Archive for October 2010
Fall is in full swing around here, between the pumpkins creeping up on porches in my neighborhood to the bursts of red, yellow and orange everywhere I had to make a leaf rubbing craft. I have to be honest my son was only kinda into this craft. He liked doing the rubbing the first few times and then after that the only thing he wanted to do was be the tape guy! We often put a craft down and return to it at our leisure, or sometimes ditch it forever. Forcing kids to do art defeats the purpose no one is creative or learning when they are forced to do anything.
- Gather your materials. You will need a paper towel roll, some white paper, scissors, tape, crayons in fall colors with the paper removed and leaves from your garden.
- Start by going outside and finding some fun leaves , bringing them in and pat them dry if needed.
- Place the leaves vein side up under a piece of paper – for my son I taped the leaves onto a paper so they wouldn’t shift when he was trying to do the rubbing. This is where I lost him, after one exposure to the tape and well tape was all he wanted to do.
- Rub your crayons over the paper and watch the magic leaf appear! You can see I still had to hold his paper steady.
- Cut them out as you go.
- Time to tape. We used tape because it would be very tricky to glue with white glue and our glue stick was MIA. A glue stick would work nicely as long as you glued it horizontally and waited until it was dry to stand it up.
- Attach all the leaves and stand up!
Books About Leaves
Leaf Man 
Leaf Jumpers
Lucky Leaf
Need more leaf projects? It was my theme of the week over at Craftivity Corner my FamilyEducation.com blog !
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I don’t think it is a secret how much I love science. I love teaching my kids about science, without telling them it’s science. Preschoolers are so much fun to watch when they experiment and learn. We did this fun activity on a recent rainy day that taught my kids about spacial relations and physics, but it was disguised as a wrecking ball.
Here is what you will need: some yarn, an empty key ring, a ball, masking tape, and some blocks.
First, tape the key ring to a door frame using the masking tape. You want to only use masking tape because any other tape may damage paint or stained wood.
Next wrap the ball with the yarn. Any ball will do.
Have your child build a structure with the blocks. You do not have to use blocks. Empty yogurt or butter containers work great, so do food storage containers.
Thread the yarn through the key ring.
Have your child hold the end of the yarn in one hand and the ball in the other. Show them how they can adjust the height by pulling or letting go of the yarn. For the younger two kids I held the non-ball end for them.
Now your child can let loose and do some demolition!
We had a neat time talking about how we needed to pull it to make it higher and standing further back to make the ball hit the building harder. It was so exciting to hear my son point these things out. I would ask how we could hit the blocks at the very bottom and he would tell me how he thought it could be done. So I told him to test it out.
It was a good time for everyone. Nothing says fun like demolition. 
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
Even kids who are not the sit and do art at the table type many love to paint rocks. If the weather is nice take this craft outside and enjoy the sun before it’s gone for the winter. If you want to make them water proof you will need to spray the finished rock with clear varnish . I skipped the step because I personally dislike the smell of varnish enough not to bother, but you can find it at any hardware/ craft store.
- Gather your materials, you will need some large rocks, painters tape, orange paint, a jar, white glue and a paint brush.
- Tape off a cool face for each- press the painters tape down carefully so there are no bubbles. * Edited to add this is an adult job if you want it precise, tape is frustrating to cut and even I was having a hard time. I offered one rock to my son but he declined. Have extras on hand if they want to do it themselves but you think they will be disapointed or frustrated if they don’t make one look like a jack-o-lantern.
- Mix you paint with white glue. I am mixing them together to stop the washable paint from “dusting” off the rock. In the past washable kids paint has all but fallen off the rocks. If you are varnishing them skip this. The glue does not make it water proof, so don’t pop it in your garden.
- Start painting!
- Let dry for a few minutes and add another coat.
- Let dry and peel off the tape. I used a paring knife to carefully peel it off.
Halloween Books !
Mouse’s Halloween Party 
Halloween Day
Moonlight: The Halloween Cat
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This month will be filled with Fall and Halloween crafts and themed activities . I had to post this one now so that all of you Target shoppers can get to the dollar spot to buy these Halloween erasers before they are gobbled up. I love using themed mini erasers for learning activities especially as math manipulatives.
Halloween Graphing
Using manipulatives is a great way to introduce children to graphing. Explain that graphs help us see the answers to questions . Also take the time to make predictions before graphing , such as which row will have the most , which will have the least?Ask them why? I am always fascinated by the reasons why my son makes certain predictions.
- Gather your materials. You will need a large piece of white paper, a ruler, markers, some fun Halloween manipulatives, and a plastic jack-o-lantern container. I think when you try to make everything themed kids get more excited and learn more.
- Start by making an easy graph. I used pictures and words to represent our manipulatives, my son is interested in the words but not yet ready to rely only on them.
- Grab the manipulatives you are using . I made sure to have 3 different amounts . Pop them in your jack-0-lantern.
- Invite your child(costume optional) to the table to start. My son dumped the erasers but taking them out one at a time is great too!
- Ask your child to make a prediction – which of the three designs do they think will have the most? Least? Why?
- Place them on the graph.
- Keep going!
- Just by looking at them which has the most? Least?
- Count them to check.
Halloween Patterns
Patterning was one of my favorite preschool math activities to teach. I have found that if you sing song the pattern children have an easier time recognizing the pattern and start using that device themselves when encountered with a pattern they need to continue.
- Gather your materials. 2-3 different manipulatives like these Halloween themed erasers in a container, some sentence strips are optional but I like them because they give my son a frame for the pattern. When I simply place the erasers on the table it looks like I expect him to keep the pattern going to the edge of the table and the task seems much more daunting.
- Make some simple patterns .
- Provide a container and ask your child to keep the pattern going.
- If they need help try labeling the pattern out loud . For example saying ” Pumpkin, Bat, Pumpkin, Bat… what comes next?
- Keep going, if they are frustrated with the more difficult patterns scrap them and make multiple simpler ones. The goal is success and if it’s too challenging for them they will get frustrated and learning will be minimal.
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