I made this cute worksheet to include in my kid’s Valentine’s Day activities.
It’s great since my girls are learning their letters, but it’s still fun, even for older kids that are just beginning to read on their own.
It’s also a great worksheet to use if you’re following along with our Alphabet Activities.
It’s free for home and classroom use, but please don’t sell or reproduce it.
You can print the PDF by clicking the link below:
These fun “Snowy” Floridian Reindeer Footprints were inspired by a conversation with a friend.
He was telling me about how they used to make reindeer footprints in the snow on Christmas Eve when they lived up north, which reminded me of when one of my other friends made Easter Bunny footprints with flour across her living room floor last year, and I realized………
Whoa.
I could totally make reindeer footprints with flour!
And glitter!!!
And my kids were even more excited then I was once they saw them.
You see, I’d had quite a few conversations with my 4yo about Santa. One of her main concerns was how he was going to get into the house without a chimney. Which was clumsily explained away with some mutterings about him climbing through windows or something.
That led to her insisting that we not only cover the lawn with the “reindeer food” that she got in school {a combination of oatmeal and green glitter meant to attract the attention of the flying reindeer}, but that we also leave open the window and glass door blinds to make sure that Santa could see inside.
And after all of her worrying, I thought it would be nice to leave some “proof” behind that Santa – and his reindeer – DID, in fact, make it to our house on Christmas Eve.
I used flour to represent the snow that stuck to the reindeer feet when they were up north where it’s cold, and the glitter was because the reindeer are magical.
What I did was mix together some flour and glitter, and then sprinkle it over the front walk with a small mesh colander.
And I would totally upload a reindeer foot template if I had one, but as you can see in the photos, I simply took a thin piece of cardboard, drew a couple of circles on them, drew a triangle in the tops of those circles, and used a box cutter to very carefully cut out the shapes.
Grandmas wasn’t fully convinced that that’s what reindeer footprints would actually look like, but I thought it was pretty spiffy.
Anyway, mix together the flour and glitter, and cut out your cardboard template ahead of time. If it’s not going to rain, you could make the footprints late Christmas Eve – especially if you think your children will awake before you on Christmas morning.
To transfer the footprints to a sidewalk/patio/balcony/etc., scoop the flour mixture out of the bowl with the small colander and shake it gently over the template until the cutout hole is covered. Lift template and there’s your footprint!
Ours lasted for about 4 days. And there’s still a bit of glitter floating around. :)
Painting Christmas ornaments with toilet paper rolls was another fun craft for my kids that was super easy to set up.
We just used the rolls to stamp red and green circles of paint onto a piece of white paper, and, once the paint was dry, we colored in the “ornaments” with colored pencils.
And hung the finished product of the fridge.
Easy and super fun.
But then, paint is always fun for kids.
My suggestions include: covering your creating space with newspaper to catch extra paint, put some paint into tiny paper plates, and suggest making patterns with the colored pencils when they color in the “ornaments.”
And don’t forget to check out these other Christmas crafts:
This is such a wonderful fall activity!
My girls have had – and are still having – so much fun with this Pretend Play activity of Raking Leaves.
And it’s so simple, too!
I bought 3 bags of 50 leaves each at the dollar store, and we already had the rakes – although I think we bought them at the dollar store in the spring.
I do suggest using plastic rakes because they’re safer for indoors. We also have metal and wooden rakes, but plastic worked best for this.
Also, I prefer doing this activity on the carpet, but it does work on the tile and wood floors. To be honest, though, I found raking the leaves up on carpet with the plastic rake to be somewhat soothing. Meditative, even.
To store the leave we use a basket that we already had, but you could also use a plastic baggy. {That’s what I plan to store them in at the end of fall.}
Another thing these leaves are perfect for is throwing.
Rake up a pile and toss them into the air!
Seriously: these are made of fabric, so they kind of flutter down gently. The whole reason I decided to do this with my kids is because they adore the Elefun Game
But that’s why I bought 150 leaves for this activity – so there would be enough to entertain both of them. Plenty to keep them busy with raking and throwing.
And organizing.
My 4yo would make piles of the leaves, sorting them by color and counting them. And my 2yo made piles that were her “birds nests.”
The options are limitless.
And, like I said, this activity can be extremely affordable. I already had the rakes and the basket, and I bought the 3 bags of leaves for a buck a piece at the Dollar Tree. The plastic rakes can also be found in the outdoor toy section or garden section of places like Target or Kmart even Walgreens – at certain times of the year.
BUT, if you’re having trouble finding the items you need, here are some Decorative Fall Leaves
And please let me know if your Little Ones enjoy it – and if they come up with any games of their own!
And check out these other Pretend Play ideas, too:
These Felt Lacing Pumpkin Pillows are so cute, and my girls really enjoy them.
