I am always looking for themed activities for my kids! I thought I’d share a few of my favorite fall activities for you to try with the children of your life!
This free printable works well as a fall craft to go with a colorful fall leaves walk!
A few years ago, we had a very special blessing to appreciate & celebrate, as featured by a well recognized site from my post here Another Thanksgiving Blessing!
I’m always sketching fun things for my kiddos to work on, and this time it was a turkey template for them to color and give a festive leafy tail. I sent them out to hunt for pretty leaves for their turkey tails while I quickly sketched a turkey for them to color. I happened to think that if my munchkins were this excited about it, maybe yours would be, too. I usually don’t think of it until after we finish a project, but this time I decided to make it into my first free printable and see how y’all like it. It’s easy peasy, but kept my little ones occupied quite awhile. It got them running through the beautiful autumn outdoors with their grocery bag, hunting for the perfect leaves. Once they were tired of doing that, it gave them something fun to do awhile and finally to display in honor of the upcoming holiday.
Want to make your own Thanksgiving leaf turkey?
First, gather up some leaves. If you don’t have any real leaves available, you can substitute construction paper leaves, feathers or anything else your little imagination can conjure.
Next, have your little artists color those turkeys you printed off and cut it out.
Then glue or tape the leaves to a paper plate in a circular pattern and glue or tape the turkey over where they intersect so it looks like the tail.
Tada!!! Turkey perfection….or close enough to make you smile!
Ready to make your own turkey? Head on over to my link below for your free printable!
It’s simple and unpolished, since it was freehanded with a sharpie originally, but it’s freeeeeee and made for a fun time for us!
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If you are like me, you don’t look forward to trying to carve pumpkins into jack o’lanterns. In fact, I am totally paranoid about using sharp knives and carving instruments with my little ones. So, to satisfy their desire to decorate pumpkins while keeping my anxieties quiet, we just don’t cut, carve or otherwise mutilate our pumpkins.
Do decorate your pumpkins!
You can do so many things with them without cutting, and they should last all the way until time to decorate for Christmas! I love to do a pumpkin with a thankful theme. My children like to make pumpkins representing themselves. We have also done pumpkins that were just randomly decorated. Be inspired by what you like! I’m more about making fall decorations with my pumpkins and less about making them holiday oriented. Most Halloween themed things don’t pass my rules, anyway, since I don’t allow witches and wickedness in our décor this time of year.
Big Sister Pumpkin
Be creative and have fun!
My kids chose their pumpkins this year. They each chose a small one to represent themselves, and my oldest daughter picked a miniature one to represent their baby sister. They wanted to do their own decorating of their own pumpkins, and to give me ideas of what they wanted me to do for baby sister. 🙂
We used materials we had on hand. My deceased mother in law absolutely adored Halloween, and we wound up with some of her craft supplies. I allowed my kiddos to choose some items from those as part of their pumpkin decorating. We wound up using sequined candy corn and stars, googly eyes, ribbon and paint on the bigger munchkins’ pumpkins in the designs of their choosing and creation. I helped very little, since they were having fun and I wanted them to have pride in creating their own. We used smaller googly eyes, a real piece of candy corn for a nose, raffia and pipe cleaner for the baby’s miniature pumpkin.
Big Brother Pumpkin
Have a safe and happy autumn!!!!
We managed to decorate these with no booboos and minimal stress. My biggest concern was making sure the paint and glue stayed on the newspapers I laid out on the kitchen floor where we were working!
For our preschool the other day I decided to make it all about Thanksgiving.
First, I told my daughter the 4 year old comprehensible version of the first Thanksgiving and we had a discussion about the things we are thankful for.
She was especially thankful for her mommy, daddy, baby brudder, all her animals and food. 🙂
Next, I sent her into the yard to gather leaves while I got together craft supplies for her project of the day!
I like re-using random items in our crafts, so I grabbed part of a thing cardboard insert I’d been saving from a box of drinks (an old cereal box would work) and cut pieces to make a turkey body and head, cut a slit in the neck and chest to be able to stick them together, trimmed an old Reeses’ candy eggs box, then laid them out with her crayons and markers so that she could decorate her turkey however she wanted, and got some googly eyes to glue on when she was finished decorating. She had a blast! When she was through, I couldn’t find any clear tape, so I just used masking tape to tape the cardboard pieces around the box “stand”, put the head on and helped her tape the leaf tail on the backside. It would’ve been prettier with clear, obviously, but Princess Peach is pleased as punch, and that’s what counts. 🙂
Thanks for Turkey?
