Thankful Tree

I found a great dried plant (tree? Small bush? not sure) on a walk a couple weeks ago. Clipped off some pieces for a project. On Saturday in Home Depot the bright fall-colored paint chips caught my eye when we passed by them...so I grabbed a handful in different fall colors. At home I used a leaf cookie-cutter, traced the leaf on the back, cut them out, burnished the edges with a dark brown stamp pad and painted the names of our family members on the leaves with white paint. Today Q and I hot glued them onto the branches--she picked where each one would go.
Inside the glass vase are river rocks and white lights.
Love a reminder of people we are so thankful for! Will have fun "reading" the names with Quinn--she can recognize all of them by their first letter!

A free, pretty fall project!

*if I wouldn't have had a leaf cookie cutter I'd have printed a template off google images (put in leaf cookie cutter), copy the image, paste it into Word and make it the size you want.

Paper-covered table

Last night for our church small group I covered the kitchen table in brown craft paper for the kids to do a project and my table to stay protected. I decided after group to just leave the paper and writing supplies out for Q and me to play with today. We had the BEST time writing and drawing all over the table this morning! Q dictated words and names for me to write and we had some great discussion about letter sounds. Then we explored with the different writing tools. Fun times, and very easy!

I bought the craft paper rolls at Dollar Tree in a bin of packaging/shipping supplies they always have out at the holidays. The rolls have a surprising amout of paper on them and I find so many uses for this simple brown paper!!

Leafy Turkey

On a walk we collected brown, red, orange and yellow leaves (Q loved helping with that!) We glued them onto paper, added a bark body we found in the backyard, some twig legs, a couple of lentils for eyes and used yellow and red leaves for the beak and waddle. He is making our fridge oh-so-festive!

Fall Gathering Collage

So simple...collect a basket of neat things on a walk outside and glue them onto a collage!

Oldy but Goody #2

Paper bag pumpkins are one of my favorite fall crafts!

An oldy but goody!

My 3's and 4's did these in October.
Construction paper hand and painty fingerprints for the leaves. Some kids even added leaves on the ground and leaves falling (mid-air!)

Fall Nursery Rhyme

Next year we'll want to make flannelboard Peter and Mouse and a pumpkin to put them in!! This year we had lots of fun simply learning this great rhyme and identifying letters Q knows in the words (especially P for Papa!!)