Digital Reflections

50 fun fall activities

 There is so much to enjoy about Fall and so many opportunities to create memories, traditions and just have good time.  Here is our list for this Fall, given the number of days from Oct. 1st to Thanksgiving, this is pretty much an activity a day type of list.  Hope you enjoy the list, and check back every so often for more details on the ideas, and photos of our projects.

1.  Take a Nature Walk

2.  Collect leaves, identify, sort and do leaf rubbings.

3.  Make a Fall Tree Centerpiece (crafty crow link to show details).

4.  Make Corn Prints or Apple Prints 

5.  Use items from your nature walk, to create a Fall sensory board/Nature Table.

6.  Visit an Apple Orchard

7.  Collect variety of apples and use for matching, sorting, addition, subtraction.

8.  Make Applesauce from scratch.

9.  Bake apple pies, or apple cakes and deliver to somone who is under the weather, or in need of some cheering up.

10.  Make homeade apple cider, package up dry ingredients for gifts for the mail man, librarian, teachers.

11.  Make and go fly a kite.

12.  Make a pinecone votive.

13.  Enjoy the Outdoors.

14.  Go to a Fall Festival.

15.  Go to a Pumpkin Patch. 

16.  Host a Pumkin Carving Party.

17.  Paint Pumpkin faces.

18.  Roast Pumpkin Seeds.

19.  Bake pumpkin pies.

20. Create Pet Rock Pumpkins.

21. Make playdough apples and pumpkins.

22. Make and give away these cute little Apple Yarn Favors.

23. Plan a neighborhood EyeSpy with a list of Fall items.

24. Make a Paint Stick Scarecrow.

25. Go to a farmers market.

26.   Visit a petting zoo.

27.  Knit scarves or hats for a Fall/Winter Clothing Drive.

28.  Participate in a Canned food drive.

29.  Enjoy a Fall Picnic.

30.  Make hand and feet print art and tuck away after the Fall season each year.

31.  Host a Halloween party, complete with costume contest, bobbing for apples, and a cake walk.

32.  Host story time at your house, and pull out your favorite Fall books.

33.  Make your own marshmallows for roasting over a campfire.

34.  Make your own TickTac Toe  and use all sorts of manipulatives found on your various fall outings, from acorns to small leaves, stones, or minipumpkins from the craft store.

35.  Rake a neighbors yard.

36.  Make your own paper.

37. Dry fruit for snack time.

38.  Make 4 season posters (use a painted hand and wrist for the tree and let the kids paint the scenery and tree according to the season.)

39.  Create a countdown to Thanksgiving calendar.

40.  Make A Thankgiving Tree, and each day have the kids write one thing they are thankful for and on Thanksgiving day, everyone reads the tree and is reminded of all their blessings.

41.  Make a corn husk doll.

42.  Make a plaque with your fall finds.  Ordinary life magic  (a great blog find)

43. Visit a planetarium, read about the seasons and weather patterns and space.

44.  Take a photowalk around your neighborhood and let the kids take photos of the seasonal changes and then create a collage with their photos.

45.  Create beautiful Fall Mixed Media pieces (i love these ideas and this blog is a family favorite).

46.  Visit the library and check out Fall themed books.

47.  Camp Out in your backyard.

48.  Make cute button/candy corn napkin rings.

49.  Can some jam, veggies, sauces to store up for the winter (introduce your children to hibernation and get some books on animal habitats.)

50.  Do one thing each day that relates to the season, bake bread, take a walk, enjoy the crisp air, read a Fall related book, everyday is an opportunity to create memories, spark creativity and enjoy the treasure that life is.

expect a post today

with some technical difficulties and some very busy scheduling things are finally back where they should be and i have TONS of Fall activities, ideas, and links to come. So stay tuned, will be posting tonight!

Sundays this Summer turn Fridays this Fall

  

With school starting on Monday things have switched gears around here.  Lots of preparing but hopefully some final summer fun with a week of stay-cation activities to enjoy as we get ready for the upcoming school year.

Plan your staycation

Some things on our list are, going bowling, hitting the drive-in movie, end of summer bar-b-que complete with smores and a chance to pull out the telescope again, finish up some puzzles, make one last summer trip to library (although we continue to go year round), we will head out on one more hike and picnic, have a late night movie night with popcorn and ice cream sundaes. 

