Coffee Filter Pumpkins

Coffee Filter Crafts are our new favorite thing around here! This is our 3rd coffee filter craft and I see no end in sight! (the 3rd is coming to a blog post soon).

I mixed red and yellow food coloring to get orange and they separated out a bit when they dried, but we still love the way the pumpkins look. They look awesome from outside at night and one night after a night walk, Sweet P said, "LOOK! Look at our pumpkins!" She thought they looked pretty cool from the outside, too.

These were made just like our Coffee Filter Trees, but had the added bonus of adding jack o' lantern faces! Sweet P loves making faces and I just love how hers turned out (I got to do a few, too!). She informed me that the one in the middle on the bottom with the triangle eye and the square eye is winking, and no, those aren't earrings, they are cheeks. She also loved the one with the funny mouth on the bottom right and we practiced making that face several times.


What do you do with coffee filters?!

The Sunday Showcase: Pinecones



Last week it was acorns, this week it's pinecones! Check out the fabulous activities Making Boys Men did with her boys and pinceones! I especially love the pinecone play dough prints and the pinecone/pompom activity. Hop on over and check it out yourself.
Things to do with pinecones and kids

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Shaving Cream Spider Web

This week we're doing Letter W and I was giddy that we could do tons of WEB activities that would tie into Halloween!

Sometimes we do an activity and I'm so excited about it that I have to post about it to show all of our family members. As silly as it might seem, this is one of those posts!

This might just be the easiest activity ever! 

Simply spray out a web and add spiders! Insta-fun. 

And clean up led to even more fun in the sink! 

Baby Bear Preschool: Letter T

Time to get caught up with Baby Bear Preschool!

First off: Letter T! We did two weeks of Letter T because I found/came up with so many great tree activities! Plus the tree theme fit perfectly into autumn/fall, too!

You'll notice that in most pictures Sweet P is in her fairy costume or her jammies, that's one of her favorite parts of homeschool preschool - getting to wear costumes and jammies!


Verse: Thank the Lord for all the glorious things He does. Psalm 105:1
Song: We didn't really have a song for Letter T, but danced to all sorts of music!

We read T is for Thankful in Big Thoughts for Little People, Thou Shalt Not Steal in My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God's Word in Little Hearts , and Timothy's story in A Child's First Bible .

    

Apple Tree Number Match: Last year a garage sale down the street was selling preschool materials that the seller had made. I snatched up a few gems, including these numbered trees. They actually go with a set of dogs with dots on them, but I left the dogs in the envelope and we used the trees with red pompoms (apples!). Sweet P doesn't love to count so she tends to get tired of these types of activities quickly. I've learned to do high numbers first so that she gets 9 & 10 out of the way and has 2 & 1 last. You'll see in the top blog picture that she started with tweezers. She got rid of this pretty quickly and used her fingers instead. She can use tweezers, she just knows fingers are faster!

After she'd put all the apples on the trees, I moved them into a line on the floor. She and Beary grabbed baskets and then went to the apple orchard and picked apples! This was by far her favorite part.

Turkey Feather Counting: I made a little turkey and ten feathers out of construction paper and placed her quilted numbers in a sack. She pulled out the numbers one at a time and put the appropriate number of feathers on the turkey. I think she probably would've liked it more if I'd made 9 turkeys and she got to glue on the feathers because she kept asking me if were going to glue them. She slid the feathers off after each number and thought it was pretty funny when we did zero!

Contact Paper Tree: We went on several leaf hunts during our T week and after each walk, I laminated the leaves we picked up until we had several of each. I explained the activity, gave Sweet P the materials and she set to work. She said, "Some of the leaves are falling off the tree." We talked a lot about falling leaves so any time we talk about them she says, "Oh is it fall?"

Sprout examined the laminated leaves too! He loved the way they felt and since they were laminated it didn't matter if he tried to taste them (which he did, of course!). 


Felt Apple Tree Sort: I made this felt game last year to go with Letter A, but it fit in great with our tree theme. She did it several times, stacking up all of the capital letters and then moving on to lowercase.

Writing in the Sand: This was the first time we've done sand tracing and she had a ball! She did capital T and lowercase over and over, and then just drew in the sand. 

Letter T resist painting: Again, our first time to resist paint and it was a huge hit! Sweet P painted all over the page and then we hung it up to dry. We both thought it was pretty cool when she peeled off the tape later and the white T showed up! The finished picture is in the collage at the top of the post.

Cork painting! So fun! Inspired by The Picky Apple. I traced her hand on a brown piece of construction paper, cut it out and she glued it to a piece of white paper. I only had 1 cork, so she used the same one over and over. It fit perfectly into the paint dish and she had a blast! She also said she was making several leaves falling off the tree in this picture. I forgot to take a pic of the finished product and am too lazy to go find it to do it now, but you get the picture!

Eraser Stamping TP Tree: (See the collage at the top of the post for a pic of the finished craft.) I pinned this verrrry early in my pinning days. After cork painting, I grabbed a pencil and she made apples all over the tree. I cut slits in the TP roll and helped her fit the top of the tree into it. Love how it turned out!

Leaf Soup: After a nature walk, she took all the leaves we weren't using for our contact paper tree and made leaf soup! I gave her a cup full of water and she went to down mixing and pouring.

Sorting Leaves by Color & Shape: These leaves are from the $ Tree and come in 4 colors. She sorted them into the clear plastic container by color and then again by shape.

Coffee Filter Trees: Click link for details.

