Finis!

Our leaf art is now complete! And the kids and I LOVE the finished product :)

Aislin's leaf

My boring leaf, which looks much cooler in this bronze frame!

 Our Fall wall

*All frames purchased at the Dollar Tree. $4 (plus tax) for super cute wall decor!  

The above art work, by the way, was made with washable paints in condiment bottles and a spray bottle, contact paper, and leaves snipped from the neighborhood trees! See post Leaf Art.

Leaf Art

I'm in love with this art project.

Desmond's leaf

At first I was worried that I'd have to discreetly throw out the kids' work...because when we were all done, theirs barely looked like anything. Aislin had so much fun squirting and mixing the paint, and spraying paint on her paper, that it was a wet calamity by the time she was done. And Des' leaf had moved around so much on his paper that you could hardly tell there was ever a leaf to begin with! Once they had started to dry, though, it was my art that turned out totally...boring :P

So neat it was hardly interesting, huh?

Aislin's awesome art work :)

The beginning photos:

It may have turned out boring afterwards but I had fun spreading the paint with my fingers heehee ;)

I heart condiment bottles!!! 

The plan is to hit up the dollar store and buy little frames for our fall art. Since mine is dull, I'll have to find a poem or something to cut and glue onto the page. And for the kids' work, I'm thinking of getting little 4x6 or 5x7 frames and separating their leaves. Little frames of children's art work are adorable, and I'll show you what I mean once their up on the wall!

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!