She's Crafty

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Have you read Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin by Mary Serfozo? It is about a tiger named Peter who is on a quest to find the perfect pumpkin. He doesn't want a lumpy, bumpy pumpkin but a perfect plumply, dumply pumpkin. Why does he need a perfect pumpkin? Well, to make a perfect jack-o-lantern, of course!

This is a really cute story. I love all the rhyming and descriptive words it uses. After we read this story I thought it would be fun to go on our very own pumpkin hunt. So while Luke was at preschool I printed and cut out 32 paper pumpkins. Half were perfect plumply, dumply pumpkins and half were lumpy, bumpy pumpkins. I was lucky enough to get my printable from "The Mailbox Magazine" but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to draw some up yourself.


Then I hid 30 of the pumpkins outside in the backyard all over the place. (I held out 1 kind of each pumpkin & I'll show you why in a minute.) My excitement level felt like we were about to have an Easter Egg Hunt. hahahaha And you should have seen how excited my boys were! I gave them their Halloween candy sack to hold all the pumpkins they found and after a 1...2...3...GO! They were off searching for pumpkins.


I tried to get some decent pictures but it all went down so fast....But trust me, it was crazy fun, even for my First Grader who is currently off track from school.

After finding all the pumpkins we came inside and counted them to make sure we got them all. Also, so Luke could practice his counting. Then we practiced making different patterns with the pumpkins. I made some light orange and some dark orange on purpose so there were more possibilities for patterning. You can see in the picture below the difference in the lumpy, bumpy pumpkins and the plumply, dumply pumpkins. (I know it's a tongue twister, you should totally try saying it 10 times really fast!)


Last we sorted our pumpkins. Prior to the pumpkin hunt I attached one of each kind of pumpkin to the front of an empty shoe box. This is why I only hid 30 of the pumpkins outside. The boys took turns sorting all of their pumpkins into the appropriate bin.


This was such a fun activity! After we were all finished the boys wanted me to go hide the pumpkins outside all over again.  LOL! And we couldn't end our Pumpkin Hunt without getting a treat so we made these super fun rice crispy treat pumpkins that I had pinned on Pinterest.


Now mine weren't as picture perfect as the one's on Pinterest, but trust me, they sure tasted perfect! hahaha! I ended up using one of those plastic containers that holds fruit to form my pumpkins. They weren't round on the bottom but that's ok, the boys didn't notice.  :)


I also warmed my tootsie rolls up at 50% power in the microwave for 8 seconds before putting them on. It made them just the right amount of softness to put on the crispy treats. How do I know only 8 seconds and 50% power? Well, lets just say there were a couple times I ended up with a hot melted mess of tootsie rolls in my bowl. hee hee


We have really enjoyed our Pumpkin Week. I have one more fun pumpkin art project coming your way the first part of next week but first I'm taking a much needed break off the grid for a loooong weekend. Ok, it's not really off the grid, but pretty much. haha!

Hope you have a great weekend and Happy Crafting!!

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I am super excited about the craft we did today to go along with the book Five Little Pumpkins by Iris Van Rynbach. This is a pretty popular Halloween story that is the well-known Five Little Pumpkins rhyming finger play in story version. I felt like it's more of a 3yr old book, but we read it pointing to each word and my boys were able to read along with me after reading through it several times. Regardless of it being a simple book for them, it is a fun rhyme that they enjoyed.


The basis of our craft is found on the first page when the five pumpkins are sitting on the gate. I picked up this book at the library last week knowing I wanted to do a craft with it, but wasn't sure just what to do. Then a couple days ago I saw a pin on Pinterest from kidsfunreviewed.com and I jumped with delight because it was one of those "over the top" crafts that I adore and I knew it was exactly what I was looking for.


I intended on posting a tutorial but once we got involved in the project I realized how INVOLVED it was and decided to just leave you with the link to the one that I used. It took us a couple hours to complete our artwork, but look how cute our pumpkins on a fence turned out.


Close up of his pumpkins. He chose to use markers to decorate his, which I ultimately decided was easier than trying to use crayons to make details on the small pumpkin heads.




I tried to mimic the pumpkins in the actual story. Like I said, it was hard to use the crayons but I think they turned out pretty cute.