And I say “enjoy them” in the present tense instead of “enjoyed making them” in the past tense, because they’re still playing with them.
They make pretty nice Fall decorations, too… except that they keep walking off and getting lost in the baby doll’s beds…
Anyway, this is a great project to do with kids in autumn. I made a step-by-step photo of how we made them {see below}. I didn’t post any patterns or anything, since I did it all by hand.
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 sheet of orange felt per pumpkin
brown yarn
scissors
hole punch
To make the pumpkin pillow:
1. Fold the felt in half and cut it along the crease to make two pieces. With the two felt sheets together, cut out a shape resembling a pumpkin. Sort of an oval with a stem on top.
2. Use a hole punch to make holes around the edge. This may take a few minutes if you {like me} don’t own an ergonomic hole puncher with a cushioned grip. Place the pumpkin with the holes on top of the pumpkin without the holes, and using a pen or marker, mark where each hole is, so that when you cut out the holes on the second pumpkin, they will line up with the first.
3. Cut a piece of yarn about a yard long for each pumpkin. Wrap some clear tape around one end of the yarn to make it sturdy enough to thread through the felt.
[I did steps 1 through 3 the night before, while my kids slept. If your kids are a little older – and you have an easier-to-use hole punch than me – you may want to let your kids help with those steps.]
4. Let your kids sew together the pumpkins, just like a lacing card, leaving a few holes {about a 1/4 of the pumpkin} open. See the 4th photo below.
5. Crumple up a sheet of tissue paper and stuff it inside the pumpkin. Alternately, use cotton balls or a some cotton batting.
6. Finish sewing up the pumpkin and tie off the yarn.
It’s a pretty easy project, and the best part is if you don’t have any felt, you could always substitute construction paper!
Plus, we made ours before Halloween, but if that’s already passed, these look great for Thanksgiving, too!
Have fun!
This Mini Pumpkin Hunt is just about one of the easiest Halloween projects you can do, and your kids are just about guaranteed to completely freak out over how awesome it is.
Well, at least those kids who love Easter egg hunts will freak out over the awesomeness. But I don’t know any kids who don’t love Easter egg hunts.
The setup is simple: buy a bunch of mini pumpkins, hide aforementioned mini pumpkins in your yard or house, hand your kids a bucket or basket in which to collect them, and stand back while they stampede.
Unfortunately for us, on the day I told my girls we were going to go outside and search for mini pumpkins, it rained.
A lot.
So, we relegated the search mostly to areas of flora that could be easily accessed with feet still firmly planted on the sidewalk and out of the wet grass and mud.
It didn’t even matter to them that it only took a couple of minutes to find all 10 that I’d hidden. They were so excited about it that they hid them again so I could find them. And again. And again…
Eventually we made it inside to decorate our mini pumpkins.
I’d pulled out some glitter glue and some glitter in silver and gold. Neutral but shiny.
I spread a disposable table cloth over the floor and some newspaper in the middle of it, opened up the containers of glue and glitter, and stood back.
Well, not very far back. They insisted I help, and, really, it’s pretty fun to bury your hands in glitter sometimes. :)
And the end result looked rather pretty.
Some had designs, some were completely covered, but they all looked so fun and sparkly.
It was much easier to clean up, by the way, than it looks.
Once you move the pumpkins and glue/glitter containers, simply fold the paper in half to make it into a partial funnel, and let the glitter slide back into the container again to be reused for another project.
My girls love activities like this.
And I love sneaking a little learning {like fine motor control} into things they enjoy.
So I made some Halloween worksheets featuring activities that my 4yo especially enjoys. And though my 2yo is more inclined to color the ghosts than trace the dots, she still enjoys being involved in whatever her big sister is doing. :)
Click here for the FREE printable PDF worksheets:
Also, a fun dinner to follow up your Little One finding the path of a worm through a jack o’ lantern would be my Spicy Spaghetti Worms in Pepper Jack O’ Lanterns:
Happy Halloween!
My girls are like me: they love rocks.
So I decided to incorporate some rocks into our activities.
I drew all the letters of the alphabet onto 26 stones, uppercase on one side and lowercase on the other.
They’re kind of like story stones, but with only one letter on each rock.
At first, because I had the stones and a permanent marker at the house, but no paint pen, I drew the letters with the marker.
I thought it might rub off, and I was right. So, a few days later when I got a Michael’s coupon in the paper, I went and picked up a black paint marker. I used it to trace over the letters, and it looked about the same. But the paint didn’t come off when we played with them.
You can find rocks like these in the floral section of most stores. I got mine at the dollar store.
I love being able to learn while exploring outdoors.
There are many ways to play with the alphabet stones, and one of the things we did was dump them in the grass and then dig them out one at a time.
We shouted out the letter on the stone as the girls pulled them from the lawn.
