Art Time! New Paint Makes Us Happy

We received this in the mail earlier this week:

We’ve been running pretty low on paint and *making do* for a few weeks now. Finally, the paint drought is over. :) M was as excited as I was, and ran for the kitchen and the paintbrushes. He grabbed the tiniest paintbrush we have, and painted an (almost) entire sheet of newsprint… blue.It was at this point that he said his arm was starting to hurt, and I finally had him switch to a bigger brush. :) I had no idea the poor kid had felt so paint-deprived lately.

Then we did some quick crabapple prints – this was for me, because I’ve been seeing all the apple crafts out there in blogland lately and they are making me so anxious to start our fall theme. I was standing firm about not starting until fall is actually here, but then Daddy and Matthew brought home grocery bags full of crabapples from Grandpa’s farm and I knew we just had to do something with them.

Ah, Paint, how we love you!

We got a great deal on all this paint – a total of 96 ounces of paint – for about $15.00 (including shipping) from Discount School Supply. Their sale is still going on, so if you need paint, head over there. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week {#3} – Autumn

I’ve been preparing an Autumn theme of learning activities recently, and so I thought I’d share three of the books we are going to read to get us started!

1. Mouse’s First Fall by Lauren Thompson, Illustrated by Buket Erdogan:

We love all of Lauren Thompson’s books and this one is no exception. I believe there is a “Mouse” book for every season, and I plan to check the others out too at some point. In this book, Mouse discovers all the beautiful colors of leaves, their textures and shapes. He has fun running, skipping and kicking his way through them, piles them up and then… well you can guess what happens with a happy little mouse and a big pile of leaves. :) It’s the same thing that happens with a happy small child and a big pile of leaves. ;) This is just a really delightful book to read and I am so glad we found it.

2. Fall Leaves Fall! by Zoe Hall, Illustrated by Shari Halpern:

This is written in the voice of two children who watch autumn arrive as the leaves begin to change colors. They talk about all the beautiful colors, the shapes and sizes of the leaves, try to catch them, stomp and crunch them, and watch them fly through the air. They collect some leaves (an idea I love) and examine them. They rake them into a pile and jump in. This book has great illustrations of leaves, which are labeled with the type of tree they came from. We will be learning about just this thing and this book will be a great addition to our leaf identification project. This book also has a cute idea for making pictures with the leaves. You have to check this one out – it’s definitely a favorite!

3. It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall, Illustrated by Shari Halpern:

This is essentially a Halloween book – the favorite holiday of the two characters - and it has a great lesson about the life-cycle of pumpkins. The children plant the seeds, water them, watch them grow into vines with flowers, and then green pumpkins which slowly turn to orange and are ready to be picked, carved, and have more seeds inside to plant next year! Halloween is mentioned, but thankfully, nothing scary or spooky is in this book. We try to stay away from that kind of thing because I have no desire to be up at all hours of the night with a little boy whose imagination is working over time… but I digress; the book is great and I plan to use it along with some pumpkin life-cycle cards. And if you have a small child who isn’t sure what Halloween is exactly, this is a good introduction – it talks about costumes and trick-or-treating and is a fun book to read!

Go to the MckLinky at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns to see what other kids are reading!

Have a beautiful day! :)