4 seasons – Page 3 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Saying Thank You with A Handmade Card

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There are a million different ways to make cards. But I wanted to do something unique with Becca. I had a package of silk leaves from Hobby Lobby, and I was wondering what to do with them. And then it hit me – leaf cards!

thank-you-cards

As you can see, they turned out beautiful. Here’s what we did, and the thoughts behind them.

Peel the plastic stem backing off of silk leaves (or collect fresh fall leaves if you have them!)
Gather card stock paper that is thick. Fold each sheet in half. (However many you decide to make is up to you.)
Mix a little bit of water in a bowl with a lot of glue – just runny enough to be able to paint with the glue. Completely cover a sheet of thick card stock with the watery glue, leaves, and more watery glue on top.
Lay them open flat to dry – on a plastic tablecloth or place mat. NOTE – they will be wet enough that if you have used colored card stock, the wetness of the glue will leave color on whatever you let them dry on… I had to Ajax my white countertop to remove the orange. Not even Magic Eraser would get it off. Thankfully Ajax w bleach did the trick. (So learn from my mistake!) They will take quite a while to dry if you’ve used enough glue to truly hold the leaves on.
Once they are dry, fold them back closed, and place a heavy pan on top of the stack of cards for a day or so to re-crease them.
Have your child dictate (or write) thank you notes to community helpers who make a difference, send to grandparents, or to other special people that your child wants to say thank you to. (We are sending notes to our pastor, our local sheriff’s office, the guy at our post office who always helps us, and for the volunteers at our local fire department.) If you’re going to mail, you’ll need to make sure that your paper starts out small enough to fit the leaves and everything inside an envelope. Since we’re hand-delivering ours, we didn’t worry about the size, and I just used full 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper folded in half.

Looking for more Thankfulness and Thanksgiving ideas to use with your kids? Check back here on Monday, and all next week!

The original Thankfulness and Thanksgiving post is here.

Thankfulness and Thanksgiving

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My favorite holiday as a kid growing up wasn’t Christmas. Maybe that makes me an odd kid. But for me, it was always Thanksgiving. The traditions our family had were precious to me, and that ritual was something I came to love, and to long for. To this day, I don’t even have to close my eyes to be transported back to Grandma’s kitchen the morning of Thanksgiving. It was the same every year. Year after year, after year.

It’s those memories that make me want to establish special traditions with our own kids related to Thanksgiving. Not just about Thanksgiving itself, but about thankfulness. Thats why when my friend Ashley wrote this post about creating a super cute little fall prayer journal, I jumped on the idea and decided to make a similar one using Becca’s handwriting journals and turn it into a Thankfulness Journal. (Step by step directions on how I made mine can be found at the bottom of this post.)

I think something kids today really struggle with is entitlement. With very little to no effort on their parts, stuff just shows up. And I started realizing recently that our kids have no idea what they have. They have no idea what half of this city doesn’t have… and that’s where my idea for the Thankfulness Journal was born. Each day of November, Becca will sit down and think about one THING (NOT a person!) she is thankful for. She can draw a picture, and we’ll work together on sounding out the words, and writing what she is thankful for. This is a great activity for your kids to work on handwriting, spelling, and phonics! In the back half of the journal, we will talk about our family traditions (not just from Thanksgiving) we are thankful for and write and illustrate those, as well. And to keep myself on the right mental path, I’ve downloaded Ashley’s grown up version of a Thankfulness Journal, which you can get free here!

Another activity we’ll do before Thanksgiving to talk about thankfulness is thinking about all the foods that we eat – not just at Thanksgiving, but also other times. I will give her food magazines to cut pictures from (fine motor practice!) and she can glue them onto poster paper and work on writing labels for the foods she finds. I will also challenge her to pick foods that she doesn’t like, that she knows other family members DO like. Maybe she’ll find a picture of scrambled eggs. Or a picture of bacon. Or a picture of (Heaven forbid!) broccoli. I want to encourage her to think about others, and what our preferences are. This is a great way to think outside the box… and stop the spread of selfishness!! She also needs practice thinking about balanced meals, so she can use the pictures to make posters of balanced meals… and pick a few of the foods she’d like to try someday! (Hey, this Mommy can dream, right??)

Fall is a fabulous time to get outside and remember the beauty that God has blessed us with on this Earth. Maybe it’s something as simple as a seed collecting and sorting activity. Or maybe it’s getting out and doing a photo challenge in nature to find certain small creatures or plants – then print those pictures and place them into a little journal that your child can look back at to remember to thank God for the little things in nature that He has placed in our lives to remind us of his majesty. Even if you don’t think there is much to explore in your front yard, you’d be amazed what you can find when you get down on all fours and pretend you are a beetle!