We have lots of organizing projects going on in preparation for the start of school. Here is a great site with lots of ideas on how to start the year ahead of the game when it comes to being organized and ready to handle the back to school process, and all that comes with that.

Creative Organization: Back to school

One of the things we are doing around here is starting off with a system in place to tackle the onslaught of papers, assignements, and information we get on a weekly basis from school.  I decided to go with the Stockhold collection from The Container Store. I have a dedicated cabinet in the kitchen that will house a set of each of these in various colors (one for each child obviously).

  The stand up magazine holders will house the daily folders and homework assignements.  The flats will house short term homework assignments, and the large flats will house the projects I am keeping to add to their memory chest. (Each of the children have a memory chest and each year we add birthday cards, photos, favorite items, (I add magazines, etc. to preserve current events from their childhood - ie. the Time/USA today re: Michael Jackson) and we add a collection of their school work. It is a great reflection of their childhood and a little time capsule of sorts.

I really love the idea of this lazy susan supply center WRITE START lazy susan. I plan to organize their basic supplies in a way similar to this one, too.  Making sure to start off the year with everything in a place and a place for everything will make the daily homework and the projects they will tackle that much easier. (Meander around Write Start blog - it is FULL of great ideas for your children and the learning process).

In our gameroom we have a wall dedicated to the kids art projects. And I love the idea at Ohdeedoh (wire handing system) using the Dignitet system from Ikea.  But we got our hanging system from  Land of Nod. 

These make for great wall art. And the more I look at the one on the Ohdeeoh Blog, the more I like that Ikea one, it adds depth for the handing items which I like. We love Land of Nod, and these systems are usually seasonal.  So when we switch out our art, we can also switch out the clips, which is a nice addition.

Another way we are preparing for school is planning out their lunches.  We decided last year to be as GREEN as possible with lunches and stopped purchasing ziplocs and other throw away plastics.  So we have gone to LAPTOP lunchboxes, and I love the whole concept.  It is based on the Bento Box style lunches so popular in Japan.  This option allows more freedom with food choices and opens up a lot healthier menu for the kids.  And, they are actually excited about this new lunch concept as it is more inline with how we eat on a regular basis.  Here is a link directly to a photogroup at FLICKR dedicated to laptop lunches (and this is where I get a lot of the ideas on what to include in my kido's lunch.

   

   

Bakerella apple mini pops.  A definate must make for the beginning of school.  We are hoping to have a back to school social for the kids and their friends in the next 2 weeks, and I will be attempting to make these. I dont think there is anything cuter that just says back to school like these pops do.

Another area with food, is in snacks for afterschool. My kids are not terribly picky, but they do like sweet things and I would just rather save those sweet treats, for just that - a treat! A friend posted about a smoothie on FB yesterday and it made me start thinking through how good of an idea that was. So here are a few links with some ideas for you to try with your kidos. Chicago Smoothie, kids-simple-smoothies.

 

 We like to mix up snack time making it fun, giving them almost playful attempts at snacking, they do like veggies with dip, especially hummus, they enjoy fruits and cheese as well.  I think its key to make snack as stress resistent as possible both in the preparation and in the eating.  In my case my kids will be winding down from the long school day and I will be gearing up for the long haul of dinner, study and bed routines. So its definately time to make like simpler and we are all about SIMPLE around here these days.

Speaking of eating.. I hope to make my weekly postings to include dinner ideas - and here are the first of those links.... As a mom of 4 its hectic around here as it is, so meal planning is a very important part of my role, its just got to be done to make dinner time go smoothly, and to tackle some of the stress that comes along with it. Ultimate Recipe Swap (speed cooking) plum pudding (zucchini boats) tasty kitchen (pioneer womans site).

Since summer is over our Sunday's this Summer posts will become Friday's this Fall. Keep posted next week to see what that means.....

technical difficulties

i havent left you, tyeppad has eaten my attempts to post more than this one sentence since sunday. will try again later...

Surf, Sun and the End of Summer.....

One week til the school bell rings again and we just cant let summer go out without a last hoorah! So this week is beach / ocean week along with some final school reviews and with lots of school preparations.  Here are some of the activities we are working on around here.. (pictures will come later as I havent uploaded that card yet) But click the links and get some great ideas for incorporating an ocean/beach theme any time of year.

