Our Halloween Carnival

We had such a blast this Halloween!  The kids are at that perfect age where they are starting to "get" all the holiday stuff which makes it so much fun.  After enjoying our Trunk or Treat party the night before Halloween, we got to go to a Halloween Carnival with our LensBaby mom's group.  All of the moms in the group are so creative so it turned out extremely cute.

{One of the mom's came up with the cutest marshmallow game where the kids had to try to eat the marshmallow off the line.  And she loved it!!  I don't think she had ever tried marshmallows before this but they were a HUGE hit!}



{Another mom brought Halloween bowling which Little Man seemed to love.  He would set them up all by himself to knock them down again and again.  This will definitely be something we do again soon.}

 

 

{And of course there was a Fall theme set up to take pictures with.  With as active as they normally are, I was surprised they "posed" for me.  He sat next to it like he was a seasoned model.  Hehe...and I bribed her with a cookie.}



{There was also a cute bean bag toss game.  The kids didn't quite use the bean bags as planned but they sure did enjoy playing with the Halloween wrapped toilet paper rolls!}



{We also had a pumpkin patch sensory bin and a "drop the spider in the pumpkin" game for the kids.  All the moms did such a great job!  Especially since it can be so hard finding games for such a young age group.}





{And of course mine both enjoyed the cookie table.  :-)  Oh and one of the mom's made the Halloween bunting for us - so cute and creative!!}



{And I have to add one more picture of her Halloween costume.  I am not sure that I got any other pictures that had her complete costume down to her ruby red slippers while she was looking at me.  :-)  }


We had such a great time!  I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!!!

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Linking up to Tot School, You Capture, and Wordless Wednesday. 

A New Toy

Look what Little Man found today.  Grandma and Grandpa brought this down to us for when he is a bit older, but he found it in the garage and decided it was time to play with it. 

Luckily though he thinks you're supposed to ride it like this (which means I can save the panic attacks for later).   :-)

He had a blast playing with his scooter until sister woke up.  Then we all went and played in the backyard for a while.  Here are a few more fun pictures I took while we played.



{Also my submission for the Paper Mama "Face" Challenge}

 

Pumpkin Fun



{P is for Pumpkin}

This week's "Tot Time" was all about pumpkins.  We had so much fun!  We started with our "P is for Pumpkin" pictures which quickly turned into pumpkin rolling.  The kids discovered if they put their pumpkin down on the top of the hill it would roll all the way down.  It became a very fun game.  My friend and I really enjoyed watching them laugh and giggle as they chased their pumpkins.  :-)



{Rolling Pumpkins - Not planned but a HUGE hit.}

 Then we came inside to read and sing songs.  The plan was to read "5 Little Pumpkins" and sing the Pumpkin songs that I found here.  But today this didn't work very well for us (although we enjoyed the songs during bath time later).  So we quickly moved on to our pumpkin patch.



{Our Pumpkin Patch}




{Cups to transfer our "grass" from the pumpkin patch.}

The kids really seemed to enjoy the pumpkin patch.  They picked the pumpkins, played with the grass (packing peanuts) and just had an overall good time.  We decided to let them just play and explore with this for quite a while.  Here are some of candid shots from our pumpkin patch play.

After playing in our pumpkin patch for a while, we tried a new game.  We took our pumpkins inside and put them on a parachute and tried going to the left and right, in and out with it.  This wasn't too successful for us today either.  So we had lunch and moved on to our craft.  I had prepared the craft I found here for us to work on. 



{Our Stain Glass Pumpkins}

 We have talked about, played with and sung about pumpkins ever since we had our tot time.  I love this time of year.  Happy Halloween everyone!!!  :-)

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Linking up to Tot School and Wordless Wednesday. 

Painting Fun

{Our little artists at work...}

{Love their techniques...}



{I'm seeing so much potential here.  :-) }

This week we spent our tot time having some painting fun.  I have to admit I've never been brave enough to try this at my house with the kids.  We've done a few hand prints and such but I've never turned them loose with a paint brush before.  My friend had this set up so well at her house though.  I left without a single drop of paint on me.  :-)

{The Setup}

My friend had set up a muffin tin of 6 paint colors to choose from for us.  The kids each got a q-tip to paint with (I never would have thought of that).  And then she taped some butcher paper to her fence for them to create on.  They really enjoyed it!  You can tell from the pictures they took it quite seriously.  :-)



{The Clean Up}

Another awesome idea - my friend put soap and water in the kids water table to let them clean up with before heading back inside.  The kids loved the bubbles and had almost as much fun cleaning up as they did painting.  They even starting cleaning up all of the paint supplies for us - an added bonus.  :-)

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Linking up to Tot Time and Wordless Wednesday. 

F is for Fire Truck

{F is for Fire Truck}

We had such a great time at tot time with the kids this week.  This week's theme was safety.  We started with our "F is for Fire Truck" photo shoot. We took a nice walk to a fire hydrant down the road from us to take our pictures.  I had made each kid their own cardboard fire truck to play with (which I have to admit I had so much fun doing).  :-)   



{F is for Flowers?}

 

{Stop, Drop, and Roll}

 {Our walk}

The kids loved our walk.  We could tell they loved the freedom to run and play as we went.  They were having such a good time playing outside that they were only mildly interested in the fire trucks but it was well worth the trip.  (Honestly I didn't get any good pictures of my little girl with the fire trucks so we tried again later with Daddy.  Hehe...and the only way I could get her near the truck this time was by putting it beside some flowers for her to pick.)    :-)



{Stop, Drop and Roll Games}

 After our walk and photo shoot, we read our book and talked about how to "Stop, Drop and Roll".  The kids loved this!  And it was so cute to watch them all stop, drop, and roll on the floor.  

Once we were done with this, we played with our red "Stop" signs (like in the first puppy picture) and matching green "Go" signs.  We did this rhyme while holding up our "stop" and "go" signs:
        '
              "Where is Red Light?  Where is Red Light?   Here I am.  Here I am.
                When you see me, When you see me.  Stop, Stop, Stop.  Stop, Stop, Stop."

              "Where is Green Light?  Where is Green Light?  Here I am.  Here I am.
                When you see me, When you see me.  Go, Go, Go.  Go, Go, Go."

Then we played a "Stop and Go" game where we would have the kids "Go, go, go, go.....STOP".  The kids loved this and were so interactive with it all.  It was so much fun!

{How to safely cross the road.}

I had also made a road so that we could learn to stop and look both ways before crossing the street.  This was probably our least successful part of our day.  The kids immediately tore up the road and that was that.  :-)




{Our Fire Trucks}





We have continued playing our "Stop and Go" games, "Stop, Drop and Roll" and playing with our fire trucks ever since.  It was so exciting watching the kids learn something new.  I can't wait to play again next week!

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Linking up to Tot Time, Wordless Wednesday and You Capture's "Back to School" Challenge.