Fall Crafts

Okay, so once again I'm horribly behind on blogging. We're so busy doing the activities that I don't have time to write about them! But, I do want to keep this going for my kids' memory books if possible. So, here goes my attempt at catching up somewhat...

At church one week, Caleb's craft was his family. The helper in the room said he was so impressed that Caleb knew all his family member's names and how to spell them and that his abilities were way beyond the rest of his class. I just smiled - that's Caleb! The picture is really cute! Look at how big Daddy is (the boys look up to him so much!) and how big his arms are for hugs. I love all the names and places of us, too. So, so sweet!

I looked up some new craft ideas on Pinterest. I love this time of year! The first one we did was on Monday, September 9, with Caleb and Ryan while Joshua was in school. We traced our hands onto brown paper and cut them out.

Then we glued them onto another piece of construction paper and used various circles to make leaves. The one thing we used that worked well was water bottle caps, trying them both ways.

Here are the boys in action:

Caleb wrote his name on his when he was done.

I called mine "early fall" but Joshua said Caleb's was WAY better and looked more like a tree. Indeed...

Ryan had fun painting his as well!

When we were getting our craft together, it was driving me crazy trying to find all our supplies. I have some upstairs in my old kiddo desk, some are downstairs in the laundry room cabinets, some are in the dining room cabinet/drawer. I decided to use Ryan's old 31-diaper bag and put the items into the various pockets. It worked great! Now everything (except the paint) is in the same spot. Brushes, glue, pipe cleaners, construction paper, tissue paper, beads and more are all together!

Caleb added his craft pen, one of his birthday gifts from Cousin Jess and Don and their kids Ben and Jordyn.

I love organization! (But not quite as much as I love my kids...)

After our fun time at the Apple Festival, the kids asked if we could make apple heroes again. Our neighbor down the street has a beautiful apple tree. I love to watch it sprout blossoms on the spring and see them turn into tiny little apple buds in the summer and then full apples in the fall. It is a beautiful tree (although I'm glad not to have the clean up of it in our yard!). I sent her a message to see if she would mind if we would steal a few apples from her yard for our craft time since she said they aren't really eating apples or good for much. She said yes, so on our next walk, we picked just a few off the ground that weren't too rotten.

We used toothpicks and marshmallows and some other little fuzzy balls I had. Caleb ate as many marshmallows as he put on (which was a lot!). He even has some in his cheeks in the picture above.  And while Joshua wasn't home from school for our walk where we picked up the apples, we waited for him to make the apple creatures since he really wanted to participate.

Joshua called his "Bido" (from the Minion movie) and Caleb called his "Weirdo."

After our apple creatures, we did some apple stamping/painting - we cut them in halves and quarters to see the painting affect. The boys love to paint!

Here they are in action.

Here was the beginning of Caleb's stamping paper.

And one of the finished products:

Another fun craft we did in September was a scavenger hunt, where we tried to find anything on the ground that reminded us of fall. Joshua went along on our walk to find items that we collected in a bag. We pulled nothing off trees but looked for things on the ground.

Then the following day (unfortunately the Bean was in school), we made wreaths using foam plates (just happened to be what we had on hand) and the items we picked off the ground. We found a ton of the little acorns, some leaves that were starting to change color, some of those red cherry-looking things, and some mini pine cones. It was fun!

Ryan loves to be able to participate in craft time, too. Even though his projects aren't quite the same as his brothers, he is getting so big and loves to be a "helper."

Here was another finished product:

While I was out and about, I found cheap foam leaf stickers for a dollar at the dollar store. We did another hand print (this time tracing and coloring it in on a card) and put the stickers on our "tree." On this day, I was watching my nephew John as well and he also put some of the stickers on after I helped him trace his hand. We were in the middle of the project when Jen came to pick him up (she was on a field trip that day with Faith).

 I love Caleb's face below. That is SO him!

 And here's Ryan concentrating on adding the sticker to his card:

More crafts and stories to come!