october art

Last week I realized that last October our kitchen was full of fun fall art and this October all we had hanging up was a half-finished water colored coloring book page of Ernie trick-or-treating.  I suppose I could blame that on our countdown to baby G and the fact that baby prep has come before toddler art but that excuse makes me sad so over the long weekend we did a few projects to make our house a little more seasonal looking.

We did my most favorite Halloween project last year but this year's were cute too.  A few months ago we needed cotton balls for one of our many dog ailments of the year.  I don't think M had ever really seen them and he took to playing with them and calling them "bunnies."  I knew he'd like this project because it included cotton balls and ghosts, a new favorite since a neighbor hung a big ghost in the tree outside their house.  We used about 10 cotton balls (spread apart) and black construction paper cut into a ghost shape.  

I spread glue over the ghost first but if M were older I would have had him handle the glue.  He had to take the cotton and stick it on.  Being the efficient two-year old he is, he took all the cotton at once and dumped it on the ghost so we then had to work on spreading out the pieces.  

We also did a paper plate pumpkin that M enjoyed painting.  He loved using the big foam brush.  We've been playing with pumpkin faces lately so once he finished painting and the paint was still wet I let him stick on the face pieces by himself and then I glued them as he had left them.  He did a pretty good job and I love the crooked-ness of it.  

We also started a special project over the weekend that I've been looking forward to.  We can't finish without baby G so this is a "to be continued" part of the post for a few weeks from now.  About a month ago I bought two small canvases especially for this project.  While we had the paint and smocks out for our pumpkin I figured we should get M's piece done because I clearly remember how hard it is to get a newborn handprint on anything.  

On each canvas will be an M handprint and a G handprint.  One will hang in his room and one will hang in her room.  To be continued....

glow tub

M and I have been celebrating "fun Fridays" since I went back to work in September. We do something fun together like the zoo or a park. Today's fun Friday was going to be mini golf and a picnic lunch in our yard but it got rained out.  Instead, we celebrated Friday with a special take-out lunch and then a glow tub.

We got our glow sticks in the Target dollar aisle. They had a large pre-Halloween selection. I almost went with the glow bracelets because there were more in a pack but these sticks were pretty bright. We only had two but M was completely entertained by them both during and after his bath.  Four would have probably been ideal. 

I've seen this on various blogs before.  Our tip- use bubbles. It looks much cooler. 

And after- glow truck

magnetic pumpkin

We're starting our Halloween activities a little early (is it still September?) because our Baby G countdown is on and with her due date a week before Halloween, it's hard to know what we'll get in towards the actual day.

This is our first Halloween/pumpkin activity.  We have a few others here from last year that M could completely do again this year at 2.  We started this activity last week when we painted our paper pumpkin orange.  I was going to use orange construction paper but M loves to paint so I thought he'd enjoy that more.  I also used a sheet of black craft foam to cut the jack o'lantern pieces.  Each piece then had a magnetic strip attached to the back.

We taped the pumpkin to the fridge and stuck the pieces on the fridge next to it.  I made a face to start and M caught right on...

M had already done a pretty good job of giving a real pumpkin a face with his Nonni last week so this worked out well.  He liked changing the pieces.  I ended up making about 4 interchangeable sets of  face pieces.  I almost didn't put them all out because I could picture them all over the floor but so far that hasn't been a problem.  Another benefit- shapes.  M knows a few and likes naming them - win win.

fall art

This morning M and I got into the Halloween spirit with this ghost handprint.

We made two, one to hang up and one to bring to M's great-grandmother.  I don't have any pictures of the process because I had one hand on the paint and the other on M's painted hand.  It's fairly simple.  You need white paint (we used our favorite very washable Crayola paint), black construction paper, and a black marker.  We used googly eyes but you could draw the eyes on.  M is getting good at handprints but if I was doing this with an older child I would tell them to keep their thumb down so it's closer to the other fingers.

Last week we did another fall picture that M loved (I haven't had a chance to post it).  I made a brown tree on construction paper:

M filled in the autumn leaves.  We used what I call "paint dotters" (bingo daubers, poster paint, felt tip paints, etc).  M loved these.  They were super easy for him to hold and use...

The downside was that they weren't very easy to clean off of his hands.  We needed SOS but it did come off.  Finished product...