Welcome back ladies! I don’t know about you but I am looking forward to another great year and am excited to see what God has in store for all of us! You may or may not recall from my October post last year how much I LOVE fall…so let me just tell you. I LOVE FALL. I love apples and pumpkins, the changing colors, cooler weather, walks, soup in the crockpot, cider, fall festivals, aaaaaaand wearing sweatpants. Yes, ladies, I am not ashamed to admit how much I enjoy wearing sweatpants. I even asked my husband once if he got tired of coming home from work and finding me in my sweats. Thankfully, his answer was “No. Are you comfortable?” Yep, he’s a keeper. ☺
Since I am sure many of you will be visiting apple orchards and pumpkin patches (if you haven’t already, we love Cider Hill), here are a few things you can do with your apples and pumpkins:
- Make apple butter, caramel apples, or apple pie.
- Taste test with different types of apples and create a graph of everyone’s favorite.
- Build with apple chunks (easier than marshmallows). Click HERE for an example.
- Glitter your pumpkins (doesn’t glitter make everything more fun?!).
- Paint pumpkins: if you search on Pinterest or Google for painted pumpkins, you can find some REALLY fun and cool ideas such as glow in the dark puffy painted pumpkins, Superhero pumpkins, polka dot pumpkins…the possibilities are endless!
- Use pumpkins to teach your children Math and Science (unbeknownst to them) by estimating weight, number of lines, sink or float, etc. Write it down, then actually test their estimations. This is a great teaching tool especially when you use pumpkins of various sizes!
- Another cute and simple fall activity are THESE leaf peepers.
We’ve already started collecting a few leaves here and there as we see them for this craft. On the website they mention pressing the leaves between books but I recommend ironing them between two sheets of wax paper. This will help keep them flat and last a bit longer as well.
We love attending fall festivals too! In fact, we went to one last weekend in downtown Shawnee and will be going to the downtown Overland Park festival this coming weekend on Saturday, September 27th if you want to check it out!
Wonderscope has a few great activities coming up as well that you can check out at www.wonderscope.org . Lakeshore Learning in Merriam has free crafts on Saturdays for children 3 and up too!
And as always, don’t forget to check out KCParent.com for more events and happenings around town!
Well, there you have it. Try to pick at least one new activity you think you’d like to try with some special kids (or kids at heart) in your life and have some fun!
Julie Collett
