StArt--Skeleton meets the Mummy

This had to be the boys' most favorite story and art activity yet.  I came up with it kind of last minute right after we read the story, and it turned out to be so fun.  This story, Skeleton Meets The Mummy, is a story about a skeleton boy who wants to go meet his friend to go trick or treating (I think), but has to go deliver something to his Grandma first and walk through the scary woods.  The skeleton gets scared of all the things sounds he keeps hearing through the woods, but it turns out it's a Mummy (his skeleton friend dressed as a Mummy) who is scaring him.  Hopefully that made sense.

I had some leftover people shapes one black and one off white and we used white paper for the bones and yellow felt for the mummy wrap.

They each made a mummy and a skeleton.  I just cut the pieces out as they were glueing them on.  Here's Aric's Mummy:

He really liked putting the strips of felt on.

Both boys working hard on their skeletons.  They were loving this!

Aric's skeleton.  He liked putting the bones together.

For more start activities and fun visit A Mommy's Adventures.

Halloween costume sneak peek

I can't believe halloween is only a week away now!  There is so much that we haven't done, and some days I just feel like I'm running in slow motion.  I've been tired, and feeling very pregnant.  Hopefully we'll get to some of the fun things this week.  We'll just see.  At least we got everyone's halloween costumes ready, finally.  It took us a while to find Aaron's because while he really wanted to be Darth Vader, I was trying to stay away from a masked costume.  So, we looked and looked for a Jedi knight type costume, but they were all so poorly made.  I wish I could have made one, but ran out of time.  Well, obviously, we just decided to go ahead with the Vader costume.  He loves it.  And besides it goes so perfectly with Aric's "woda" (how he says Yoda) costume.

Happy last week of October!

May the force be with you...

Miss April is the American Girl, Felicity.  Her costume is not complete here, she does not have her doll with a matching dress, and her hair could be "dolled" up a little more.

PuMpKiN pAtCh

And other pumpkin-y type things...

(a lapbook, and muffin tin meal too!)

Last week Aaron's class at preschool went on their first field trip to the pumpkin patch!  I have to say that it was a great field trip, but we are definitely going to need to go back.  It's been a lot of years since we've gone with a preschool class so we are used to doing a whole lot more in one trip to a pumpkin patch, like all the corn and hay mazes, playing in the corn and acorn pits, etc.  They didn't do nearly as much as we hoped to do.  It was still pretty fun though.  The weather was absolutely perfect too.

Aaron was so excited for this field trip.  He almost didn't want me to come along, but I insisted that I was coming because I wanted to.  And, that I was also bringing April because it was her early release day and it worked out perfect for her to be picked up from school and join us at the pumpkin patch.

Here he is with some of his friends after they did the easy kids hay maze (the only one the class got to do).  Look at that smile!

Here's Aric, he enjoyed the pumpkin patch too, but he wasn't quite himself.  Turns out after we got back home he had a stomach ache, and was throwing up the rest of the evening.  I think it was something he ate at lunch.  That's why his cheeks look so red.

This is the whole class, plus April and Aric.

Then we went over and watched the cider press, that's always a cool thing to watch.  Here they are getting a taste of the delicious cider.  That stuff is sooooo good.

Finally, the hay ride to the pumpkins.  Aric LOVED watching the tractor, but see he's not nearly as excited as I'd expected him to be.  Poor guy just wasn't feeling good.

Then, when we arrived at the pumpkin patch we were to each put 3 things in our bags:  a pumpkin, a gourd and an indian corn.  Unfortunately so many of the pumpkins were already rotting, it was hard to find good ones.

Ready for the tractor ride back!

The last thing they got to do was feed the goats and see the other animals.  They each got a handful of food and here's Aaron feeding a goat!

As part of his trip to the pumpkin patch, I made Aaron this lap book all about pumpkins with different activities in it.  It has the pumpkin life cycle, a pumpkin patch abc, a jack-o-lantern mini book from Enchanted learning, a dot-to-dot, pumpkin patterns, other little extras.  Most of these things I found the links to at 1+1+1=1, and you can find those here.  He really enjoyed doing this.

He loved the pumpkin life cycle flaps, but even more he loved adding the missing pumpkins to the alphabet pumpkin patch.  This really surprised me.

The picture is of him at the pumpkin patch a few years ago.

This is the pumpkin patch abc part that he worked so hard on.  I am amazed that he liked this so much, that he even cut each of the little pumpkins letters out himself AND he worked on it all the way until he was done.

