Pumpkins – Day 3

I found this cute fall basket shape for my Silhouette a while back that I really wanted to use.  I used my Silhouette to cut out pumpkins, baskets,and numbers.  While the chicks were doing their opening activity, I pulled them over one by one to glue their numbers to their pumpkins.  Then we put our pumpkins and basket on the side to let the glue dry.

While we waited for the glue to dry,  we made pumpkin sugar cookies.  I found a tutorial here for candy pumpkins.  I followed the tutorial to get the pumpkin shapes, but opted to do cookies instead.  The chicks made the dough.  I had them color the dough by kneading in the food coloring.  I dropped the red and yellow food coloring into a ball of dough for each chick and let them knead the dough until they had orange.  They did the same to make green.

Then we rolled pieces of the orange dough into balls, flattened them on the plate, and used a fork to make the vertical lines on the pumpkins.  Making balls took a little practice, but they got it.  We used a chopstick to make a little indentation in the top and bottom to give the pumpkin shape.  Lastly we used added a little green stem.  They came out so cute.

After a little snack and a break, we went back to our numbered pumpkins.  I had the chicks put their pumpkins in numerical order.  Then I had them close their eyes, I took a way a few and had them fill in the blanks.  Way to easy for them.  Uniqua was looking at me like “Really, Aunty?”  I promise, Hal got that 5 in the right place.

Lastly, we worked on our scissors skills and made paper pumpkins.  I drew lines on orange paper.  The chicks cut along the lines to make strips of paper.  We stacked the strips and poked a hole in the top and the bottom. Then we strung a green chenille stem through the holes and fanned out the strips to form a ball.  Voila!

I almost forgot.  At some point I read a couple of books that Aunty Emmie sent up for us.  They were both very cute, but I canʻt remember the name of the first one.  The second one was Tomie dePaola book, called Strega Nonaʻs Harvest.  I love Strega Nona.

Grandad and Grandma- Day 1

I was a little stressed because I couldn’t find any good ideas on pinterest!  We started with our usual signing in in their journals. I added to the page Grandad’s first name so they could use Ch again, and Grandma’s name.  That was easy since one of the chicks is named after her.

For our opening activity I had a box with various objects that represented their jobs and hobbies.  Grandad worked as a painter.

He was also a fisherman.

Grandad was a boy scout leader and a nurse (pooh is holding a blood presser checker thing).  Grandma was a cashier at the PX and it’s not in the picture but we also had a needle and thread because she sews.  I have a crochet needle? but I couldn’t find it.  Grandma crochets too!  Oh and I had blocks to build a house because Grandad built houses for his family.

I asked the chicks to bring something for show and tell.  Hal brought a puka shell necklace with shells that they had picked.

Uniqua’s show and tell was a picture of Grandma’s old piano that they just got. 

Pooh’s show and tell was a picture of her with Grandma at Grandma’s house.

We talked about Grandma being 93 and we counted out 93 bears then we counted out 4 and talked about which was more.

In the past few years Grandma has been making musubis for everyone whenever they come over.  So for lunch I made spam musubis : ).  Grandma makes delicious, crunchy, buttery chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts.  She told me it’s the Nestle Toll House recipe but I’ve made that recipe and my cookies are not like hers!  I wanted to learn by watching her so I asked her to teach us and packed up the chicks and some ingredients and to Grandmother’s house we went!  The chicks mostly wanted to play with toys and watch movies the cookie making was pretty much me and Grandma.  I used a different butter than she does and I didn’t let it come to room temperature.  My cookies were close, but not as good as hers.  I’ll have to keep trying!

I have the good fortune of being Grandma’s size so I have a few fun, vintage hand me downs.  I wanted to put the chicks in her old Chinese blouse and take pictures but we ran out of time.

Welcome Back-Day 3

My Kindergartner’s teacher read her class “the kissing hand” the second day of school.  I thought that was a great idea since it’s about a little raccoon starting school, and we have the book!  None of the chicks could relate, “who wouldn’t want to go to girls club?!”  “Why would I miss my mom?!”  Anyways, I read it and then we made kissing hand cookies.  (Hal came late and my kindergartner had no school.  That’s not Hal in the picture!)

I thought they came out cute and the girls had fun dipping them in the frosting.  We made lots of little hearts so they could do more dipping.

They had the hearts for a snack after lunch and the hands I told them they had to take it home and share it with their moms.

I gave them their supplies toward the end of the day.  I pre labeled a couple things so they had to look for their name.  I wrote their names on pieces of duct tape too so they could put their “labels” on some things themselves.  After each chick had her basket of supplies, I had them draw something in their journals.  I told them to draw something from the day but they didn’t really.  : )

Pumpkins-Day 3

 

 

I was kind of dreading girls club today.  I was up all night with my stuffy 6 month old and I was soooo tired.  The morning started out kind of crazy getting my 4 year old to school and before I broke down I had to stop to say a prayer.  It totally worked! : )  Half the time I’m battling my baby, trying to read to the chicks and hold her and then doing “free play” brakes every time I have to nurse.  Baby fell asleep just before our opening circle and stayed down for a good hour!  So, on with our day.

We started out with a song and prayer and then did the weather song and checked the weather.  I read the book “Pumpkin Head.”   Then we made pumpkin heads.  I cut a few shapes out of black cardstock and put tape on the backs.  I was wanting to use funtack but couldn’t find any.  The tape worked fine though. 

 

 

The pictures pretty much explain it.  On the front cover of the book there is a person whose face is covered by a pumpkin so I tried to get them to hold their pumpkins up to their faces so they look like they have pumpkin heads. Hal got the idea!

Uniqua did pretty good too.

 

I think the other two are too used to having to take nice “cheese” pictures.

 

After that I showed them pumpkin puree and explained that it comes from inside the pumpkin.  I got it from a can but showed it to them in a bowl, I think if they saw it coming from a can that would be too confusing, it comes from a can not from a pumpkin!  Then we made Iced Pumpkin Cookies.  I love allrecipes.  I just looked up pumpkin cookies and this one had over 2000 reviews and almost 5 stars.  I changed the spices a little and used pumpkin pie spice in place of cloves and nutmeg  I don’t think kids like too many spices.  They had fun making cookies and taking turns adding ingredients.  They liked the cookies too!

I had seen (I think on Pinterest) jack o lantern quesadillas online and thought that would be a good pumpkin related lunch.  I was lazy to cut out the face shapes so I just used a food coloring pen and drew on a face.