Hootie Who's Ready for the Weekend?

The flock is ready for the long Labor Day weekend, and we have the perfect kid friendly activity to usher in fall.  We can only hope and pray that fall is around the bend, because honestly there is enough heat and moisture in the air to cut it with a butter knife!  Nonetheless, we are super excited for the traditions that the season fall brings.  Back to school (you already know we love that!), college football, yummy food, family gatherings, pumpkins, and these adorable owls!

Making these cupcakes would be a perfect home or classroom tie in to Wednesday's Lil Sprouts Book Club choice.  Here's what you'll need:

Box of cake mix
White cookie/cake icing
Oreo cookies
Sixlet candies
Shaved almonds
Coco Puffs cereal
Goldfish crackers or Cheez-It crackers

Directions:

Follow the directions on the cake box to make cupcakes.  Let the cupcakes cool completely and then add your icing.  

Your mini pastry chefs can decide if they would like to create a brown owl or white owl.  If they would like a brown owl, have them put a handful of Coco Puffs into a resealable baggie and crush.  Sprinkle cereal crumbs on top of the cupcake.  Carefully twist apart two Oreo cookies to use as the owl’s eyes.  You’ll need to use two so that you can have two eyes that are covered in the yummy white frosting!   

Place a Sixlet candy on the icing to finish off the owl’s eyes.  Now using your shaved almonds create wings for the owls by making staggered rows.  Your final touch will be the beak.   

Let your kids use their creativity!  They can shape a Goldfish cracker into the beak, or even bite off the corner of a Cheez-It cracker.

 Extend the fun and learning with a journaling activity that has your little owls practicing their writing and sequencing skills.  Simply save the image below into a Word document and print for your kids. 

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The Letter O is for Owl! Hoot Hoot!

Today we learned about the letter O

We started out with a sensory activity. I squeezed some different colored paints ( blue, purple, black, light blue, glitter paint) onto a piece of construction paper. Kaitlyn practiced making her o's by moving the paint around with her finger. When she was all done we sprinkled on some glitter and set it outside to dry.


While it was drying we went out to the front yard and gathered some fall leaves and found a nice branch for our picture.

I used the hot glue gun to attache her branch and her leaves onto her painting.

I then traced the body of an owl onto some construction paper and asked Kaitlyn to color him brown.....I look over a few seconds later and see that she drew feet onto the owl ( this was a first for Kaitlyn) She is starting to become more accurate in her depictions of things. We made some handprints for wings and added them onto her picture!

We discussed today how owls are nocturnal animals and how they fly quietly at night to hunt for their food. We read several books today about Owls, Kaitlyn's Favorite was Owls, by Gail Gibbons

 

 

Letter O, Practice

Kaitlyn practiced her letter O's today on her mats I made. She used pom pom's to make the shape of the letter O. She also used her dry erase crayon board to trace the O's

Hoot Hoot! It's Orange Owl Cupcake Time

Kaitlyn and I had some fun in the kitchen this afternoon cooking up some orange cupcakes. Kaitlyn and I decorated them to look like owls. We used oreos and little green candies for the eyes. She then decorated the bodies with almond slivers and cocoa pebbles cereal to mimic the feathers. The finishing touch was a goldfish cracker as a beak. They were so much fun to make! Now to find a small army to eat some owl cupcakes!

Kaitlyn loves "school" time and loves practicing with her learning puzzles. This is a great one that we actually got as a gift. Kaitlyn matches the color or texture to the object. It is a great way to learn about describing words. When she is all done she practices reading the cards by pointing to the words and saying the describing word and the objects name.....a great way to develop those early reading and decoding skills.

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