We also made "thankful" leaves. Here is where I have to thank my dear friends for thinking of me and bringing the leftover craft pieces from an event to my house (so thank you, A!). These leaves are super cool. They have a wax like covering that, when scraped off, have rainbow colors under it. Originally, I was just going to have the kids do designs, but then I changed it up and decided to combine another activity I had planned with them. I was going to make a "thankful" tree with handprints. To save time, I just used the leaves. The kids were great. The things they came up with were, well, interesting. I didn't want repeats, so they couldn't use what the other had done. They decided they were thankful for their family, friends, dog, country, world, and the sun (because without the sun, there would be no life...guess someone is paying attention in science). One of the nicest parts of this was that Sunshine got to practice writing and sounding out words. Instead of a tree, we are hanging them from the dining room chandelier, sort of like a Thanksgiving centerpiece.
Even during all the craziness here, we've made time to do fun little crafts. I saw the cool idea of melted crayons on a pumpkin on Pinterest. So, I got my pumpkin all ready and then, I stood there, for over an hour, with a hair dryer, and still, some crayons never melted. Luckily, with Husband's job, he has a heat gun. After getting that out, the pumpkin was AWESOME in under 10 minutes. I do not suggest doing this if you don't have a heat gun, unless you have hours to kill. Will definitely do this again next year, minus the time with the hair dryer! Another thing I found on Pinterest was this door sign. I didn't want mine to be as long, so I changed it up a little. The kids got to pick the kind of faces they wanted on their hands. Yes, I know this is the second time I'm posting this, but this time I added a link with it. This time of year would not be complete without pumpkin carving and painting. This year there were pumpkins everywhere! We had more pumpkins this year than we have ever had in the past, and it was great! Both kids got to tell Daddy exactly how their wanted their jack-o-lantern faces to look. They turned out super cute! Sunshine's is smiling, of course. Monster's looks mean. I got to do the surprised one. While Husband was working with the carving, the kids painted pumpkins. I painted our annual taped off "R" pumpkin because, by the time we got to that one, the kids were pretty much done. Sunshine also made us some very nice paper jack-o-lanterns at a MOMS Club event we attended. Every year since Husband and I have been carving pumpkins, we have tried roasting pumpkin seeds. Last year was the closest we came to success. Still, even then, Sunshine was really the only one who would eat them (which is odd since she eats nothing!) This year, I found yet another recipe for pumpkin seeds. After all our failure, what's one more recipe to try? This recipe has you soak the seeds in salt water. This one was a success!!! I did change up the recipe though because we have had issues with our seeds burning. By changing it up, my way took a LOT longer than the recipe says. Completely worth the time though! I soaked the seeds in salt water like the recipe said. After that, I let the seeds air dry, well, almost completely dry at least. Then, I baked them at 200 degrees for several hours. My first batch was faster than my second because I tested it out with only about 1/4 of the seeds. I'm glad I did test though. I didn't add the salt to the top like in the recipe. I did this because one complaint last year was that they were too salty. So, I left off the additional salt. I'm so glad I did because they were plenty salty from just being soaked in salt water! I will definitely be doing this one again next year! Immediately after Halloween was over, I started working on Thanksgiving. I feel bad for Thanksgiving because I need to rush since it's so close to Halloween and Christmas. I want to cram as much Thanksgiving stuff in as I can! First things my kids did was make Thanksgiving cards (and Veteran's Day and winter holiday, but most were Thanksgiving) for veterans and active soldiers. I forgot to take pictures of them, but my kids did a great job! And now, Monster knows how to spell country due to writing, "Thank you for serving our country" over and over. We also made "thankful" leaves. Here is where I have to thank my dear friends for thinking of me and bringing the leftover craft pieces from an event to my house (so thank you, A!). These leaves are super cool. They have a wax like covering that, when scraped off, have rainbow colors under it. Originally, I was just going to have the kids do designs, but then I changed it up and decided to combine another activity I had planned with them. I was going to make a "thankful" tree with handprints. To save time, I just used the leaves. The kids were great. The things they came up with were, well, interesting. I didn't want repeats, so they couldn't use what the other had done. They decided they were thankful for their family, friends, dog, country, world, and the sun (because without the sun, there would be no life...guess someone is paying attention in science). One of the nicest parts of this was that Sunshine got to practice writing and sounding out words. Instead of a tree, we are hanging them from the dining room chandelier, sort of like a Thanksgiving centerpiece. No autumn is complete without collecting beautiful leaves and no Thanksgiving is complete without turkeys. We combined the two this year. The house at the corner of the street where we pick Monster up from school has the most vibrant red leaves. Sunshine gathered a whole bouquet of them. We then made turkeys and used those wonderful leaves as feathers. Unfortunately, the picture really doesn't do the leaves justice. Speaking of turkeys...Little Miss Sunshine had a project due for school. She had to "disguise" her turkey so he could make it through Thanksgiving. The kids could disguise the turkey anyway they wanted. Sunshine combined the interests of her family. First, the turkey had to be sparkly with a crown, of course. But her turkey also had to have hiking boots since Sunshine's family loves to hike in the fall. It also had to be playing UNO, which is one of Sunshine's favorite games. She did almost the whole thing on her own. I only cut out UNO cards and the turkey and drew the hiking boots. She colored and glued and drew everything. It turned out super cute! The UNO cards fold down and on the other side, she glued colored paper and wrote numbers. (This is a reminder for everyone else in her class....turkeys are due Friday!) And because nothing in this house is complete without a science lesson...... Sunshine's friend's birthday is coming up. He is very into the solar system right now. So, we did a mini lesson in which Sunshine made her friend a model of the solar system. She's very excited about it, so don't tell ;) There were probably more things in there that we did, but when I'm this far behind on posting, I can't be expected to remember it all!
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