FISH BOWL CRAFT: 4crazy kings

Cupcake Liner Fish: 4crazy kings  

BEACH COLLAGE: kids nature spot

UNDERWATER SCENES: crafty crow

SHELL MEMORY GAME: the write start

OCEAN IN A BOTTLE: parenting  

 

PAINTING WITH SAND: artistshelphingchildren

OCEAN DIORAMA: enchanted learning  

 

ADDED TO THE BOOKSHELF:

   

 

Summer has come and gone way to fast, and I am again reminded just how fleeting childhood is.  It's my goal and mission and purpose as a mother that we make the most of it, through learning experiences, through fun and laughter, through living each day fully, simply and completely.  I hope this was a summer they remember.  More on our week and a whole lot of back to school links coming soon.

midweek finds on our week off...

I meant to post this earlier in the week, but this is a busy week for us.  Lots going on, planning and a weekend trip away.  Not to let things go too quietly, we are working on a few things around here, although we didnt have a "theme" this week, we are really reviewing our skills, and reading a lot. The kids have all gotten a book for their book reports. The olders know what to do and I am working with the little ones on reading comprehension as we work through books above their own reading level. My new kinder girl is soaking it all up, it is literally a 24-7 request for school activities, wanting to sit with counting objects, asking for matching games, and shape sorting... she is all about patterns, and colors and writing (I love it!).  I had the olders pick a biography and they will finish reading it and complete a 1 page summary this weekend.  The one thing I love about kids in general, is how absorbant they really are, little sponges. 

I wanted to give you a heads up about next week because I suspect the post to be late after I am back in town. But next week is OCEAN week, and it is chalked full of activities... I am really excited to finish our summer off with OCEAN week, including trips to an AQUARIUM, and of course the BEACH!! So come back and check out that posting for lots of crafting and science ideas...

Cant leave you without some midweek finds - just couldnt do that to you, I know you wanta see what I found dont you.......

FOR THE KIDS::

MAKE AN INDOOR OBSTACLE COURSE (journey into unschooling)

CREATIVE COLLAGES: 4 crazy kings great dimension 

SUMMER MATH FUN (teach mama) LOVE THIS - have you checked out this blog yet, go NOW (but then come back and finish checking out this list!!)

SUN PRINTS (that artist woman)

 SOMETHING TO EAT::

CANTELOUPE SALSA (smittenkitchen)

BAKED BRIE WITH FRESH BLUEBERRIES (recipegirl) 2 of my favorite things 

STRAWBERRY LEMONADE ICECREAM (thepressedpastrychef)

ZUCCHINI LATKES WITH YOGURT CURRY SAUCE (pioneerwoman)

SOMETHING TO MAKE::

FINGER PUPPETS (sewmamasew)

OH YES WE ARE STARTING A FALL CATEGORY::

WHITE PUMPKIN CARRIAGE (imperfectly beautiful) one of the cutest ideas EVER  - a MUST do at our Cinderella loving house.

 AND FINALLY SOMETHING BRILLIANT::

RESTERAUNT KITS (crafty crow)

and I cant leave without atleast one image:

this was taken by my friend KAY who was here taking pics during the tea party camp last week. since my son knew i was a tad too busy to grab my camera, he asked if he could "shoot" some pictures, and after a little this is how to and put that strap around your neck conversation, he rather enjoyed being paparrazzi to a house of girls....

 

I LOVE PHOTOBLAST ACTIONS (first of all they are a breeze to install) and I love the one click change that I get.  The above photo was editing using the RUSTIC CHARM preset...

Here you can see some of my favorite ACTIONS:

  

pro b/w.................contrapop...................antique

they all produce great results... if you work in photoshop or photoshop elements you should certainly go take a look.

well, enjoy your week and weekend... and I will be back with loads of OCEAN fun ideas early next week.

Weekly Roundup

Our tea party camp was a great success. Lots of girly activities and the boys were all dressed up to help out too.  That is one of the things that made the camp work in a house of 2 boys and 2 girls, giving them all something to do keeps the peace and makes everyone happy.  And as promised here are a few photos and details about the 2 day camp.  I hope to have more photos to post soon, as I was lucky to have a friend hang out and take lots of pics so I could focus on the girls and activities of the day.

The girls decorated the containers on the first day, and then during the morning of the second day they made these tissue paper flowers.  These were the main centerpieces on our table.

These are the napkins the girls helped make the day before. On the second day each girl got a piece of a papertowl holder and covered it in paper and decorated it with scrapbooking header stickers.  These are a very quick and an easy way to get the kids involved in setting the table. 

