Apples and Pumpkins and Fall, Oh My!

My Little Guy Turned
One in August!!

Our calendar was stuffed full at the end of the summer and into this fall with the Olympics, Spanish Camp, the beginning of school, Little Guy's First Birthday, the commencement of cousin days (more posts to come about that!), and a wedding in the family!  But nothing can keep us from reading, checking out way too many books at the library, and racking up late fees!  Check out our last post for a recap in photos of July and August, and see below for what followed in September and October.


Flower Girls and Bridesmaids

Little Guy and Me at the
Dress Rehersal of My Brother's
October Wedding

The Beautiful Bride, Groomsemen & My Bro...
Look at that lovely fall backdrop!

Big Stuff Having Fun at Rehersal

And now for a look at what fun we had with reading in September and October...

September

In September we did an apple unit for Cousin Days.

Definitely my favorite book about apples; probably
one of my favorite books of all time.

Storytime on Cousin Day, reading Apples to Oregon.  For
some fun ideas with this book go here.

We read, and re-read, The Apple Doll a lot through this unit.
One of the fun parts was seeing the apple tree through all the
different seasons of the year.

We decided to make apple trees in the
shape of our arm and hand--one for each season.

The arm is the trunk, and the fingers are
the branches!

Since Mom did the cutting, Big Stuff worked on ripping green
paper for leaves.  This is a great way to work on building those
fine motor skills in the fingers.

At first Big Stuff just wanted to pull the paper with fists, so
I ripped little "starter" rips for him to get the hang of ripping.

 

We labeled an arm and hand for each season.  We decided to start
with fall, the season we are in!

Then we glued on paper for leaves . . .

. . . and decorated each with craft supplies we had around the house.
Pink tissue paper flowers and bee stickers for Spring; hole-punched
red paper dots for small apples beginning to grow in the Summer; big
apples and leaves falling from the tree in Autumn; and flour and
glitter for snow in the Winter.  We got the idea for making trees
from hands here.

 

October

Our favorite book for October was probably
What Small Rabbit Heard.  This is a cute
story about Small Rabbit on a
walk with Big Rabbit, and try as Big Rabbit
might, her instructions to keep up and stay on the
path get caught in the wind, and Small Rabbit
entertains readers following the jumbled up
directions he thinks he hears.

On one of our Cousin Days we took a windy
walk around my parents' land (where the
wedding was), and had a picnic.  You can see
the tulle blowing in the background.

My Little Guy is getting so big!

Another book we enjoyed in October was Pumpkins by Ken
Robbins.  Great photographs depicting the life cycle of a
pumpkin and its many fun uses.

Making the most of the good fall weather,
we did some "painting" outside with
watercolor pencils.  Love these because
it is like watercolor painting, but you only
use water, so it is less mess.  Go here for
a great song about orange pumpkins
growing on a vine!

"P" is for pumpkin and painting!

I drew a big "P" for Big Stuff to trace with his paintbrush.

He always tries to put the pencil behind
his ear like he sees his grandpas doing.



We hope your family had as wonderful of an October as we did!