Terri Thompson

Fall Bucket List – Revisited

November 22, 2011 By Terri Thompson

Now that Thanksgiving is almost here, it’s time to look at our Fall Bucket List and see what we did and what we missed.

I know Fall’s not over quite yet, but now that the Holiday season is upon us, we’ll be focusing more on Christmas and winter activities.

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1. Make apple pie playdough – This was the first thing we did and it was amazing.

2. Carve jack-o-lanterns

3. Collect leaves and make leaf rubbings

4. Go on a hike

5. Visit an apple orchard – We were never able to find the time to go this year. But, we did go to a pumpkin patch instead!

6. Make candy corn sugar cookies – Yet we had plenty of other sweets in our house, maybe that’s why we never made the cookies.

7. Watch It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – We did this a few times!

8. Make handprint turkeys

9. Drink apple cider – Again, we didn’t do this because we never went to the apple orchard.

10. Make a thankful tree

11. Make apple prints

12. Go on a scavenger hunt

13. Make spider masks

14. Make a fall garland

15. Make pumpkin bread

16. Go acorn collecting – It took several attempts, but we did finally find a few!

17. Do an owl craft

18. Make crock pot apple sauce – This was yummy and the house smelled heavenly all day!

19. Feed the birds

20. Make homemade Halloween cards

We did all but three items on our list and had lots of fun this Fall! I love having a bucket list each season and plan on making a winter one after the holidays are over.

So, you tell me, what should I put on our Winter Bucket List?

Thankful Trees

November 21, 2011 By Terri Thompson

Our Fall Bucket List would not be complete this year without making Thankful Trees. When thinking about this project, I decided I wanted it to be more about thankfulness than about the artwork.

I drew simple tree shapes on brown construction paper, then cut out a bunch of construction paper leaves.

Then, armed with the leaves and my trusted black Sharpie, I gathered the girls to talk about thankfulness.

We read the book Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland. This is a very sweet book that gives the kids a wonderful and very simply stated introduction to thankfulness.

After reading the book, we talked about what we were thankful for. Lizzie was able to give me quite a good list.

I recorded all the things they were thankful for on the leaves, then we went to the table and started gluing.

We talked a bit more about thankfulness while the girls used their glue sticks.

Lizzie’s list: food, friends, flowers, Mommy, my kitchen (i.e. her play kitchen), sister, Daddy, books, and ice cream (aren’t we all).

AJ’s list as dictated to my by Lizzie: sister, books, Charlie (our dog), milk, Mommy, food, Lucy (our cat), her baby doll, and Daddy.

What are you thankful for?

Hand Print Turkey Cards

November 18, 2011 By Terri Thompson

One the items on our Fall Bucket List that we hadn’t completed yet was “make hand print turkeys.” Since Thanksgiving is coming up soon, it was time to do them.

This craft was much more adult-led than the other projects we’ve been doing, but the girls enjoyed it nonetheless.

The first item of business, was painting the girls’ hands. Make sure you use washable paint! I did each girl one at a time since I had nightmares of colorful hand prints all over my walls.

Once the hands were painted, we pressed them on the paper. We were turning these into cards, so I had already pre-cut and pre-folded the paper.

Once they were dry, we added beaks, eyes, legs, and grass.

The cards are two folded sheets of paper nestled inside each other – four pages total. The turkeys got progressively small with the first being Lizzie’s, the second AJ’s, and the third was Lizzie’s thumbprint for the body and AJ’s fingerprints for the feathers.

They’re going in the mail soon, so that hopefully the recipients get them before Thanksgiving!

What Thanksgiving projects have you been doing lately?

Simple DIY Backyard Scavenger Hunt

November 17, 2011 By Terri Thompson

I’ve always thought scavenger hunts were so much fun. It’s at the top of my list of favorite outdoor activities.

So, we picked a perfect day to go on that backyard scavenger hunt that I had been planning ever since I created our Fall Bucket List.

This was a day for simplicity. I didn’t want to on a hunt for the perfect scavenger hunt printable. I wanted something quick and fun so I grabbed a sheet of paper and created this simple DIY backyard scavenger hunt.

Keep it simple with this fun & easy DIY Backyard Scavenger Hunt Idea. Grab a sheet of paper and get ready to have some fun.

Create your backyard scavenger hunt

I didn’t want this activity to be something that took a big effort, after all, it was supposed to be fun!

Before going out, I took a piece of notebook paper and wrote down specific attributes I wanted the girls to hunt for.

We were going to search for textures, colors, and even sizes.

I took a simple sheet of notebook paper and jotted down all the things were were looking for, leaving room to write down everything we found. I clipped it on a clipboard and were were ready to go.

Let’s go on our scavenger hunt!

We bundled up and went outside.

My oldest took off and started hunting. My youngest opted to play on our slide instead. (She just wasn’t interested in a scavenger hunt this time and that was okay.)

I was the recorder and the photographer. We had a lot of fun hunting and taking pictures of all our findings.

Here’s what we found!

Here are the attributes I included on our scavenger hunt. You can use these ideas or come up with your own things that are unique to your own backyard.

Hard: the wood on our play structure
Soft: our gloves
Green: some of the grass
Brown: our dog Charlie’s fur
Tiny: the rocks in the sand
Big: the climbing rope
Alive: the people
Prickly: the raspberry stems
Smooth: our skin

We had a lot of fun with this backyard scavenger hunt and it’s definitely something I would like to do more often. It was the perfect excuse to get outside and play on a blustery, cold day.

Thanksgiving Craft Roundup

November 16, 2011 By Terri Thompson

I’ve been gathering ideas for Thanksgiving crafts for the last couple of weeks and have found so many good ones.

Since I know I’m not the only one looking for inspiration at this time of year, I thought I’d share some of my favorites.

The Chocolate Muffin Tree shows you how to make beautiful coffee filter turkey cards.

Kitchen Counter Chronicles shares adorable hand print turkey napkin rings.

The thankful tree from JDaniel4’s Mom is a wonderful craft for teaching about gratitude.

Practice a little bit of origami and make these cute turkeys from Let’s Explore.

Little Wonders’ Days made turkeys using rubbings from homemade feather rubbing plates.

My girls would have fun playing with these rockin’ turkeys from Itsy Bitsy Learners.

Classified: Mom shows you how to make these fun 3-D textured turkeys.

Laugh, Paint, Create shares these colorful collage turkeys.

Small Types shows you how to make a simple and very beautiful thankful log. It would make a wonderful keepsake!

Little Family Fun has another great way to show thankfulness with this gratitude turkey.

Do you have any Thanksgiving ideas you want to share?

Terri Thompson

Fall Bucket List – Revisited

Thankful Trees

Hand Print Turkey Cards