Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for Autumn and the cool weather it's bringing. We've had the windows open for a couple weeks now. The days are beautiful but most mornings are chilly. Sean has started crawling into my lap each morning for snuggles. I'm eating it up. At almost 5 years old, he doesn't snuggle as much as he use to. Then he made it even better. He told me "Mama, you're so comfy!" as he snuggled in a little more. *swoon*

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DIY Window Decorations: Fall

I'm behind on posting but better late than never, right!? We have a huge picture window in our livingroom. In the past we've used it to display some of the kids art work but I wanted to do something bigger. So, we made a mural! The inspiration came from the Tissue Paper Stained Glass project that Dilly-Dali Art did.

It started with just the kids putting scraps of tissue paper on the bottom of the window. Then I made the tree trunk and the top of the tree and the kids finished it with the falling leaves.


It was beautiful from the inside during the day.


And just as pretty from the outside at night.


We took it down when the Christmas decorations went up and I'm already brain storming on the winter mural we'll do when the Christmas decorations come down.


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Kid Meal: Autumn

Sandwich shaped as a house and a pretzel, pineapple, and peaches tree.
Inspired by this pin/blog.

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Kids Meal: Autumn

We're welcoming autumn today with some autumn food.


Pumpkin dump cake, pumpkin shaped toast with pumpkin butter,
Minestrone soup...and not pictured because I almost forgot it, cranberries.
Another change: the kids decided they wanted pumpkin nutella muffins instead of the pumpkin dump cake for dessert.


More Muffin Tin Monday ideas:


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School Days: Harvest Time

Fall is in the air! This week we extended our prior lesson on autumn with a lesson on harvest time. It was perfect timing because we ended the week with Autumn Fest at the arboretum.

Sean's scarecrow:


And tractor:


Autumn Fest
The kids had fun at Autumn Fest but might enjoy it better next year. They had many crafts for kids to do, including making a scarecrow, but Sean wasn't interested. They really enjoyed the tractor and hay bale maze though. And as always, kids love to make their parents liars and make us scratch our heads in confusion. Shy guy Sean who didn't want to do crafts b/c of the other people around had no problems with Woodsy Owl (mascot type thing who's motto is “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute”). He actually asked to meet him, walked up to him, said hi and gave him a high five.










*A little note; I'm going to start adding our week's reading list at the end of bloggings so I've gone back and edited past posts with the books I can remember.

This week's reading:
The Little Red Hen -Byron Barton
Strega Nona's Harvest -Tomie DePaola
The Scarecrow's Dance -Jane Yolen
Hello, Harvest Moon -Ralph J. Fletcher

School Days: Week 4: Autumn

This we continued working on the letters A,B and C. Our theme was Autumn. Unfortunately, it rained all week so we couldn't do as much outside as I had hoped. We did manage to get out and collect leaves for leaf rubbings. We may revisit this theme a little b/c it's just now getting cool and the leaves aren't really changing colors yet.

Leaf rubbing:


Sean's art work this week. He loved making the hand print autumn tree.


He also loves his abacus. Right now we're just using it to count with.


This week's reading:
By the Light of the Harvest Moon -Harriet Ziefert
Fall is Not Easy -Marty Kelley
Fall -Ron Hirschi