We do play with them inside, too, but outdoors is preferable.
I’m so happy it’s fall and we can be outside more.
Anyway, my 4yo also plays a game where she finds all of the letters of her name and puts them in order {see below}.
This has helped her with writing her name, as well. She would often mix up the order of the letters when writing it, and she even put the stones in the wrong order a few times – like spelling out her name from right to left instead of left to right even though she can spell it aloud perfectly.
But since we’ve been playing with these stones, she’s been writing her name correctly nearly every time.
These stones are also great for practicing phonics. You can put a sound like “-at” on the ground and make a pile of letters that go with it to make different words: cat, hat, bat, sat, mat, etc.
My 4yo loves to rhyme, so she has a lot of fun with things like that.
I keep the alphabet stones in a little mesh bag in the playroom, and sometimes the girls pull them out and play with them on their own.
Which is pretty awesome. :)
I wanted to do something special for Halloween, and settled on a sensory bath with orange, green, and purple noodles that would be mixed with black, creepy toys.
It was a hit. But then, I knew it would be.
How could kids NOT love a sensory bin that you let them climb inside of?
Earlier this year we did an Ocean Sensory Play Bath. My girls really enjoyed it and requested it again and again.
But this time we did a “creepy” version.
Seemed a good way to get into the Halloween spirit.
I had the food coloring on hand, but the rest of the supplies I picked up at the dollar store.
You’ll need:
4 lbs. of spaghetti
Food coloring in orange, green, and purple
Various toy bugs
I got a package of 8 rubbery mice, 8 rubbery spiders, and a dozen plastic centipedes.
I thought about sticking with the traditional colors of orange and black, but eventually decided to throw in the green and purple, too. They added a nice dimension to it.
You need to cook the spaghetti ahead of time, but it can sit for awhile. This is helpful, for example, if you want to take care of this part while your kids are sleeping or at school.
I put most of the 4 lbs. into one large pot with a big scoop of orange food color. Then I put green and purple into two smaller pots with smaller amounts of spaghetti.
I cooked them according to the package directions, then took the pots off the heat and allowed the noodles to sit in the colored water for 20 or 30 minutes.
You could also cook all the noodles in one big pot and then separate them into plastic baggies. You can add the food color to the baggies and mix it all around to dye the noodles this way.
Sometimes I have issues with that method, so I used the dye-them-on-the-stove technique. It takes very little time to wash the pots afterwards, and if you don’t have that many pots, you can always reuse the same one or make fewer colors.
Once you’re ready to drain the pasta, make sure you rinse the noodles with cool water, too.
Rinse until the water that’s draining from the bottom of the colander runs clear.
Some of the food color that is in the spaghetti will still leak into the tub as the noodles steep, but rinsing helps eliminate as much color as possible beforehand.
Here is a photo of the dyes spaghetti in one big bucket and all the creepy, crawly critters in a little dish.
I put these on the bathroom counter until we were ready to play.
As I mentioned, the spaghetti can sit for awhile. We waited at least an hour, because my youngest was still napping.
And if you don’t have a bathtub {or just can’t imagine putting food in your tub}, you could always use something else. For example, a kiddie pool. Or, if you don’t want your kids sitting in the spaghetti, you could put it in a water table or large plastic bin instead, and let them play with it that way.
Fill up the tub with just a few inches of water.
Then dump in the spaghetti and any toys. Here you can see me and my daughter tossing in all the creepy vermin.
Swirl everything together with your hand or a small strainer.
We used the small mesh strainers to clean up afterwards, but also to play. The girls used them to scoop up the toys.
The orange faded from the spaghetti rather quickly.
Next time I would use more color and perhaps let it sit a little longer, since orange is such a light color.
And, as you can see, the green and purple did seep into the bathwater. This makes it even creepier, though, and more of a challenge to find all the toys. So not a total negative.
Plus, in case you’re wondering, my kids did not turn green and purple.
To clean up, we took out all the toys and scooped all of the noodles back into the bin.
We used both our hands and the mesh strainers to remove the pasta. My kids have nearly as much fun with this part as they do with playing in the spaghetti.
Once all {or as much as I can find} of the noodles are out of the tub, I drain the water. Then I make sure there’s no food coloring left in the tub and my kids get a real bath.
When the bath is over, I sprinkle a bunch of baking soda over the drain and rinse it down with white vinegar. {This is my normal method of cleaning bathtub/sink drains.} It is inevitable that some noodles will escape down the drain, and certainly some starch, so this extra step is important.
Have fun!
If you’re new here, please read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities first!
Here are all of the printable PDFs for the Letter E. They are free for home and classroom use, but please don’t sell or reproduce them.
And don’t forget to check out all of our Letter E Alphabet Activities!
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Have fun!
Roaming Rosie 