses over the marsh.  It is here where we spotted several egrets, watched a local fisherman, made leaf boats to drop into the water and served as a greeting committee for other walkers, runners and bikers along the path!

  

Grace enjoying the view of the Scarborough marsh from the bridge.  This marsh is largest salt marsh in the state of Maine.

Jack and Eve watching several egrets drying their wings.

Jack

Grace, Jack and Eve

Gracie

Grace cartwheeling!  Grace is such a free spirited girl and I love how she cartwheels whenever and wherever she can!

Grace and Jack loved standing on the bridge to watch a local fisherman fish below.  After watching him for nearly twenty minutes we decided to go directly under the bridge to get a better view.

The fisherman was so happy to have Grace, Jack and Eve watch him.  He talked to us about what he was doing and how he goes about catching fish.

Jack and Eve underneath the bridge

Watching the fisherman

In the end, we found all twenty items on our scavenger hunt but best of all we enjoyed a fun-filled afternoon together in such a beautiful place.

Hello, October.

Here are a few pictures that I took early this morning around our home just as the sun was rising.  I love autumn and everything that it brings...

 "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

~Albert Camus~