Once the turkey was proudly perched on our windowsill, I wrote out THANKS and TURKEY on two pages, had her point out all of the letters and we talked about the words. Then she did her best to copy the words out. She also made a picture with her two hands traced and the word THANKS at the top later that day, because she enjoyed her Thanksgiving theme so much and didn’t want to be finished with it. 🙂
Can you guess what that blessing is? Yep, you guessed it! We are expecting our third little pumpkin…errr…baby!!! 🙂
Tiebreaker!
As you can see, blessings #1 and #2 are quite excited about the eventual arrival of another little cutie patootie! Now the competition starts…who will win the tiebreaker? 😉 Our five year old is rooting for a girl, if you couldn’t guess that. Our two and a half year old isn’t old enough to know to have a preference. He just wants a “baaaaby”. Mommy & Daddy are with him on that.
I am just hoping this pregnancy goes much smoother than either of my first two, and have lots of hope that it will. I may just have to post about that later, but I’m not ready to go there yet. For now, I’m just happy about the expected blessing and riding the waves of nausea and rollercoaster energy levels.
Black Friday week savings are AMAZING at CVS!!! There are over 30 freebies, and I was able to score quite a few of them. It’s really easy compared to usual, since they’re mostly free even without any extra coupons. There are even more terrific deals than I’m sharing, if you want to do some research and scan ads, but this was what was simple for me to take advantage of with two less than patient planning and shopping companions. I riproaring tickled with my bounty as is! 🙂
I walked into CVS with $13 ECB leftover from a previous shopping trip. I paid $21.93 out of pocket, have $12 in Extra Care Bucks leftover, and still have a $12.99 rebate to send in. That being said, I am eventually going to be paid $3.06 for buying $135.40 worth of great stuff!! Can anybody give me a “WOOHOO!!!”?? LOL My four year old is not very cooperative with searching for sale items, so I had her hunting for things and toting a basket, all with the goal of earning a (free) pack of gum if she was helpful instead of acting up. Yes, she earned her gum. Yes, that is the part of the trip she bragged about the most. That and the fact that she believes we saved enough money in this shopping trip to buy her most desired gift for Christmas. 🙂
So, to break it down:
$13 Extra Care Bucks walking in
$21.93 paid out of pocket
4 Transactions (I put some of the higher priced items on the first two purchases to carry the ECB to the next)
$135.40 Value
$12 Extra Care Bucks and a $12.99 rebate leftover
PAID $3.06 for taking these goodies off of their hands!!!
Here is your list of things you can buy for free, nearly free or even be paid to take home! I printed my list off and gave myself a rough list on the back of the main items to put on my transactions (I planned on 3) so I wouldn’t pay a ton out of pocket…
99¢ ECB wyb Ricola Extra Strength, 4 ct 99¢ Limit 1 Final Price: FREE
99¢ ECB wyb CVS Training Pants 2 ct or CVS Ultra Soft Cleansing Cloths, 12 ct., 99¢ Limit 1 Final Price: FREE
$3 ECB wyb (2) Starbucks Refreshers or Doubleshots 2/$3 Limit 1 Final Price: FREE
$2.37 ECB wyb Children’s Advil 1 oz., $2.37 Limit 1 If you can find an Children’s Advil coupon, this is a moneymaker. Final Price: FREE/MONEYMAKER!
$2 ECB wyb Right Guard Total Defense Deodorant, $2.99 Limit 1 Use coupons you can print at Swagbucks earning points or at coupons.com without signing up or earning points, plus you can ear Saving Star money on this. Final Price: Around 50 cents after Saving Star payment.
$12.99 ECB wyb CVS True Result Blood glucose monitoring system $12.99 Limit 1 Mine had a rebate in it to get the complete price back. Final Price: FREE or a $12.99 moneymaker
Colgate Total 4-4.2 oz., $3 Use $2.50/1 Colgate Total CVS COUPON Printer and there are Colgate coupons in prior papers, if you have them. Final Price: FREE or 50 cents
I was also able to get some bags of Christmas Reeses candy for pretty much free after their deals and stacking grocery & in store coupons. Supreme protein bars for the hubby were only about $1 each, which is less than 1/3 of the price, after in store coupons, Extra care bucks and a printed coupon. Sodas are 69 cents apiece, so I just threw a couple of those in. I wanted toothbrushes as stocking stuffers for the kiddos, and the Clifford ones you see were extremely cheap after in store coupon and Extra Care Bucks. The coupons on the protein bars and Reeses candy coupons are available on coupons.com and Swagbucks, as well.
What are you most excited about getting for free?
If you want to join Swagbucks or Saving Star, check out my posts on those programs:
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