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We went on a walk to a playground when Gammie visited and came home will sorts of nature pieces. Actually, as she picked up pieces she said "This can be the head." and a Leaf Girl was born.  I guess it's more of a leaf monster! 

Apple Seed Dice Game: These foam apples are from Target's $ Spot. Sweet P's tray had the apples, a box of raisins (seeds) and dice. She'd roll the dice (we started with 1) and then add the appropriate number of raisins. This lasted awhile, until she decided to eat the seeds! 


Yarn Tree: Inspired by 3 Dinosaurs using a Letter T worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler. After coloring the trunk, she went to town with 3 colors of yarn. I couldn't get it cut fast enough! 


Tear Leaf Trees: Can you tell she's really into the tearing?! Love that picture! Her tray had scraps of green, yellow and red paper, along with a brown letter T and a glue stick. She did several pieces and then announced that she wanted to hang it up.

Acorn Lady: Gammie found these pieces of acorn on our nature walk and we glued them together to make a lady! Sweet P drew on the face with a marker. Too funny!


Other activities:
Center Grove Orchard: We went to the orchard TWICE during our letter T weeks and it's always a blast!

Food Bank: To go along with being thankful this week, we thanked God for our abundance of food and took food to a local food bank. We also dropped off several toys the kids no longer play with at the Salvation Army. We talked a lot about giving during this week as well.

Words of a Preschooler: Auntie Rosita volunteers at a food bank twice a week so she talked to Sweet P via Skype about working there and what she does. Well after we took food to the food bank, I told her about a girl we saw loading a truck and said, "See she's volunteering like RoRo does." Sweet P replied, "Yes, RoRo goes to the food bank because she doesn't have enough food to eat." Whoops.

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The Sunday Showcase: Acorns



SO many great fall/Halloween posts this week, but I just fell in love with all of the acorn ideas on Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk. Her Acorn-Palooza post is fabulous! Have acorns? She has an idea (or 3) for you!

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The Sunday Showcase: Cats!



I only have 1 feature this week because things have been kinda crazy around the Farmer household. I chose this because Sweet P wants to be a cat for Halloween and this costume is too adorable for words! 

Crafts-N-Things for Children shared this SUPER cute DIY black cat tutorial. Love the pink ribbon additions! 
DIY Black Cat Tutu Costume for girls


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Behind the Blog: Taking a Break

If you haven't noticed, I've cut back on posting quite a bit since August. Things have been pretty busy around The Farmer's House, but I've also taken a break because my heart just wasn't in blogging.

I began blogging as an outlet, a way to connect with my faraway family about my pregnancy with Sweet P and once she was born, our life with her. Little by little my blog grew (but not too big) and I found myself wondering where my blog fit in the blog world. I blogged about kid stuff so I knew I fell into the area of Kid Bloggers, but I also liked blogging about recipes, mama crafts and life in general.

Well, I shoved my blog into a box and became fixated on child-centered crafts, activities and games. There's nothing wrong with those things and blogs that focus on those things are AWESOME, but my blog was resisting and I wasn't listening. I overcommitted to guest posts and giveaways and slowly but surely my love of blogging depleted. It wasn't fun anymore and it was stressing me out. It was also cutting into family time and I told myself when I began that I'd never let the blog interfere with my family. I prayed a lot about what to do blogging wise while at the MOPS conference and heard loud and clear that it was time to take a break. So I took a step back in August.

I'd think of things to blog about, but I just couldn't sit down to do it. I didn't want to sit down and do it. I had other things on my mind, homeschooling a prsechooler, teaching a night class, working with MOPS and having hand surgery. Blogging was not a priority. So for the past month or so I've done the bare minimum. We've done 5 weeks of Baby Bear Preschool and I've posted about 1 because my hearts not in it right now.

 So I'm writing to say I'm not going away, I'm just taking a break for a bit. I'll still pop in here and there and the Sunday Showcase will remain, but I've got to decide what direction I want my blog to go and if I want to continue. So I'll be praying a lot to see where God guides me. I'm also focusing on my family and some other goals I have.

 In the mean time, I'd love for you to check out some older posts and follow us on Pinterest and Facebook.

The Sunday Showcase: Pumpkin Activities



I love PUMPKINS. LOVE. Ours didn't work out this year so we don't have any from the farm and I can't tell you how sad I am about that! So how do I cope? With pumpkin crafts and activities of course! Here are a few of my favs from last week's Showcase.

Playdough to Plato has an adorable activity packet based on the rhyme The 5 Little Pumpkins. It is TOO cute!


Mari from A Mom Not a Pro shared these adorable favors! I bet that pumpkin play dough smells A-MAY-ZING! And what a great way to recycle baby food jars!


And this art project using fist prints to make pumpkins from Putti's World is just genius!
Fist Hand Print Pumpkins

What we've been up to:
We've been working on Letter T so we've had lots of T activities lately!

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This is a fun and relaxed linky with a few guidelines:
  • You can link as many kid friendly or child-centered posts as you'd like, however, links for giveaways, shops, or downloads for purchase, etc. will be deleted. 
  • Please try to visit a few other posts if you are linking up. Everyone loves comments, feed-back, pins and shares!
  • I'll share some posts via Facebook, Twitter and Google +, while commenting on and pinning others.
Please NOTE: By linking up you are giving us permission to use a photo (with proper link to you!) in our featured section! If you prefer not to be featured comment below or e-mail me.

Thanks for joining us and I look forward to seeing what you've been doing this week! Don't forget to visit my co-hosts for additional features this week!