A New Home School Year

Voila--a finished board!!
First...we picked leaves for the border! Des was taking a nap while Tim was doing some work on his laptop, so Aislin and I took a small paper bag and a pair of scissors and walked out to the road. We collected 18 colorful leaves :) (And if you're wondering why they look kind of funny, it's because they're taped onto yellow, orange, black, and white construction paper with clear vinyl.)
Second...we painted pumpkins by mixing red and yellow paint. We printed pumpkins on card stock and squeezed paint onto the paper, then placed the paper in a plastic bag. The kids had fun squishing and spreading the paint around until it resembled orange. And the pumpkins look beautiful!
Now, I may have made the scarecrow with the disproportionately-shaped head and cut out the letters, but the kids made the awesome trees along the sides of the board:

After cutting out a rectangular piece of brown construction paper for the tree trunk, we squeezed red paint onto a small paper plate and yellow paint onto another. The kids then pressed one hand into one plate and stamped their hand-print onto blue paper. After going around in a circle, they repeated the process with their other hand and the other plate. And now they have two lovely trees with fall leaves :)

Inspiration taken from The Mailbox Magazine, Preschool Aug./Sept. 2012 edition, page 46. 

We had some paint leftover, so I let the kids do their own art projects until they'd had their fill. While Aislin was busy mixing colors to make her favorite one (why yes, it is pink), Des decided to continue making hand-prints. He certainly enjoyed it!

An update on our card-in-a-jar experiment: 

Today the kids chose FOUR cards. Yes, four, because the first two went by so quickly. The first two were songs ("My Hands" and "Nephi's Courage"), so once we finished singing, the kids just kind of stood around not sure of what to do. I asked, "Do you want to pick two more cards?" The answer was a simultaneous, "Okay!" So the third card was yet another song ("Do As I'm Doing") while the fourth read "Bible Storybook". This meant pulling out their bible board book (with the flaps covering some of the pictures). From it I read the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Umm...the story was barely a paragraph long, SO...I think I'll try to expand on it next time and maybe with some extra pictures and an actual bible by my side :) 

Thus was the end of our first week back in home preschool!