Apple Craft

Lately Bekah has not been interested in doing crafts at all. She's just been so busy playing with her toys and whenever I asked her if she wanted to do a craft she would say "NO!" So, today I decided to take a different approach. I decided to get everything ready on the table and offer it to her when she was ready. IT WORKED! In no time she was at the table wanting to make a craft. We made an adorable apple craft I had seen over at Giggles Galore.

We stuffed our paper lunch bag with tissue paper I had leftover from unwrapping birthday gifts (you could also use newspaper). I closed up the bag with a twist tie.
Bekah then painted the apple red. I added a green leaf made out of foam with a stapler.

Bekah kept saying, "This is fun," so I hope this means she'll want to do crafts again!

Poky Little Puppy Muffin Tin

Happy Muffin Tin Monday! I had something totally different planned for today's muffin tin. Then, while Bekah was playing with her stuffed animals she said, "They're eating a Poky Little Puppy muffin tin." Well, I knew I HAD TO make her a Poky Little Puppy muffin tin after that comment. So, I racked my brain for ideas. She's been addicted to the Poky Little Puppy movie we got from the library, so I went off that for my ideas. This is what I came up with:
A dog bone shaped egg salad sandwich (Bekah didn't like this, so I ended up making a cheese one), cherry tomato "beach balls", bunny crackers (like the bunny Poky plays with), dirt cake with "squirmy wormies", and milk to drink.

Other than the egg sandwich (hey, a mom can try, right?!) Bekah loved her lunch. It was such a fun muffin tin.

You can learn about what others are having for Muffin Tin Monday over at Her Cup Overfloweth.

stART - The Poky Little Puppy

Lately Bekah has LOVED the book, The Poky Little Puppy. We were recently at the library and even discovered a Poky Little Puppy video. We've only watched it a few dozen times so far! Since she's been so drawn this this book we are using it for our stART activity over at A Mommy's Adventures. stART is: a story = art = a great start!

I found the activity we did at Homeschool Share. It's like a little booklet that you make by gluing in the pictures of what the puppy smells (sees, tastes, hears, touches) and what you can smell (see, taste, hear, and touch). I thought it was a great idea to go over our five senses as well as enjoy a book she loves...well, Bekah got tired of this quickly. I think she just wasn't in the mood for one of mommy's "great" ideas! She did some of it with me and perhaps we'll finish it later.

All that's needed is the printout from Homeschool Share, scissors to cut out the pictures, and glue.



Bekah wanted to circle the pictures and color some in, so I let her. (Don't you love the hat!!!) We were playing dress-up before this.

Here's what we got done. I just noticed that she just fell asleep on the couch, so she was probably just tired.

Happy Fall!

Happy First Day of Fall! I love Fall! It's such a beautiful time of year and there are so many fun activities to do. Today we celebrated the first day of Fall by making a Fall tree.

To make our Fall tree we used: red and yellow paint, a poof sponge, a tree trunk cut out from brown construction paper, glue, and white paper.


First we glued the tree trunk onto our white paper. Bekah colored in some grass along the bottom of the page. She then went to town dipping her poof in red paint and then yellow paint. This was a wonderful lesson on color mixing. We learned that red and yellow make orange.
I thought our tree turned out really pretty!

We also read Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert to go along with our project. Happy Fall!

Pinkalicious Muffin Tin Monday

Happy Monday! Today is not only Muffin Tin Monday, it's also my birthday! I was excited to see that the theme for today at Her Cup Overfloweth was children's literature. I love children's books! One book I've heard a lot about lately has been Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann. As soon as I got it from the library last Thursday I knew this was the book we would do our muffin tin on.


In her muffin tin, Bekah had, a plain bagel with strawberry cream cheese, pea pods (in the book, the little girl turns pink from eating all the pink cupcakes and has to eat green food to turn back to normal), a pink egg (made by soaking a hardboiled egg in beet juice), a pink cupcake (of course), strawberry applesauce, raspberry kabobs, and raspberry lemonade.

Here's my silly girl sticking her peapods into the applesauce!


And, as for my birthday, here's my present from Bekah. She picked it out with Grandma! Haha, our dog thought the piggies were toys for her! She kept chasing my feet!

You can learn more about Muffin Tin Monday at Michelle's blog.

tiny and yummy apples

We had so much fun in the kitchen tonight. We made mini caramel apples that I had seen over at A Mommy's Adventures. Thank you so much to Michelle for this idea.
We heated up the caramel sauce I had made earlier this week and I used the melon baller to make small round balls out of our apples. Bekah loved dipping the apples with Daddy.

After dipping them in caramel they got a coat of sprinkles. At one point we ran out of sprinkles, so Daddy got out the mini m&m's.
Bekah loved every part of this. I think it was the most fun we've ever had in the kitchen together.
The apples turned out so yummy (especially the ones with the mini m&m's!

Yummy!

