Theme - Autumn

E has been amazed by the onset of Autumn. He loves pointing out the beautiful trees as we drive. Therefore, there were a lot of leaves flying around this place.

There were even leaves flying in the bathtub. I cut out the tree, leaves, and pumpkins from foam sheets and let E stick them on the walls of the tub. I got the idea from Filth Wizardy and got the sheets from the Dollar Tree. Cheap fun!

We sorted leaves by color. This is a printable I got from Making Learning Fun. I attached the baskets to a heavy piece of paper and left a gap on the top so E could fill them with leaves.

Here is a cute picture of T in the leaves we used during music time. Any guesses on how little brother ended up covered in leaves? The next picture might clue you in. If you want to know how I used the leaves for music time check out this posting on 1+1+1=1.

I created this sorting activity with nuts. We sorted and named the types of nuts. E told me one day that some were rough so I made an impromptu lesson on smooth vs. rough. We had been doing opposite puzzles so it was perfect. I simply wrote smooth on one side of a sheet and rough on the other and he sorted away.

This is E doing a sensory activity during what we call Table Time. We dug nuts with a rake out of a bin of steel cut oats. We pretended that a squirrel had buried them and had a blast unearthing them over and over.

E made Jack-O-Lanterns with shapes that I printed from Make Learning Fun. We named the shapes as we made them. Simple but engaging for him.

A friend of mine gave us this Weather Bear. We have been talking about the change of seasons quite a bit, so it was fitting to take some time to dress our bear in the appropriate clothes for Autumn.

We had pizza one night and my husband asked me if I wanted to save the plastic things that come on top of the pizza. He knows I collect strange things like that to make projects for E and sure enough they turned into a spider. I interlocked three of them and snapped off one "leg" to make eight and then propped it on a paper towel tube so that we could hold it while painting.

Theme - Apples

A popular theme for preschoolers this time of year is apples. We joined the masses and explored all things apples for a week or two. Below are a few of the activities that E worked on during both Tray Time and Table Time.

E dropped "apples" (pom poms) into the container based on the word cards we flipped over. For example, we did "little apples" and then dumped them out for a new turn where the next cards said "red apples". We continued this until all the classification cards where used.

E worked on patterns using Do-A-Dot paint and a print out we got from Making Learning Fun.

This is a reader we got from Making Learning Fun as well.

As a spin off the reader, I made strips that said "This apple is _____." plugging in color words so that E could pick out apples to place with the correct one.

E made "apples" whole with fraction tiles.

Make it in Minutes - Parking Lot Spaces

This was an activity I made for E in less than 5 minutes and he absolutely loves it. In fact, we have "recycled" it many times and he still sits to play it over and over when I bring it out for Tray Time.

I took a piece of card stock paper and taped down rectangular strips with numbers printed on them. I then took some white labels and attached matching numbers to the underside of some cars we had around the house.

E takes the cars and drives them to the correct parking spot on the sheet. This activity forced him to try and remember the number while he was pushing the car.

Sometimes he will play independently, but I will also play with him so that we can practice saying the numbers. For instance, he sometimes says eleventeen instead of eleven, so if I would pick that car I would say "E, I have to go park in the parking spot marked eleven. Where do you have to park?".

I am planning on remaking this activity with a new concept or new numbers that I would like to work on.

E is currently 28 months old.