last year around christmastime, i posted about our felt christmas trees that i made for the girls. (you can see that post HERE.) libbi enjoyed it so much that i had the idea to recreate it, halloween style!
i had a difficult time finding orange felt, so i just bought a yard of orange fleece. it works just as well. i also bought one yard of black felt (but 1/2 yard would have been plenty).
i freehand cut a pumpkin out of the orange fleece (go big or go home, right?) and used the black felt to make different shapes for the pumpkin face. i found different items around the house to trace with a piece of chalk and used them as templates for my shapes. i cut out circles (from a block), squares (post-it notepad), rectangles (old iphone box), and triangles (piece of toy birthday cake) - easy! i also saved the scraps from where i cut these pieces out so they could be used as eyelashes, hair, bows, or anything else her little imagination might come up with!
once the shapes were cut out, i taped the pumpkin up to the wall and tried it out!
when libbi woke up from her nap, she was pleased as punch to see a pumpkin on the wall. and she knew just what to do. she immediately got to work. {and yes, she did "nap" in a princess dress}
even laney got in on the fun....bed head and all. :)
until the princess decided to put a stop to it. sisters. :-)
the girls had fun decorating and redecorating the pumpkin. and it's a nice, easy project with little to no clean up. since the felt shapes adhere to the orange fleece on their own, it's mess free fun!
after laney went to bed, i decided to extend our pumpkin activity just a little further. libbi is very into "gluing" these days, so i figured she would enjoy making a paper version of her pumpkin, too.
i would create a face on the large wall pumpkin and then it was her job to recreate the pumpkin i made using paper shapes and a paper pumpkin. it's an excellent way to practice so many valuable skills. (excuse me while i slip into my former teacher voice) "matching, shape recognition, transferring patterns, counting, spatial relationships, and one to one correspondence." (end teacher voice).
what's so great about it, is that she just thinks she's getting to use a gluestick - ha! she has no idea all of the "learning" that is taking place!! :)
and i have to say, i was extremely impressed with her ability to copy and transfer the faces that i made onto her smaller scaled paper pumpkin. maybe she'll be good in math like her daddy.... or maybe she'll just be crafty like her momma ;-)
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