For the background we tried out watercolor salt painting. I had actually never heard of it before, and I tried a Google search of how to do it, but not much came up. We basically just used blue and purple watercolor paints to paint the paper and as we went along we sprinkled salt on the paper when it was still very wet. I didn't get quite the starry texture that the tutorial showed so maybe I did it wrong, who knows. If you've used this technique before, I'd love to hear how you did it. Once the artwork was all the way put together I do think the background still had a nice texture and was glad we used the salt.

I also wanted to mention that I drew the pumpkins and the boys cut them out themselves. Luke needed a little help with the hill background so I drew the hill on the paper and then he easily cut it out himself. Both the boys had a go at cutting out their own leaves, and then I gave then some I cut out as well. Also, both boys were able to make the cuts in the rectangle pieces for the grass. There was a lot of cutting practice in this project making it perfect for a preschooler.

One more hint before I go, TACKY GLUE! Using tacky glue for our sticks and pumpkins worked perfectly because it is thicker than school glue and dries a lot faster. This helped everything stick into place nicely without any fuss with so many different layers going on. We used a glue stick for everything else.

Happy Crafting!!

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Aren't these goofy pumpkin faces the cutest? I've had this pinned on Pinterest for a couple weeks now. They come from artsy_T Flickr stream, and I guess she makes them with her Kindergarten class every year.

We read The Bumpy Little Pumpkin by Margery Cuyler last night and after reading the story I knew making goofy pumpkin faces would go along perfectly! I seriously dreamt about it last night. haha!


The characters in the story are Little Nell, BIG Mama, BIG Sarah, and BIG Lizzie. It's Halloween, and the three siblings are looking for pumpkins to carve into jack-o'-lanterns. Little Nell's selection is deemed too small and ugly by her sisters. Not to be deterred, Little Nell enlists the help of Reindeer, Hare, and Bear Cub and creates a special jack-o'-lantern that can proudly take its place on the porch. As BIG Mama says, Jack-o'-lanterns come in all shapes and sizes!, a line that can be reassuringly applied to children as well. 

So this morning the boys sat down and made their very own, unique pumpkin faces.

Materials you will need:
-2 sheets black card stock paper
-1 sheet white card stock paper
-orange paint
-green paint
-scissors
-glue stick

Directions:
1. Have your child cut out a large pumpkin shape out of the white sheet of construction paper. My boys actually used a pencil to draw their pumpkin first and then cut it out. Don't throw away the scraps because you are going to use them.


2. Paint the pumpkin orange. (Ok, as a sidenote, after completing this project I thought it would have been more fun to have given each child yellow and red paint to mix together to make their own orange color. Not only does it teach about combining different colors, but I'm certain each child would have come out with a different shade of orange making each project more unique. This can also be applied to the green paint, giving each child blue and yellow and having them make their own.)


You can already see how different my boys are just by looking at their painted pumpkins. Andrew paints a thin, smooth layer. Luke paints everything thick and dark.


3. Take one of the left over white scraps and paint it green. Let the pumpkin and green scrap dry completely.
 

4. Use a piece of black card stock paper to cut out a mouth and pupils for the pumpkin, and use the other white scrap paper to cut out 2 eyeballs and teeth for the pumpkin.

5. When the pumpkin is dry, glue it to the 2nd piece of black card stock paper. Then glue on the mouth, teeth, eyeballs and pupils.


6. When the green scrap paper is dry, cut out a pumpkin stem and some grass for the bottom of the paper. Then glue them on your page.


I have about 15 different pumpkin crafts I'd love to get done this week...Wish we'd be able to get to all of them, but I know we won't.

To go along with our pumpkin theme this week we also had a very fun lunch. I made ham & cheese pumpkin wraps.


To make the wraps, I simply used some sun dried tomato and basil wraps and put mayo, ham & swiss cheese inside before rolling it up. After it was rolled up, I cut the ends off and made 6 sections out of each wrap. I put a piece of cilantro on each section and poked a toothpick through the entire section to hold it together nicely. They turned out so cute, looking like little pumpkins.


The kids also had some grapes and vanilla yogurt with orange and green sprinkles just to spice it up a bit.  :)



They gobbled it all up and Andy even exclaimed, "I wish we would have this every day for lunch!" Me too Andy! I love eating fun food!

Happy Crafting!!

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