Glittery Spiders

When we got up this morning it looked more like November than September with all the fog and fallen leaves. 

Fortunately it's not that cold yet. 

But there are spiders webs everywhere and the overnight dampness has shown them all up with glittery dew. They look magical! 

We made some this morning using big card circles punched with holes and then threaded colourful wool through. 

Brilliant skills for little fingers! 

To finish, we added some cheeky spiders and a flourish of glitter. Well, it's getting to that time of year and we all love a bit of glitter!

Playdough Apples

Our leaves and apples from the garden

It's been a lovely summer and the sun and warmth were still with us until today when it turned a bit more chilly.


That didn't stop us from getting out into the garden to collect a few colourful leaves and collect the last of the apples from our little tree.

Our apples and leaves alongside
our playdough version

So as well as tucking into the apples, we decided to have a go at making some bright red playdough and turn it into another little basket of apples.  

Here they are!






We just used our usual playdough recipe (below if you want to try it) and then I coloured a couple of playsticks with a brown Sharpie and then cut some leaves from foam. 

You could of course use real leaves and sticks if you preferred.



Playdough Recipe
1 cup plain flour
half a cup of salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup boiling water
food colouring

Autumn Sensory Tub

I've been getting so many updates on my FB page from all the early years people who have blogs, all with autumn themed sensory tubs. 

So this is our take on it.....

I used half a bag of lentils, a spoon and a couple of plastic shot glasses for scooping and filling.

Little one played with this quite happily for a while - and especially enjoyed tipping and scattering the lentils on the floor!
















Then I added some other bits and pieces, mostly orange to keep the autumn feeling... these were:  
some leaves we collected at the park, some cinnamon sticks and pine cones, pom poms, wooden play arches and some ribbon and feathers - just lots of different textures to explore.  Easy to put together and will keep him busy for at least 5-10 minutes!!?

Felt Pictures

Remember Fuzzy Felts? 

I used to love creating my own pictures with the little cut out bits of felt.  The box used to
contain really simple shapes, with silhouettes of different animals and objects but as time went on the shapes became more complex with printed pictures on top of the felt.  


I thought this spoiled Fuzzy Felts and discouraged creativity and imagination a little bit.  Would you agree?

I notice there is a 60th anniversary box available at the moment and it has gone back to basics with simple shapes. 

The blurb says....

Fuzzy-Felt encourages co-ordination, recognition, counting, sorting and storytelling 

Sounds good to me!


Anyway, all this just to share with you my DIY felt board and shapes with an autumn theme. Have a go!

Autumn is on the way.....

Much as I love the colours associated with autumn, it marks the end of summer and a step toward winter with dark, chilly evenings and shorter days....not the best for a sun and light lover like me!

But it really is on the way, the trees are just beginning to change and a few leaves have already started to fall, so what better excuse do we need to start some autumn play?

So today I cut out some leaf shapes to make a garland and then cut some extra ones just to play with.  Monty loved when I threw them up in the air and they fluttered down on top of him.  We'll need to try this outdoors soon too with real fallen leaves.

He was really quite taken with the garland when I hung it up and kept looking up at it, so now I'm even starting to get a little excited about what Christmas might bring!  We talked about all the colours of the leaves and sang a little song I used to sing to the children at nursery and then blew the leaves to make them flutter. He loved this and every now and then when he's playing, he has a little look up at them again.  (I'll add the song at the bottom)





As we were talking about the colours we started to look for other things the same colours and soon had a basket full of red, yellow, brown and orange objects.  








He is still too young to sort, but you could try sorting into colour groups with older toddlers. You could also put numbers on the leaves and order them.






If you want to make an autumn garland you will just need some coloured paper, a hole punch and some string.  I punched two holes in each leaf as when the string is threaded through both holes it seems to secure the leaves in place and stops them from slipping down at an angle. 

I folded the paper too just to give the leaves a little dimension - it's also much easier and quicker to cut them out on the fold.

5 little leaves so bright and gay,

Were dancing about on a tree one day,

The wind came howling through the town,

And one little leaf came a-tumbling down.

Repeat for 4, 3, 2, 1 using your hand as a tree and fingers as branches

More autumn activities to come soon!