Pumpkins

Monday - Playgroup.  We had a trip to one of our favorite pumpkin farms scheduled today.  Unfortunately, we spent almost all this week sick with a nasty bug, so we missed out.  

Tuesday - baking day.  My, my, pumpkin pie! 

 

I think Ana may like baking day best.  She doesn't even care if she gets to eat it; she really enjoys the process of cooking/baking.  Anything and everything. 

"More cream, mama".  Then, of course, she wouldn't eat it and had to take it off. 

 

Pumpkin pie meets with Meema's approval for sure! 

 

 

Wednesday - Painting day.  I saw a lot of these glue resist pumpkin paintings on pinterest.  I dd the glue the night before.  

This was another painting project where she painted everything but the paper. 

 

I made one too.  Can you guess which one is mine?

 

 

Leaves

Monday - Playgroup.  Nothing this week.  

Tuesday - Baking day.  Went out into the herb garden to cut fresh herbs for herbed popovers today. 

Gluten free popovers are tricky - they don't always pop.  These came out wonderfully though! We used the recipe from 12 Loaves. 

Wednesday - Painting day.  This may be the first painting activity where she painted the paper rather than herself :P  Fall colored leaves. 

 

Thursday - Sensory/Tactile day.  Dried beans and various scoops.  

Friday - Craft day.  Leaf suncatchers.  I spread out contact paper and Ana stuck pieces of kite paper all over.  I covered it with another piece of contact paper and cut out some leaf shapes and hung them on the windows. 

 

Some of the books we are reading this week: 

 

Our board is looking very festive and fall like!

Count On It leaves game.  I love how these have no set instructions; Ana can just make up the game as she goes along. 

Michaelmas

Michaelmas week started off with a celebration with our playgroup/homeschool group. 

We made dragon masks 

and dragon bread, of course.  We also had a treasure hunt and found a dragon's nest outside and played pin the tail on the dragon. 

 

 

Michaelmas festivities the rest of the week focused on food.  Making a Michaelmas pie

 

and dragon chili 

 

Painting day was wet on wet watercolor, in dragon fire colors (red and yellow)

 

Apples

 Best way to start apple week? Apple picking!

 

 Holden decided to pick every apple off this particular tree.  Thankfully Kenna was there to give him a boost to get those last ones at the top! .  

 Meema's first time picking apples!

For painting day, we made apple prints on an apple tree

Lots of gorgeous weather this week meant lots of time to explore outside.  Ana ventured into the backyard to climb the rocks.

Baking day was fried apple rings.  They didn't come out very well, unfortunately.

 

No matter, peeling the apples is more fun anyhow!

Squirrels

"Furrels" are a favorite here.  We feed them on our deck and watch them scamper around daily.  So naturally, squirrel week was a big hit.  We have a squirrel game from Count On It (how I wish she still made games!), and did a lot of play with the big and little squirrel puppets.  And there have been wooden acorns everywhere!

So what's for baking day during squirrel week? Why, nut cookies of course!  And we made some no bake seed and nut energy bars as well. 

 

Having her red snack 

Art on the deck in the sun

 

Feeding the squirrel puppet some acorns 

 

Fall Fun

Monday - Playgroup day, but we were supposed to be away this week and didn't have it.   But we did handprints to turn into leaves at a previous playgroup, which we finished and hung in our windows

 

Tuesday - Baking Day.  The apple roses have been popping up on facebook for a few weeks now, so we tried it out today.  We used Gluten Free on a Shoestring's sopapilla recipe for the crust/dough.  It didn't roll up as well as I had hoped.  Next time, I will try a different dough. 

 

 They tasted yummy though! (and isn't my Rising Sun Earthworks mug awesome?!?)

Wednesday - Painting day.  We worked on prototypes of our Martinmas lanterns this week. 

Thursday - Sensory/tactile.  We took out the rice box early in the day at our usual activity time.  It was Meema's first rice box experience.  She loves to run her fingers through it!

But the big attraction this week was setting up the corn box.  150 pounds of corn from Tractor Supply (which we will later grind for bird and chicken feed for the winter) + one of our sandboxes = 3 very happy children (the 15yo checked it out, ran her fingers through it, said, "Cool", and went back upstairs).   I suspect we will be spending a lot of time in here before the weather gets too cold.

Friday:  Craft day.  Button trees.  Mama got to try out the block crayons for tree drawing.  On my list of things to do this fall is to watch the block crayon tutorials and learn some drawing techniques.  Drawing is definitely NOT my strong point!

And the book box came! This is definitely one of the highlights of every month!

Ana's developed an obsession with (1) putting everything in baggies, and (2) lining everything up.  I almost always have to step over lines of toys like this now.