Calabazas-Color Mixing

D loves to mix colors and I was inspired by a project that I saw here on Tired, Need Sleep. I pulled some containers of different sizes (2 liter of pop, gallon of milk, and piña colada mix :) out of the recycle bin. I put in a little red paint and a little yellow paint and gave them to the boys to shake. The boys shook the bottles until the paint turned orange and covered the entire bottle. We cut out eyes, nose, and mouth and glued them to the bottles to make the Jack-o-lantern faces. We had so much fun that we are planning to mix more colors to make bottle monsters next.

Calabazas- Pumpkins

I have to admit that I have been waiting for October. Not only is it my birthday month :) but I also LOVE Halloween, pumpkin patches, fall festivals, and everything else that comes along with it. This week the boys and I are doing PUMPKIN activities. We kicked it off today with a trip to our local Botanical Garden for their pumpkin fest. I am not sure who had more fun the kids or me.

Otoño- Fall Crafts

Here are a few of the crafts that we did to go along with our "otoño" theme.

D thought the most interesting part of "otoño" was the fact that the leaves change color and fall from the tree. We recreated this with a tree that I made from butcher paper. I wrote numbers on leaves made from different fall colors. I would call out a number and he had to find it and throw it on the ground (make it fall). Can you guess what his favorite part was?

The second game we played with the tree was to practice lower case letters by identifying the letters in the words verano (summer) and otoño (fall). I made the letters for summer green and the letters for fall in fall colors. I would love some more ideas for the use of this tree since it is still up and my little guy hasn't destroyed it yet. :)

We have been taking lots of walks around the neighborhood lately. This time we gathered a few of the leaves that have changed colors. They were hard to find since fall comes late to Texas. We flatten them and glued them to a piece of cardboard to make a wreath. I think that we will do this again in a month or so when more leaves have changed colors.

Libros (Books)-Otoño and more

I checked out a few books about fall from the library. D, to be honest, was not very interested. I pick five or six books every night and have him choose which four he wants to read. I put the new library books in the mix hoping that he will pick them. The last couple of weeks he has become very opinionated about his book selection (don't ya hate it when they have their own opinions :) and refuses to listen to a book that he hasn't chosen. I have "tricked" him into listening to a couple of them by reading them loudly to his little brother and usually curiosity will get the best of him and he will gradually come over to see what is going on. Anyway, I have included the two fall books and the other non-fall books that we have read this week.

El primer otoño de Clifford was, like all Clifford books in our house, a big hit. My kids can not get enough of that big red dog. This book is all in Spanish.

el otoño by Josep Parramon

This is a simple book about what happens in the Fall. This book is entirely in Spanish published in Spain. There was no picture on Amazon.

This book, Counting Ovejas by Sarah Weeks was the absolute favorite of the week. A little boy who can't sleep counts sheep of different colors. This is a simple bilingual book with a pronunciation guide for non-Spanish speaking parents. Good book for learning or reviewing color words.

Another popular book with my kiddos. Siesta by Ginger Fogelsong Guy is a bilingual book about two children gathering items for a campout in their backyard. Another good book for reviewing color words.

This book has made several repeat performances this week. Borreguita y el coyote is about a

clever little lamb that outwits a coyote that plans to eat him. This book is written in Spanish but an

English version also exist.

Otoño- Fall

This week were are learning about Otoño (Fall). First we went to the libary and checked out several books which I will post later and today we did our first project.

First we took a walk around the neighborhood and collected hojas (leaves).

We stopped to look at a mariposa (butterfly). D was not in a good mood this morning. He has been kind of moody lately. He usually loves taking walks.

His mood improved greatly and he did enjoy the leaf rubbing project that followed. I didn't take a picture of it, but we first taped all of the leaves (upside down) on the table. Then we covered the table with white butcher paper. If you do not have paperless crayons on hand, removing the paper would be the next step. Luckily D has had this weird obsession with peeling paper since he was little so we were ready to go. Lay the crayons flat and rub until the impression of the leaf comes through.

M decided to help also. :)
I love how it turned out. We are going to use it as a table cloth for the week.....or at least until someone spills something on it. :)