The Connett Connection

It's fall and the day before Halloween!  Are you looking for some fun last minute ideas for your pumpkin other than just carving it?  Here is what we have done with our pumpkins! I first bought three pumpkins, one for each of my children.  I let them sit outside and paint them any way they desired!  They turned out wonderful!  I use them as decoration on my counter! I also bought a small pumpkin pie pumpkin to do come activities with.  I cut the top from the pumpkin and dug out the insides.  I let my daughter feel the inside and had her pick out the seeds. After washing and drying the seeds, we counted how many we had with a pumpkin seed counting mat .  I first, before even cutting the pumpkin, had her predict how many she thought would be in there.  She guessed 50.  We had 77 seeds total!  Apparently smooth pumpkin have less seeds.  I learned this after picking out this pumpkin.  Some people had pumpkins o...

Week eleven is done!  And I am a little late posting as week 12 has already begun!  We had a busy weekend with fall festivals and family visits!  We continued learning about community helpers.  We made this doctors kit when we learned about doctors.  I had cotton balls, q-tips and band aids at home and we looked through magazines to find examples of other things a doctor would use! One of my daughter's favorite thing from the week was this skeleton puzzle.  I gave her the bones to see if she could figure it out.  The picture on the left shows what she did. The one on the right was where we learned about where each bone actually goes and felt some of those bones under our own skin! Since it was the week before Halloween, we had a lot of fun with pumpkins this week!  We carved a small pumpkin pie pumpkin and dug out the insides.  I washed and cleaned the seeds and we used this counting mat to figure out how many seeds we had!...

My kids love corn.  They have never really seen corn that had just been picked, so I found two ears for us to play with and learn about! I showed them the ears of corn and we talked about what they were and the part of the corn we could see was called the husk. I then gave each child their own ear of corn to take the husk off.  This was a great fine motor activity. My two year old ripped his apart before the 5 year old.  I do not know if you can tell from the picture, but the 2 year old tried to bit into his corn right after removing the husk! They then washed their ears of corn in a bucket.  I then took the corn inside to let it cook and we then began some fun craft activities to go along with the corn theme! My son's ear of corn had a surprise inside!  There were to small ears of corn hidden within the husks.  My daughter wanted to know if she could eat the "baby corn."  I told her, "no," but we would do something fun with ...

Wow!  It has been 10 weeks already?!  Where has the time gone!  I feel so behind (only averaging 3 days a week right now) but at the same time I feel like my kids have learned so much! We made a pumpkin mosaic for one of our craft projects!  My daughter wanted to make a pattern for her pumpkin! We did a fun acorn themed measuring activity this week.  Both my kindergartner and my 2 year old loved this activity! We did what weighs more than the acorns, what weighs less than the acorns and how many acorns does it take to equal a given object.  We continued learning about community helpers with this fun sorting activity that I found at themeasuredmom.com !  We sorted pictures for a baker, police officer, mail man and fire fighters! My two year old is still learning about the letter B!  We did a butterfly craft this week where we used the letter B to make the butterfly.  He had no interest whatsoever, but my kindergartner wa...

Halloween time offers such fun opportunities for unique crafts and activities!  I have highlighted the activities and crafts that my kids have really enjoyed! My daughter loved painting her own paper plate pumpkin!  Super simple craft for even the youngest of kids, just pain or color your paper plate orange and add a stem! I created this Hundreds Chart puzzle for my daughter with a pumpkin patch theme!  She has enjoyed putting it together over and over! We have a Halloween tradition where each kid gets to paint their own pumpkin.  My five year old did the purple one on the left, the 2 year old made the one on the right and I painted the one in the middle for the baby.  They will remain on our bar until Halloween when we place them outside for the trick-or-treaters.  Then they will go back on our counter until they are no longer good. Another pumpkin activity we did was this pumpkin mosaic.  My daughter insisted on making a pattern...

I am so glad we are all feeling better!  While the boys have horrible congestion and cough, neither have fevers! It is so nice to not have to be tending to sick little ones for a change.  I want to get back to our normal. This week we continued our fall theme by doing this fun painting pumpkin craft.  My daughter insisted on doing it on her own.  I think she did well! We also did this hundreds chart puzzle of a pumpkin patch !  I simply printed the answer key for the puzzle and cut it apart in various shapes for my little girl to put together. We made some pumpkin decorations this week to display,  My five year old made the pumpkin on the left, my 2 year old did the one on the right and I made the one in the middle for the baby!  My daughter thought this was the best art project ever and was so excited to pick out her own pumpkin at the store! We are still learning how to spell our last name!  I made this letter cards for her ...