Hey friends,
At the beginning of September, I committed to spending 10-20 minutes on homeschool each day for Lennox. He is two years old now and absolutely loves learning. Although I am an educator, I have been most intimidated by the thought of completing a craft each day. I thought, “maybe we can just color?” But with just a little searching online, I came across three simple yet fun activities that have added excitement to our daily learning time.
Apple Stamping
Lenny absolutely loves painting. When he was just months old, we started finger painting and he was instantly hooked. This stamping activity from Premeditated Leftovers was so the perfect opportunity for us to use a new medium for painting – apples! The one challenge with this activity was trying to keep Lenny from devouring all of the fruit before starting. But once I promised him some fresh Granny Smith slices when we were done, he was ready to work. Needless to say, you’ll want to do this craft after your little one has eaten. 🙂 One tip I will share is to be sure your slices are very straight. If they are not, you will have blank spots on your paper that need to be filled in. Other than that, just have fun!
To set the tone for what we are doing each day, I’ve been reading a book or two before we begin our crafts. For this activity, we read How to Make An Apple Pie and See the World and Apples.
Fall Wreath Making Station
Wreaths are an easy way to celebrate any season. During our first week of homeschool, we made this adorable fall wreath from Toddler Approved. What I love about this activity is that you can use whatever materials you have on hand. We used tissue paper and yarn that we already had at home, and some stickers and fake leaves from our local craft store.
I did have to help Lenny with this quite a bit because he was honestly more interested in the glue stick than putting anything on the paper plate. But once we began working, he got really into coloring the plate and adding stickers. We will definitely be making wreaths for every holiday from here on out. To set the tone for what we’d be doing, we read the books I See Fall Leaves and In The Middle of Fall.
Name Design Pumpkin
This time of year, pumpkins are everywhere! When I was growing up, my family didn’t celebrate Halloween, so I have no experience with carving pumpkins (#churchkids). But I really wanted Lenny to get a chance to decorate a pumpkin that he could keep in his room. This craft idea comes from my friend and phenomenal mama blogger Life As Taylor. Taylor comes up with great ideas all the time, and when she shared this one last year, I knew I’d have to give it a try this year.
I found this white plastic pumpkin on sale at my local craft store. Before letting Lenny go to town, I spent a few minutes adding letters made of washi tape and stickers in various shapes to the pumpkin. Then Lenny spent about seven to eight minutes fully engaged in painting. When he was done, we placed the pumpkin on our front step to dry. I may outline the letters with paint just to make his name stand out more, but overall I love the way everything turned out. Now, Lenny has some personalized fall décor for his bedroom. We read the books Pumpkins and Wonderfall to go along with this activity.
I hope that these activities are as exciting to you as they were for us. Our children are only small once so definitely take a few minutes when you can to make some memories that you’ll be able to look back on. If you’d like more fall book recommendations, I have several in this post. Let me know how you plan to celebrate the season with your little ones down below in the comments. Happy crafting and happy fall! 🍂
Thanks for reading,
Brittany