I would challenge you to have your children write thank you notes to their friends who give them treats for Halloween. Encourage them to list out not just what the friend gave, but WHY they are thankful that child is their friend. “I love it that you make me laugh.” “I like how you help me when I can’t tie my shoe.” “Thank you for always smiling at me and helping me be happy when I’m sad.” Even if your kids are used to writing thank you notes, I bet they are probably used to saying “thanks for the _xyz toy_.” And that’s it. Mix it up this November. Get them thinking about WHY they are thankful for that friendship they have. Let them use fun stickers and special pens or markers to make those friends feel really special, and to add some fun to what can seem very serious for your kids.

Now is the perfect time to plan what activities you’re going to do this November – to not let Thanksgiving get lost in the shuffle between Halloween and Christmas. It’s a great time to think about what new family traditions you want to start, and to really center your own mind on thankfulness. We often focus so much on the costumes we’ll wear and the gifts that we’ll buy, or even on the turkey we’ll cook… that the actual purpose of giving thanks is lost. Hopefully these ideas will help everyone in your family remember to be thankful for the objects, foods, nature, and people around them, because Thanksgiving is so much more than just a day we eat a lot of food and hang out with family to watch a parade and some football. This year, focus on the things and the people they are thankful for, and WHY they are thankful for them. Let’s raise a generation that isn’t the ME generation, but the YOU generation… the THANK YOU generation.
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Make your own Thankfulness Journal!

Check out how Ashley made hers here.

I don’t have any Modge Podge, and wanted to cover the book entirely… so I took 4 sheets of scrapbook paper and here’s what I came up with! You can do the same in just about 5 minutes!

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paper journal

I also cut pieces to cover the insides so that the print on the front cover was not distracting. You wouldn’t have to do that – in which case, you would only need 2 sheets of 12×12 paper. front-cover-of-journal

There are more posts in this series! Check them out here:

Saying Thank You with a Handmade Card

Thankfulness and Thanksgiving – For Your Toddler

Writing About Thankfulness

Pumpkin Dough

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I recently had a friend share a pin with me… because she knows I’m ALL about homemade play dough. We seriously are play dough obsessed around here! When I saw this recipe, I immediately knew it would be a hit with my kids, and it was similar enough to my favorite recipe that I already had most of the supplies on hand in my pantry. Becca loves colored doughs, and Gray would love the scent (y’all, it really does smell like fall!)! I followed her recipe exactly except that I doubled it, and I only made it orange, so I mixed the color in while it was in the skillet. Rather than list the recipe here on this post, I’d love to give credit back to the original mama who took the time to post it, so please go check out her post HERE.

In her post, she also mentioned collecting items from nature to use with the play dough. We already had some seeds from our Seed Collecting and Sorting activity, and then I gave the kids a bunch of silk leaves that I got at the craft store. They also used some fall shaped cookie cutters (this super cute set is similar… aff link… thank you!) that I’ve had for a while. They both had a blast making trees, bushes, and a variety of other pretend creations with their play dough and leaves! (Gray wasn’t allowed to use the seeds since I was afraid he would eat them, and I was trying to get the dishes done while they played.)

I love how simple this activity is, but how entertained it kept them! Typically their play dough play is simply with dough and cutters, or possibly different toy animals or cars to make footprints/tracks. Adding the leaves and seeds aspect was new and exciting for the kids and they loved it! I think I want to do something similar in December perhaps with buttons they could use to decorate play dough Christmas trees…. hmmm… my wheels are turning! 😉

What do your kids like to do with their play dough? Do you have a favorite recipe?

Seed Study: Collecting and Sorting

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This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support of this blog!
It also contains links to previous posts to give you even more ideas…
happy reading!

It’s that time!! Fall is upon us, and here in South Texas we’ve finally had a couple days with highs below 80F! It’s actually jacket weather in the early mornings, and it’s going to be time very soon for this gardener to get back outside and clean up my flower beds that turned to weeds in the heat of the summer. Becca has been feeling the change in the air, too… and has been begging to get outside and explore again, which is awesome!

A few weeks back (in the heat of the summer when we spent a LOT of time in the cool of The DoSeum), I came across this book in their library and fell in love. (A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Aston) I ordered it for “such a time as this” and the other day we pulled it out to read before going on a seed hunt! Becca was so excited to see our Texas Mountain Laurel seeds on the front cover- since our property is simply covered in Mountain Laurels! I love that the author incorporates LOTS of different plant seeds, talks about how various seeds are transferred and planted naturally, and also shows timelines of how long various seeds take to sprout and produce fruit! The illustrations by Sylvia Long are gorgeous, and it’s definitely a page turner that Becca loved – she begged to read it again when we got back inside, and also used it as a reference guide on our walk when she had questions. (And I can’t wait to get more of Dianna’s books – she has several that I’ve added to our wishlist!)

