The Offbeat Life: Weeks 5 & 6: Pumpkins & Halloween

The past two weeks have shown some major changes with Molly. Especially this week. I'm amazed at how the activities have clicked with her and she doesn't need as much help anymore. With how busy we have been I decided I would just post about these two weeks together. I tried to focus more on pumpkins week 5 and then more Halloween this week. We had a lot of fun! Molly is weirdly obsessed with pumpkins, and after last night she is also in love with Halloween. Needless to say the past two weeks definitely held her interest.

We played a shape matching game. She loves matching games. They have been easier for her than some of the others.

We started a several step project. Last week she painted it and I glued a stem on.

I found a really cool pumpkin observation sheet that we filled out before we opened out pumpkin.

She liked watching me cut the pumpkin open. I was surprised that she hardly messed with the insides.

I wanted her to help roast the seeds. I filled a bowl full of water and she got to wash them, then dry, then "sprinkle" with cinnamon. As you can imagine we didn't eat them really.

I used an online printable to make a pumpkin lifecycle ring book. She was very interested that pumpkins at one point are green. One night we were sitting in the living room and she said to me "pumpkins grow on the ground on the dirt. Need water and sun." Heart burst!

This week we started our lessons in My First Hands-On Bible. I love it! They also have activity ideas. The lesson was on God creating the world and the activity was drawing your favorite creation. This was the first time Molly said what she was drawing. She told me she was drawing a pumpkin patch. She started out with green and orange! Of course then the pumpkin patch took her own creative turn.

We also did some practice cutting with her knew scissors.

We did some coloring and some sticker art.

This is a great counting game! Also where I started to notice her doing the games without as much of my help.

We carved pumpkins and by we I mean Adam and I. Molly had 0 interest as you can see by her face. Natalie got stick her hand in for a few seconds before we had to grab the bowl away. We won't be doing this again until they ask!

I got out the Melissa and Doug sequencing game. We also did the apple and scarecrow.

I cut out a black circle and gave her some tape and scissors to make a mummy. It was a blue mummy since that is all we had close to white! She loved this! I gave her two craft eyes and some glue too.

The sensory bin was quite the hodge podge this week!

While she was doing the sensory bin I decorated the top of this door and it hit me to make a game. So I put the webbing at her level too and gave her some of the spider rings. I would hand her a certain amount and as she put them on we counted. It was a great fine motor and counting activity!

For fun we made the obligatory seasonal hand print art.

For the second part of our plate craft I gave her some of the seeds she had washed off and I saved. After the mummy she said it needed eyes so I gave her some.

We read a lot of this book to help prepare for Halloween night.

I wanted to make an orange art activity, but we didn't have an orange dobber, so yellow had to do. She loved it. We will definitely be doing a color a week now.

This was when I really started to notice a change. We have done sorting games before and they didn't hold her interest and you could tell she didn't get them. I put a spider in each compartment to get her started. Like before I told her that the spiders needed to get home and asked if she could take them off. She was off and I didn't help at all!

I post a game with these cards about every week. They are awesome tools! She likes the game, but usually needs help. Just like the sorting game I usually tell her that the objects have a certain home. For this I hold up the object and tell her where it lives and she has to put it where it goes. Like "This pumpkin lives at the three." I didn't have to do that so much this time, because instead she just counted them out.

This was another game that she didn't have much interest in. With these I hold up one side and tell her whatever it is needs it's other half. This time they needed their half to go trick or treating.

She loved this craft, of course! It's 3/4 shaving cream and 1/4 glue. Once it dried I glued on the eyes and drew the mouth.

Today I hung up her art that week before class. I can't even stress how big it is to hang their work at their level. They get to see it and discuss it later. They feel like you appreciate it. These were not eye level because we ran out of eye level space. I was hoping she would notice and she did. She walked in and first thing she squeals "I made it! I made it!"

I had bout these stickers for Halloween week and almost forgot about them. I wanted to do something more so I made it a little game. She did so good at it! I hung it on the fridge so we could talk about it later.

This was our first time going over patterns. It is definitely new and I helped a lot. Just like the other things she will catch on, but this will probably take longer.

We did some prewriting and color sheets. For the color sheets I saw this wants to be whatever color and then hold up two colors for her to decide which is that color.