This is the tracing page.  He didn't quite get the tracing, but he had fun counting and coloring the 5 pumpkins.

I think it was the day before we did a pumpkin Muffin Tin Meal.  I don't do these very often because of time, but it always amazes me how excited the kids get every time they know I'm making one.  

Top row:  pumpkin hamburger, orange balloon (to play with afterwards), and pumpkin mix (pretzels, candy corn, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips)

Bottom row:  peaches with a green spoon (to look like a pumpkin), cheese and pickle pumpkin, and a cookie pumpkin.

This meal has way more sweet things than I'd like it to have, but it was all I could come up with.  Oh, and it's in the pumpkin muffin tins that I had.  The boys liked finding the pumpkin faces in the bottom after eating each thing.

After they were through eating we turned on "Dem bones" song and they danced with their balloons.

A pumpkin party for the littles

We had a lot of pumpkin fun this week!  Here is the little pumpkin party we went to at our friend Maisy's house.  You can read about her family at their blog here.  Emily, Maisy's mommy even has a pretty neat post all about this party and how frugal and simple she did it, but yet it turned out so fun for the kids.

First the kids all painted pumpkins from Emily's garden.  They got to choose their pumpkin on the way in.  Here's Aric with his pumpkin.

Here is Aaron with his pumpkin, all ready to paint.  The little girl next to him is Maisy.  He really wanted to sit next to her.  There was even some fun music in the background.

Aric creating his masterpiece.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I now notice that he is holding his car while painting.  That's Aric, always has a car in his other hand.

Here's Aaron creating his masterpiece.  This year he is really into pumpkin faces, and loves to make pumpkin faces on every pumpkin he can.  I love how he took his time to make a face.

And, that was it.  He made his face, in his favorite color!  Ta da!  (that's what he's saying)

Then they played a game.  Stomp on the balloons to pop them, and the last one with a balloon wins.  But, apparently these guys weren't big enough to pop any balloons because none of them popped!  So, we had to break out the pins to move on.  It was pretty funny, but not to some of the kids.  Oh well, they still had fun.

Aric wasn't quite sure what to do with the balloon tied to his foot, but he liked it!

Then all the kids sat down for a lunch of sandwiches, chee-tos and apples while watching Dora halloween.  I think that's the first time my boys have seen Dora since April is all grown out of Dora.  It brought back some memories.

It was a hoot watching the kids and listening to them while they watched Dora.  It was also pretty funny to watch the smaller babies go around and try to steal food off the big kids plates.  Anyway, it was a fun party.  I'm so glad that we can be a part of things like this, and thanks to Emily and Maisy for the fun time!

Good old fashioned roller skating fun

This was last weekend's activity, we took the kids roller skating!  Grandma and Grandpa were up for a visit and we took a vote on different things we could do and roller skating was one of them.  We also went to OMSI (science museum) that day so it was a packed day of fun. 

Miss April absolutely LOVES roller skating!  I've taken her since she was about 2 to this particular skating rink because they have these special times for just preschoolers, so she is a roller skating pro.  She even has her own white with hot pink wheels roller skates that she got for her birthday a few years back.  She loves them, but they are starting to get a bit small.  I think that is the next thing she'll be saving her money for.

Here is Miss April doing the limbo on roller skates.  Look how low she can go!  I think she bumped the pole though.

Here is Aric and Daddy skating.  I was so surprised at how well little Aric did!  He kept his balance pretty well, and only needed a hand to keep up usually.  He loved roller skating!

Here is everybody in the practice area.  Aaron skated with Grandma most of the time, he loves his Grandma!  I love that Grandma got some skates on too.  Aaron is a different story on roller skates.  He doesn't balance very well, and seems to have a little bit harder time, but I'm pretty sure he still had tons of fun!

There she goes...zOoom!

These are actually the before pictures when we first got ready.  Miss April is sporting her white and pink roller skates.

There's Aric, he was ready and such a brave boy!  This was his very first time roller skating.  I can't wait to take him back to the preschool time.  The nice thing about the preschool time is that the Mommy's don't have to put skates on, they can just walk out onto the skate floor to help the little ones, so that works for me for obvious reasons!

Here's Aaron!  He doesn't look so sure about this.  Oh, there's a little smile!  I love this boy, and I love family outings like this.  We all had such a good time.  Even though I didn't get to skate, I enjoyed watching the kids have a lot of fun.

Eventually Aric convinced Daddy to get a pair of skates on as you can see in the picture up above.  He liked holding Daddy's hand, and he was the only other adult who COULD get a pair of skates on.  What a fun day!