So what did we do exactly? First, we read the book. Then, we grabbed a bucket and headed outside with Daisy. We looked everywhere for seeds. At first, she was just seeing Mountain Laurels and acorns on the ground. But then her eye started getting more keen and she started looking AROUND instead of just down. And then she started looking UP! She was amazed at all of the seeds everywhere! We collected seeds along our way through our nature trail (we live on an acre and a half of very wooded land), and then before we came inside, I showed her that Daisy had been collecting seeds for us, too! What a fabulous way to see how animals transfer seeds! She was in awe. (If you don’t have this availability on your property, take a trip to your local wooded park or along the bank of the closest stream, etc.)

So, we brought our seeds inside, and then sorted them by the seeds that were obviously just seeds, and by what looked to be seeds inside seed pods. We talked about how the pods don’t drop their seed until just the right time, and she explored opening a couple of the pods and discovered that they didn’t all have seeds! One had a spider web, and it appeared the spider had probably eaten the seeds early on. Another had shriveled, tiny seeds. And yet another had a whole, healthy seed. It was a great way to talk about how appearances on the outside aren’t everything – all of the seed pods looked the same on the outside. She was ready to move on to a different activity, so I didn’t dwell on the character lesson, but the seed did get planted, so to speak. 😉

There was also a door left open to do more research about seeds – she wasn’t sure if the flowers that had seeds in their centers were considered seed pods or not, and she wasn’t sure about a couple of the weeds that we collected – and wants to know how their seeds get transferred. So, there is plenty of room for more discussion and research, which we will do at the library next time.

There is also room to go back and review the sunflower life cycle unit that we did last fall – so glad I laminated everything! 🙂 (not an affiliate link, just giving credit where credit is due – it’s a great unit she has set up!)

What are you doing to get your kids outside as the weather begins to turn cooler? Here are some other fall ideas you might enjoy!

Fall Tree Activities

Leaves
Leaf collection in your yard or a local park
Sorting by color/size/shape
Pressing/Leaf art
Books:
Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert My post about Leaf Man
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Apples
Apple picking at a local orchard (or even the grocery store if you don’t have an orchard close by)
Sorting by color and/or size (order largest to smallest)
Counting (put in groups to add, subtract, or even multiply or divide)
Making applesauce
Also check out my apple theme box here
And my apple activity center here
Books:
Apple Picking Day by Candice Ransom
Apples by Gail Gibbons

Pumpkins
Pumpkin selection at a pumpkin patch
Cut one open, sort and count seeds after estimating how many are inside
Making a jack-o-lantern, talk about what facial expressions say about our emotions
Books:
The Legend of Spookley The Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano
The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons

Never can get enough books? Me neither! Check out more of our favorite Fall Reads here!

Homemade Gift Idea

So you’re looking for something quick and easy to throw together this week as a gift from the kids to mom… or for grandmom. Or maybe your next door neighbor went above and beyond and now you feel obligated to return the gifting…

This is super easy, and you may have the supplies in your house already! To give all the credit where credit is due, I’m linking HERE over to the original post where I got the recipe – you can get the recipe from her. 🙂

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If you like my jars, I found them at my local Hobby Lobby for $1.99 each.
One note I will make from the original poster – her recipe was not enough to fill one of my jars – we made a double recipe to begin with, and it filled a jar and a half. So go into this with an open mind about how much coconut oil you’re going to need. We got blessed/lucky/whatever and had the exact amount of coconut oil to make the four jars we needed for gifts, but when you’re shopping/prepping supplies, just make sure you have plenty of coconut oil.

Another tip for the coconut oil – if it’s too cold it’ll be hard to scoop from the jar, so you can zap it in the microwave for 15-20 seconds to loosen it up a tad.

And to make it easier to put into the jars without making a mess, I used my medium size cookie scoop (from Pampered Chef), which fit easily inside the mouth of the jar so I could drop the scrub directly into the bottom of the jar without getting it everywhere.

Becca loved stirring, and doing the math to help me double the recipe. She helped me count the drops of essential oils to add in, and got more than a tad frustrated with me when we got an extra drop of lavender in at one point. 😉 She sat with me as I got on the computer and designed the labels, and she helped type the words “Mommy” and “Becca”.

All in all, this gets recorded in the books as a super easy, wonderful gift idea that we’ll be repeating in the future! I’m looking forward to trying some other oils as well, to make different scents.

Side note, as I’m always trying to raise awareness for hidden disabilities – Becca has anosmia (the lack of sense of smell), so I told her this smells really good – what did she think it would smell like? She decided that if it smelled good, it must smell like peanut butter. Because peanut butter is her favorite creamy thing, and this is creamy. The glow on her face as she told me what she imagined it smelled like transported me to a different world. She’ll never know what lavender and peppermint smell like. But in her mind, she has happy things she can equate to various things, and the beauty of her disability is that everything smells pleasant in her mind. She’ll never dread the smell of a skunk, or wrinkle her nose as she carries out the trash. Blissful ignorance. It’s hard for me as her mom to see the positives in this disability, but seeing her smile today as she said it smelled like peanut butter… made me smile, too. Because I know she’s happy with her imagination. Never take for granted the abilities you have – someone, somewhere in the world, can’t do what you can do.