RaptorMama

I don’t even know who to credit with this idea.  I feel like I’ve seen this on a million Montessori blogs.  The basic idea is that you match up the written number with the number of small physical objects.  Clear as mud?  It’ll be clearer as we go through the tutorial.  🙂

   

It all started when I saw these decorative thingies in the dollar section at Target.  I had to have them!  (I haven’t mentioned yet that I’m having a Halloween themed play group party yet, have I?  Get excited.  🙂  )  And then I realized that they would be perfect for a Montessori counting activity that I had seen everywhere.  First I set out to create the numeral cards.  Pumpkins!

   

I found a free SVG file, but it had swirlies off to the sides.  No worries, I layered it up in SCAL and then cut it out in my cricut.  Awesome!

I cut off the swirlies and voila!  Ten pumpkins!  Now onto stamping.

   

I rarely stamp, but that hasn’t stopped me from procuring a large number of them.  🙂  I stamped the numbers 1-10 on the pumpkins.

Then I put the pumpkin cards along with 55 of the plastic pumpkins in this super cute pail that I also found in the dollar section.  Now onto the actual activity. 🙂

   

First I had Kate lay out the pumpkin cards.

   

Then she counted out the plastic pumpkins to correspond with the number cards.  So she set one plastic pumpkin under the pumpkin card with the number 1.  The pumpkin card with the number 2 on it had two plastic pumpkins set under it.    Continuing all the way to 10 plastic pumpkins.  Having exactly 55 plastic pumpkins in the pail helps her to check her work.  If she runs out of pumpkins or has pumpkins left over, she knows to go back and recount.

I made another similar set so that Kate and Emily could both play at the same time.  For these I started by cutting 10 2 inch squares.

   

Then I stamped a bat and the numbers on the cards.  I counted out 55 of the little plastic ghosts and put them into another pail with the bat cards.

I helped Emily lay out the cards in order.  She was concentrating very hard!

10 was a little more than Emily wanted to deal with so I ended up giving her 5 cards instead.

Kate and Emily loved this!  Kate’s had some experience with activities like this at school and she loved showing Emily how to do it.  They’ve played with these several more times already.  This was totally worth the effort.  🙂

I decided to move some stuff around in the living room and put all of my canvases on the same wall.  The plan is that eventually, there will be 9 canvases.  🙂

I actually made this project last year, but I didn’t get the picture printed until after Halloween so I’m posting it now.  🙂  It is, of course, from Pinterest.

Basically, I took a cheap Ikea picture frame and painted it bright green.  Then I glued down a ton of googly eyes with mod podge.

Incidentally, it takes way longer and uses way more googly eyes than you expect it to.  🙂

Still, I think it turned out cute and it’s not difficult, just time consuming.  🙂 I debated adding some ribbon and letters like in the example, but it didn’t look right with this thinner frame so I left it off.

Michael had the day off from work today so we headed up to Hobby Lobby to look around for a fun project to work on.  We ended up buying a spin art machine.  How fun is that?!?  I totally remember playing with one of these as a kid.

This one came with some paper and tiny containers of paint, sand and glitter.

We had a blast playing with this.  I love crafty activities that the whole family gets into.  🙂

It made a huge mess, but it was worth it.

The sand kind of went everywhere so Kate ended up wearing Michael’s safety goggles.  So cute!

 

Kate loves playing with vinegar and baking soda.  Generally I fill up a baking pan with baking soda and than fill up a muffin tin with different colors of vinegar.  Today I decided to mix it up a little.

First I spread a layer of baking soda in the pan and then I added a bunch of drops of food coloring to it.

I then put another thin layer of baking soda over the top and told Kate that we were going to hunt for treasures!

I gave her a medicine dropper and a cup full of plain vinegar and told her to go to town.

She thought it was really neat to see the different colors show up when the vinegar hit a pocket of food coloring.

She had a fun time, but then asked for “regular” baking soda and vinegar.  I think she prefers to pick her own colors instead of them being a surprise.  Little bit of a control freak, this one.  🙂

 

Kate and Emily were at preschool while I made my pumpkin, but they spied the other pumpkins and demanded to make their own crafts.  🙂

   

So after nap I pulled out some green paint and some foam Halloween stamps.  Kate was horrified that I wouldn’t get her pink paint, but she came around eventually.

   

I spread the paint out in a thin layer so that it would be easier to stamp and let the girls go to town.

   

The upside of this method was that it was remarkable unmessy for a painting activity.

   

The downside is that the stamps totally don’t show up because the pumpkin is curved.

   

The girls loved the novelty of stamping on the pumpkins, but this would obviously work better on paper if you want the actually stamps to show.  We might try that next week.

Still, the girls were thrilled and that’s what matters to me.  🙂

Halloween is seriously my favorite holiday.  So we’re going to get started with the halloween crafts a little early, m’kay?  Just be glad that I waited until September was halfway over to start.  (I’ve been pinning stuff since mid August.)

First up is a ribbon pumpkin from Pinterest.  The original had you hot gluing ribbon on the pumpkins, but I decided to go with mod podge instead.

I found these cute tiny little pumpkins at HEB and I couldn’t resist.  I knew they would be perfect for this project.  I had a tiny bit of bat trim left over from 2 years ago (I think it was Making Memories?) and I bought some black ricrack and Martha Stewart washi tape from Joannes.  Honestly, I was hoping to find more black trims at Joannes, but I had to settle for the washi tape instead.

I painted a strip of mod podge on the pumpkin and then set the first piece of trim in one of the grooves.

Then I painted more mod podge over the top.  Side note: I love mod podge.  It is seriously stinky, but it’s awesome.

After the bats, I added the ricrack.

Then I added the washi tape and painted a coat of mod podge over the entire pumpkin.  The trim worked a lot better than the washi tape, but I’m still pleased with the look of the pumpkin overall.

And yes, I use the Valentine’s Day table cloth as a crafting table cloth.

Kate and Michael bought some “real” clay this weekend.  Michael set up his iPhone to make a time lapse video of us playing with it as a family.  Kate particularly liked adding the water to it so she could make more of a mess.  lol.

Here’s a fun little layout I put together with the October Afternoon 9-5 collection.

It’s a retro secretary themed line (which sounds really odd to be using on a kid layout) and I’m totally in love with it.

I inked and/or traced the edges of the layers to make them pop.

I ran across this on Pinterest and I’ve been itching to try it out with the girls ever since.  Well, today Kate was begging to play with paint so I decided to give it a whirl.  It was a hit!  And super easy.  First I put some paint into some ziplock bags.  (We don’t usually have these on hand, but I bought some to package up our busy bag swap projects.  Score.) Then I taped the bags onto the table with a plain piece of white paper underneath so they could see the colors better.

Since there were three kiddos, we went with a bit of color theory action.

The color mixing was fun (yellow+blue worked the best) but what they really loved was the sensory aspect.

The paint was awesomely squishy.  Side note: try to get as much air out of the bags as possible before taping them down.

After the squishing had lost a bit of it’s appeal, we “drew” in the paint.

This project was awesome.  Painting with no mess!  Perfection.

I’m going to put the bags away and see if they work again tomorrow.  How cool would that be?