Wheels on the Bus

This week we are participating in stART over a A Mommy's Adventures. stART stands for a story + art = a great start. Our book craft this week was Donald Crews' School Bus. Bekah was excited to find out that her cousin goes to school on a bus. We decided to make a shape school bus to go along with this book.
I cut out all the shapes ahead of time. A bus shape (without wheels) out of yellow paper, two small orange triangles (for the headlights), 3 blue squares (for windows), 1 red rectangle (for the door), and two black circles for the wheels.

Bekah glued them where she wanted and then we fastened the wheels with brass fasteners.

"The wheels on the bus go round and round..."

You can learn what other book crafts were done this week over at A Mommy's Adventures.

Jonah and the Whale

Our letter J week was interrupted by strep throat, so I had some activities leftover to do. I've wanted to do more bible stories with Bekah, so today we talked about Jonah and the whale. Bekah thought it was so funny that Jonah was swallowed by the whale. I made this whale water scoop from Family Fun to use in her bath tonight, but it got used even before then. It was so easy to make and she loved it. I was a little bit concerned about the edges of the whales mouth being sharp, but they weren't at all.
We even reenacted the story of Jonah with one of her bath "gingerbread men" that we made awhile back.

She loved having something new to play with in her bath time.

Muffin Tin Monday Apples

After being sick this weekend I wasn't sure if Bekah would be up to Muffin Tin Monday. However, she's back to her energetic self and we were able to participate. The theme today at Her Cup Overfloweth was Apples. We started our Apple day with an apple craft.
I cut strips of red paper and had Bekah use her scissors to cut smaller pieces.

She then glued her pieces of red paper onto an apple I drew on paper.

I had planned on using her handprint for the stem, but she refused to put her hand into the paint. Oh, well. I guess it doesn't always work out the way we plan, does it?
I didn't get too creative with this muffin tin meal, but decided to try some yummy recipes I'd seen. The first one was Apple Brownies from Gourmet Mom on the Go. These were so yummy! Bekah helped make these today and we really had fun cooking together.


Here's a picture of the finished brownies:


Next I made caramel sauce from Tammy's Recipes. This was delicious as well. No more store bought for us!
Bekah loved her Muffin Tin today.

She had: Apples and homemade caramel sauce, apple brownies (not shown, it was still cooling!), ham, cheese, and crackers.

Here she is enjoying her apple brownies drizzled with our homemade caramel sauce.

Jellyfish

Since Monday was Labor Day and we were over my Mom's house we didn't get to do Muffin Tin Monday. So, today, we had Muffin Tin Wednesday. Why not, right? It was perfect because we were learning about Jellyfish today. I had seen this idea for eatable jellyfish (made from hotdogs and spaghetti), but I can't remember where I had seen it. If any of you know, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!
In her muffin tin was, hotdog jellyfish, Upper and lowercase J's made out of cheese, Juicy Juice, jellybeans, and letter J cookies.


I simply made these cute jellyfish by sticking uncooked spaghetti noodles in a small piece of hot dog. We then boiled them and there you have jellyfish.


Here's the completed jellyfish.


Bekah loved her lunch!


We also decided to make a jellyfish craft. I got this idea at Homeschool Creations. We took some clear contact paper and cut out a circle. Bekah then took some glitter and sprinkled it on the sticky side of the contact paper.


Fold the contact paper in half and you have a jellyfish body.
We used some clear tape to attach string to the bottom of the jellyfish.


Bekah had so much fun playing with her jellyfish today.

Letter J

We're learning about letter J this week and have lots of fun activities planned. This morning we did some jellybean activities.
First we took some jellybeans I had leftover from Easter and a muffin tin. I started her off by putting one of each color in a muffin holder.

Bekah then sorted the jellybeans out by color. She had a great time doing this.

We then made a J is for Jellybeans. I drew the J on white paper and Bekah colored it with markers.

After coloring our letter J she drizzled glue all over the J.

She then put her jellybeans on the glue. She insisted on putting them anywhere glue was.

We ended up with a ton of jellybeans on our J. It is still drying as I type. I'm hoping they stick to the paper. I guess we'll find out!

Bekah kept saying how much fun she was having.

A Color of His Own

In a recent trip to our library we got the book, A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni. Bekah has been crazy for chameleons, so I knew she would like this book. We decided to do a craft along with the book.

The book is about a little chameleon who is sad that he doesn't have a color of his own. When he goes on lemon he turns yellow. When he goes into the heather he turns purple. Eventually he meets another chameleon and they decide to go everywhere together so they are always the same color. It was such a sweet book and we have read it over and over again this week.

In our craft, Bekah decided she wanted to put out chameleon friend on a lemon. So, I drew the lemon shape and she colored it in.

Then she colored the chameleon cutout in the same color (we got this from Mailbox magazine, but here's a coloring page you can use. ) We glued the chameleon on top of our lemon. You could put your chameleon on anything your child would like (apple, leaf, etc.)

in our next chameleon craft we used our finger paints. Bekah chose a fingerpaint color and went to town coloring a piece of white paper. She really wasn't sure about the feel of the paint...her expression in this picture is hilarious!

After she had fingerpainted on the plain paper, she added another copy of the chameleon and painted the same color over him. She thought it was funny how he blended in.

We sprinkled on some glitter and let it dry.