This is the winner...

 I think this leaf from our maple tree in the front yard is the biggest maple leaf I have ever found.

 It's a lot bigger than Luke's hand.

That's a big leaf!!

 

Leaves

by Elsie N. Brady

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

 

 

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.

Happy Fall,Y'all

"Happy Fall Y'all"

This is today's craft....from my favorite craft supply company, Oriental Trading Company.

Mark's Indians and Pilgrim Hats

Mark made this very cute centerpiece for our Thanksgiving table.

He found the directions at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman, one of our favorite quick and easy craft sites!

Sunflowers of Thankfulness

Today we made "sunflowers of thankfulness".

They were very simple and turned out very cute!

All you need to do is to paint one side of a paperplate brown.

While the paint dries, cut out sunflower "petals".

I folded a sheet of paper in thirds like a letter and then cut out three petals at a time.

About 12 petals fit on a regular sized paperplate.
On each petal, write things that you are thankful for.

The three youngest kids made the sunflowers, but everyone took part in naming things they were thankful for.

Glue the petals to the paperplate.

Gracie added a happy face to her flower.

Our "thankfulness sunflowers" are now displayed on the kitchen cupboards to remind everyone what is most important during this special time of year.

Autumn leaf luminary

My wonderful Becky made me this autumn luminary with some of the leaves from out in the yard this morning.

I saw the idea here
and assemble the needed supplies and Becky did her crafting magic.

Thank you so much, my lovely daughter!!

Indian corn jewelry

I remember doing this every year when I was little.

We gathered the indian corn and then we would make jewelry.

I can still remember how sore my fingers would get shucking the corn and then stinging it for bracelets and necklaces.

Well, this year, my finger didn't get sore at all.

I had so many little helpers, the corn was shucked in no time at all.

The colors are just gorgeous this year. (I think they are probably just as beautiful every year, but every year I am in awe of the beauty of this colorful corn.)

This years corn was VERY dry, so we used a hammer and large needle to hammer holes through the kernels. This was very helpful in speeding up the stringing process.

Basically, we made beads out of the corn kernels

Mark and Amy hammering away. Gracie, string her bracelet.

I bought stretchy beading thread. Perfect for this project. Having the holes already made sped this up so much, I was very pleased.

Gorgeous!!

My beautiful crafter, and beautiful model.

"Stained Glass' apple suncatchers

Our favorite "big" apple book of the week!!!

(Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE our library....they have the greatest things!!)

We have been reading plenty of apple books around here in honor of all the apple orchards here in CNY. We will be apple picking very soon, but in the meantime I found this cute apple suncatchers to make over at Craftideas.info.
I printed the pattern right out on card stock and then cut out 2 apples for each of my kindergarteners.
Kim and Luke were busy tearing red and green tissue paper into small pieces.

Luke chose to cut his paper. Kimmy preferred ripping her paper.

I placed the apple pattern, right side down, on clear contact paper.
Kim and Luke are 4 and 5 and they did a fine job with this sticky paper.

I was afraid it would end up a big mess, but they managed fine.

They then filled in their apples, and apple leaves with the green and red tissue paper.

I then placed another piece of clear contact paper over the back of the apples.

You can see in the photo above, this gave me a little trouble. It is a little wrinkled, but it made no difference in the pretty final results.

Cut out the apples.

They look just beautiful on the window of the back door.

They make a great addition to our "suncatcher" door.

You can see how the big kids made the cross suncatchers at this blog post.

We Made It!--Indian Corn Craft

We are quite behind on our crafting as of late, but we did manage to make these cute indian corn decorations this week. I saw the idea last week at Two Hearts Together. I added a little more detail and a story to incorporate the big learners that I have in the house.

We used:

real indian corn

yellow and green construction paper

glue

a template found here
Thanksgiving Bible verses from here

scissors

We also incorportated the reading of my new favorite Thanksgiving book: P is for Pilgrim.
"Across the Atlantic Ocean,

a lone ship on a vast sea.

Ablaze with new hope,

all praying to be free." from P is for Pilgrim

"From the lives of our early settlers, who established the foundations for American freedoms and ideals, to today's celebrations, "P is for Pilgrim" colorfully examines the history and lore of Thanksgiving. This alphabet book pairs each letter with a short poem and a sidebar that provides further information about the ideas presented in the verses." Amazon review

I also love the illustrations in this book.

The Bible verses we used are from Christian Preschool Printables, one of my favorite resourses.

First Gracie and Luke removed the kernels from the corncob.

This was quite a time consumming task for the two of them, resulting in Gracie becoming a little hungry.

Luke stuck with this for longer than I thought he would. It is great work for those little finger muscles.

Kim and Luke both practiced their carefully dotting of the glue, and then applied an indian corn kernel to their "cob."

While the little kids worked on the corn, Mark and Grace traced and cut out the husk part of the craft out of green construction paper.

They then put a suitable Thanksgiving Bible verse on the husk.

Mark choose to cut out the verse and glue it to the husk, while Gracie wrote her verse.

I think they turned out very nice--and are now proudly displayed in our Thanksgiving craft montage area.

Check out all of this weeks We Made It crafts at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

A Bat Mobile

This is a quick and easy printable craft from Family Fun.

The bat on the inside of the light shade is for my dad---he has done this since I was little. I used one of the printables from Family Fun to make our lamps scary.
This mobile is simply a coat hanger with fiberfill as clouds, yarn and the printable bats.

Mark made this mobile for us....

great job, Mark!!