My kids have already made another set to go on our everyday table.   They are asking me to help them make more napkins, too.

Here is a sampling of the bunting the kids helped make.  They used rulers to draw the lines and cut out the triangles, then using double sided tape I adhered the two pieces together sandwiching the string in between them.  Over night I decided to cut out some butterflies like the ones I loved at Pottery Barn Kids.  These were easy to do, the key was allowing there to be a 1/2 or more gap in the middle, so they were not exactly folded in half, that way there was an allowance to staple them to the wall and it helped keep them open.  I just cut out scrapbooking paper (cardstock holds up better).

This is just a little different shot of the table. the girls each got a little gift container and a decorated cookie to take home (I managed not to get pics of their cookies, but am hoping my friend did.)

This was the table the morning before the girls began arriving. You get a general feel of what the table looked like.

Here is a close up of the food. The girls cut and filled the strawberries, and dipped the whole straberries into chocolate. We made muffins, and the girls cut the cheese with Pampered Chef pastry cutters (they are small and a perfect size for bite sized treats for kids - I use them all the time).  We also made finger sandwiches, just cheese, and pb&j (with homeade jam...so good!)

We had story time and I read

                                        

We also talked about holding and serving tea, using our napkins, treating our guests kindly, etc.  The girls even balanced books on their heads, and it was quite fun to watch.  At the end of our day together, the girls made necklaces and played hide and seek and ran around being silly.  All the things that make a day with a house full of kids a great day.

Well, back tomorrow with our next weeks plans and lots more summer activities. We have started our back to school countdown with the calendar today.

               

I made this calendar using Andrea victoria's skinny calendar at designerdigitals.com.  You should check it out, and start thinking about calendars for this years Christmas gifts.  Here is what Cassie Jones did with this same calendar here.  I fell in love with the idea and how crips and clean her looks and plan to use Andrea's 2010 skinny calendar to make a few gifts this year.

Midweek Roundup

What a fun week. Today was the first part of our tea party camp and we had a great time crafting.  We sewed, glued, cut, taped, painted, and prepared for our actual tea party tomorrow.  We will spend the first little while in the morning finishing up some decorating details. But so far, we have made our placemats (painted and stamped), sewed our napkins (the kids cut and pinned, and helped sew some), cut and made our bunting, cut, glued and decorated our flower pots and baked the cookies...here are a few pics from today... (but you will have to wait for tomorrows post to see how cute the whole room looks)

this by the way, is my favorite photo from the day - little hands preparing to sew...

 

 

 

Here are some recent finds:

IN THE KITCHEN:

Sweet Chicken Bacon Wraps (paula dean)

Organgina cupcakes (baking bytes) 

Belgian Buns 

Mini Sugar Glazed Scones (king arthur flour) just like those delish starbucks ones, but better and cheaper - we love that!

FOR THE KIDS:

TEACH MAMA needing ideas for activities with your children, toddlers, great educational find -sent it to the top of my google reader list!

Eye Spy Bottle: 4 Crazy Kings (what a fun idea) 

Customized Water Bottles: Siggskins looking for new water bottles for my schooling kido's and this is it. love that i can create something personal for each of them.

And here are a few books we are enjoying from our trip to the library:

 this book is perfect for my animal loving 4 year old, especially since we are a pet free home, it helps him learn how to approach a new animal. and he loves the pictures.

 We love baking and cooking, and whats better than a book about all that in a fun natured and colorful artisic way. We love this book.

What I love about this book aside from the timing (ahem, wrong dryer setting recently - no not me!!) was how all 4 of kids were drawn into it even though it started by my reading it to the youngest. I love books that do that!

Well, come back tomorrow - the dining room is all decked out and a room full of beautiful little girls will be coming for tea. And I will share some pics and more details about everything we did...

Sunday's This Summer - Tea for two or 6 or 8

I dont know where the weekend went, but here are the plans for our week.  This week we are having a tea party camp.  The camps are short, just 2 days instead of 4 which gives us the beginning of the week to finish putting together our penpal gift packs. The kids have been so excited to gather items and make cards, we just have a few days to get them in the mail now.  For the camp, the idea is helping the girls put together everything they need for a tea party.  They will be sewing their napkins, making all the decorations, including hats, placemats, bunting, etc...  And on the second day, they will make the food, sandwiches, dipped fruit, petit fours, and decorate cookies.  The girls will set the table, and serve one another, and we will highlight table etiquette and friendship.  My girls are very excited about this week, but my boys on the other hand, well they arent super excited about this week, but they have had several weeks of science overload to carry them over and in the same thread of etiquette, the boys will serve the tea and help prepare the craft items and learn a little about treating girls with kindess and respect and serving their needs.... its gonna be a great week!

