Week In Review: October 27 - October 31

Quite the busy week that began with cooking and taste testing different pumpkin-y foods and ended with our fun daycare Halloween party. Here's a look:

The kids made pumpkin muffins, watched me cook pumpkin seeds, had pumpkin pancakes, and sampled pumpkin pudding. The pudding was the least favorite of all of the pumpkin food.

We watched numerous Halloween movies, including "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" and "Curious George Boo Fest." I'm more than happy to not watch CG Boo Fest for a nice long time. Seeing it every day, at least once a day, for an entire month is enough for me!

They turned the Magformers Magnetic Building Construction Set - 62 Piece Designer Set into a carnival. They used a Lego elephant to perform in their circus and Lego people (DUPLO Community Figures set Compatible with Lego Duplo (16 Pcs)) as the spectators.

The kids went into the front yard to collect the gigantic leaves falling from our sycamore trees.

The kids studied the leaves, drew their own leaves, and traced the leaves. Max also measured one for the kids and reported his findings as "it's a REALLY big leaf!"

We made ghost cups for outside decorations: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/10/ghost-cups.html

The kids made paper bag pumpkins. Stuff old newspaper inside a lunch bag (we had white ones left over from our ghost puppets, you could easily use brown bags so you don't have to paint the stems), use a orange, green, or brown pipe cleaner to close the bag, paint the outside orange. I had to help a few of the younger kids paint their paper bag pumpkins, but all of the kids did a great job with this project.

One of their favorite snacks: Scrabble Cheez-Its. It takes quite a while for the kids to eat their letters because they have to ask me "what letter is this?" before they eat it.

We had a Halloween Cupcake Day. The kids played with the play food cupcakes, coffee beans, we read "If You Give A Cat A Cupcake" and we decorated Halloween cupcakes.

The kids LOVE these coffee beans. They pour them, scoop them, count them, pretend to feed the dolls, and shake them in the cups. Easiest two hours of entertainment I've ever handed them.

The kids love this cupcake set: Melissa & Doug Bake and Decorate Cupcake Set

Cupcake decorating always gets messy!

Some kids just eat the frosting....

Harrison got to spend a morning at Iowa Orchards with his school. Elizabeth got to tag along. She thought she was hot stuff for going with the "school kids" and spent the afternoon bragging to the daycare kids she got to go "to pumpkin patch school."

I took a day off and went to Harrison's school Halloween party, took the two littlest minis to lunch, set up for our Pre-Trick or Treat party, and hosted 30+ people for our party and trick or treating. It was a fun and exhausting day. Read more about it here: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/10/pre-trick-or-treat-party.html

We ended our week with our Daycare Halloween Party: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/11/daycare-halloween-party.html

Next week we'll be going into full Thanksgiving mode. We'll talk about Thanksgiving, what we're thankful for, read our Thanksgiving books, and the kids will have a chance to make Trees of Thanks.

Daycare Halloween Party

We had our daycare Halloween party on Halloween this year. Often times I choose to do it the day I have the most children, but schedules prevented that. I thought I was a genius when I left all of the Pre-Trick or Treat Party (http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/10/pre-trick-or-treat-party.html) activities out for the daycare Halloween party. However, the weather unexpectedly turned frigidly cold and none of the kids wanted to go outside to have their party. So I brought several of the activities inside for them to enjoy.

We played Pumpkin Ring Toss and Pumpkin Toss in the living room.

They played "Pasta Restaurant" with orange and black spaghetti. The kids loved this because the noodles were frozen from the night before (again, I didn't know it was suppose to get so cold when I decided to leave everything outside for the night). As they played with the noodles, they began to un-thaw. The noodles wound up all over the kitchen, but the kids had a great time playing with them.

The kids colored pumpkin pictures.

The kid's favorite activity: bobbing for apples in the bathroom. They wouldn't actually stick their faces in to grab the apples, but they would inch their face close to the water, exclaim "I got one!" and swipe their hand in to grab one.

When the kids were done bobbing for apples, the cats seems pleased with the giant water bowl sitting out for them.

I had to show them how it was done.

Lunch was deli sandwiches, chips, pumpkin poops (carrots), and witches fingers (celery).

The kids got a very special after lunch treat of Halloween cupcakes and cookies.

Afternoon snack was brains (green jello and gummi worms) and apple cider.

We spent an hour reading all of the Halloween books one last time.

I was a bit a disappointed that going in the backyard to do the Halloween activities didn't work out because they would have loved the haunted playhouse, pumpkin "sand," and ball pit. I was more disappointed that I had a lot of cleaning to do both inside and outside! Overall, a fun Halloween party for the kiddos, just a lot more work for me!