Pumpkin Puzzles

Using real pumpkins, let the children draw faces with washable Crayola markers. The ink will wipe off easily with a wet cloth. After a few days, you can make a pumpkin puzzle or "shape sorter."

Open the top of the pumpkin, scoop out the seeds. Let the children help!

Cut a good sized square, circle, rectangle, heart, and triangle out of the pumpkin. Allow the children to find the correct hole to put their piece back into the pumpkin!

Easy Spring Blossoms

It's going to be a few more weeks before things start to green up in Edmonton. Try an easy painting project with your little ones this week and add some spring color to your walls. This activity is great for children 2 1/2 and up.

To start, draw some simple spring shapes on a large piece of paper - we used finger-painting paper and a black permanent marker.

Using finger paint, add swirls of different color paint all over the piece of paper. We used orange, yellow, blue, purple, and red.

Have the children mix the colours together with their fingers, spreading the paint evenly over the different images. Be careful not to mix the paint too much, or you will end up with brown flowers and butterflies! We listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons while we painted and the children loved to move their fingers to the music. We talked about the different colours they made by mixing the paint together, and they tried different ways to make designs and patterns in the paint.

Allow the paint to dry thoroughly and then cut out the pictures.

We added some construction paper stems and grass to complete our spring blooms. This was a fun activity and everyone really enjoyed it. Now our dayhome walls are a bit more spring-like, even if outside isn't quite there yet!