Here are some links with great tea party ideas for you.

Bakerella: petit fours

strawberries filled with creme (joyofbaking.com)

monda loves blog: paper bunting (we will be using some of my left over paper scrapping supplies)

                                     

Great 'pink' party deocration ideas from Martha Stewart. Will will try our hand at the paper dolls.

Old Fashioned Tea Party Ideas (recipes)

The Long Thread: sewing napkins and placemats with kids

shortbread cookies with white chocolate and raspberries (joyofbaking.com)

Added to our bookshelf this week:

                                      

                                              

                                        

 

and just to finish up our space themed week from last week: here are a few pages i added to our scrapbook.

                        

                       

all supplies for the scrapbook pages are from designerdigitals.com.

Space Week continues. . .

Part way through our Space week and the kids are all abuzz about everything Spacecraft, Astronomy, Apollo and NASA related.  We have made moons, watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, flown in our homeade spaceship, and had a lot of fun doing all of our space related crafts.

 

Here the kids are busy making paper-mache moons. We blew up balloons, then began layering strips of glue/water soaked newspaper (you can use the flour/water mixture as well).  Once these dried we painted the newspaper.

After letting that dry, pop the balloons and tie a string to the "moon".  I had planned to coat with a glow in the dark paint, but the kids opted to leave it just like this.

Here the kids planned and made a spacecraft.  The shuttle was designed with all four kids input, especially making the little openings for their heads to pop out, and according to my oldest their had to be a way for him to get out to do a space walk.

We have enjoyed NASA tv a lot this week, the kids were very excited to watch the landing on the moon and the Special that they ran covering the Apollo's 40th Anniversary.

We plan to take these shuttle's outside to spray paint them this week, but they have provided a ton of fun for all the kids this week.  One of the things I love about it the most, is the amount of their imagination that is being used to play Astronauts.  The conversations really allow me a chance to see how much of what they watch, read and learn they are retaining.  Who knew some tape, cardboard boxes and a lot of creatvitiy and the kids can land on the moon, fly to a galaxy leap years away or fight aliens on unknown planets.

Here my oldest (and a friend) were going over documents to build their own Hubble.  I gave them free reign to use the print outs from that web site or to "decorate" their own the way they wanted, and they opted to just decorate their own. But what I loved about this web site is that there is an 8 page pdf with full color printouts foruse to assemble the Hubble.  They came and went from this project for a few hours, and always on their own, which showed me their genuine interest in this activity...

 

Here is one of the finished projects, although I was just looking for it to see if he had made any changes on it and he was back in the dining room looking over the diagrams and writing on his some more.  He really likes the details on projects like this and I think now that his friend is gone and he isnt distracted by all the other things to do with his friend, that he is back to those details, which just makes me smile.

Here are a few more books we got from the Library this week:

    

Here is another website my friend Bailey pointed out to us this week.

AMNH Ology lots of interactive fun and filled with great information on a kids level so my kids have enjoyed exploring this site. (thanks bailey).

Now, since I am a digital scrapbooker, I just had to play around with a photo of my son, thanks to the NASA space your face site (its an interactive site within the NASA main site) you upload a photo and turn into a dancing Astronaut.  And as you can imagine, my kids loved seeing themselves dancing in spacesuits. So I managed to save the image of my youngest since his room is already filled with lots of space items.  Including this fabulous inflatable solar system.  I was playing with his photo and he was so excited to see that he was completing a space walk on the moon (gotta love kids input).. so here is the page, turned printout - now framed in his room... digital scrapbook page.

  

 

This page was created using a kit from designerdigitals, it is Anna Aspnes OuterSpace Page set.

Also I used Pattie Knox's Fasten-Its. 

Just gotta love when something silly and fun like this comes together and makes your kido smile.  I have no doubt he will dream about floating high above the earth tonight.  I am grateful to encourage the kids imagination.  Tomorrow will finish up our space activites and then we will have a field trip on Friday to conclude our space week.   It has certainly been a blast and couldnt have been better timing with the Apollo 11 anniversary / and current mission in space...

Hope you are encouraged to go the extra mile with your kids this summer.