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Taking Time to Play- The Pleasantest Thing
Carolyn of The Pleasantest Thing is an a expert at helping her children find fun and build memories. Please stop by her blog and check out her wonderful ideas. I love her Halloween Gross (Motor) Fun post. I will be using some of them when plan for JDaniel’s preschool Halloween party. I think the children in his class will love them.
My boys and I have had many fun experiences inspired by the Taking Time To Play series, and I am excited to be contributing to it today.
As a recent play date at the playground was winding down, my thoughts had already turned to packing up the diaper bag, the best way to transition to the car, and the dinner preparations waiting at home. Then we looked across the field next to the playground, and saw that the late afternoon sun left an enormous shadow of a big, beautiful tree.
My friend and I knew this was an opportunity not to be missed. She suggested we pretend to be squirrels, scurrying around the branches, looking for nuts and seeds, jumping, chasing each other, playing. Of course, all thoughts of leaving the park were left behind.
Our play date lasted much longer than anticipated, and ended in joyful exhaustion. We all played together in the shadow of the tree. The kids loved that we got into the game with them. It added that extra measure of delight that happens when adults join in on the kids’ game. I don’t recall what I made for dinner that night, but I clearly remember the squeals of laughter from our time in the park.
Lunch and Breakfast Ideas with Pumpkins for Kids
October has been a crazy and busy month. On Wednesday we went to the pumpkin patch with JDaniel’s class, rushed from the farm the patch was on to his speech assessment and then to a local park to visit with some playgroup friends we haven’t seen in ages. Thankfully the park is less than a mile from the testing site. The farm was forty minutes away from our church’s school where the testing took place. With so much going on I created lunch and breakfast ideas we could take on the go if we needed to.
With all that going on I knew I needed to pack JDaniel a bento lunch to have at some point. He ended up having it in the waiting area of the testing center. I was so glad I had brought it with me the testing ran over an hour and it was 1:30 p.m. before he finished. The tester commented that he had so much to say it was hard to move on to the other questions on the language part of the test.
Lunch Ideas
Breakfast Ideas
We have loved taste testing pumpkin relate products we have found at the store.
More Lunch and Breakfast Ideas
Breakfast Ideas Kids will Love
What is your favorite pumpkin product?
Lunch Idea- Fall Bento Lunch
Some of My Guest Posts from Other Sites for September
Guest Posts from Other Sites
I don’t think I mentioned that I have started working with the Kiwi Crate to contribute to their Recipes for Fun database. Here are some of the activities I have contributed to them:
A fall harvest-themed bento with a harvest moon and fruitful tree. I walk you through how to create this meal on the Recipes for the Fun site.
Here are some posts from right here on JDaniel4’s Mom that I think you will love:
Roll and Cover Corn Mat
Corn and Pumpkin Weaving
Driving on a Corn Stalk
Lunch Idea- Apples for Lunch
Apples for Lunch Bento
The top left section of his Bento box contains grape tomatoes. I am not sure that there are apple tomatoes so I went with a tomato that would fit in the box and was red. I thought they would look pretty in the box. I took an apple shaped piece of apple and placed it in with the tomatoes to make that section officially contain an apple product. When you are creating a themed lunch for a four year old, they like it to be offical.
What do you think? Apple juice or apple cider.
Creating a Tide Pool at the Beach
When we were at the beach we built our own tide pool.
Just a few feet away from us was a family building sandcastles with many buckets. I went over and asked them if we could borrow one for a few minutes. Thankfully they said that we could. It made filling the tide pool up much easier.
The water was very shallow that morning so I had to take the bucket out a distance to fill it.
When the sand and shells had been added, JDaniel announced that the tide pool needed a creature in it. Guess what creature it needed? Apparently this tide pool is the home of a human being in a bug repellent hat and a green wrist band.
If you like this tide pool activity, here are some more water activities for kids.
Ice Cream Game with Ice and Shaving Cream
How to Create an Exciting Water Discovery Table
15 Awesome Preschool Activities with Water
Spending Time at the Beach
He was so excited when I finally set out his suitcase and he could throw in his bathing suit and sun shirt. As you can tell from the picture above, we packed a few more things including his bug repellent hat. We didn’t have water shoes for JDaniel so, we picked some up at the store at the beach.
Our first day of the beach was sunny and warm. We had to apply sunblock multiple times on Monday. All that was on the agenda was collecting shells, digging in the sand and playing in the water. We spent most of the day on the beach. Lunch in our room was really our only foray into the hotel. I really don’t like sand in our food.
After a perfect day, we had a not so great day. We knew storms were coming, but had no idea that the lifeguard would post signs for no swimming and that we would get to see palmetto trees sway wildly in the wind.
JDaniel wanted to see what it was like on the beach after breakfast. He literally had to hold the hood of his windbreaker on to keep it in place.
Tuesday turned out to be a great day to be in the water park area and to visit the aquarium. The morning was spent in the waterpark area until thunder and a loud crack sent all the parents scrambling for their children and the exit into the hotel. The sides of the water park area are open to the elements and the crack we heard was really loud.
The aquarium was fully enclosed and rain free. We wove around each of the exhibit areas a few times to fully talk in all that was there. JDaniel loved watching the sharks swim over our heads as we walked through a tunnel that was part of an exhibit.
JDaniel really doesn’t care if a shell is whole or not. He really loves the different colors and textures they have. He would run ahead and shout, “This is a glorious one!” When I raced to see what it looked like it would be a few ridges of a broken orange shell with rough edges.
What a joy it was to getaway from our everyday life and just be together as a family! JDaniel is already asking to count down the days until we go back next year.
This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday.
Homemade Halloween Costume Parade
Then he announced that he wanted to be Chet the mouse from the same show. I decided that I could pull together a mostly homemade Halloween costume that would look like Chet. I told him I would start putting together the costume when it got closer to October.
Here is what we have for the homemade Halloween costume so far:
I bought JDaniel a fuzzy gray sweatsuit and a gray turtleneck as the base of his costume. When he tried it on, the pants looked a little short. I will have to exchange them at Walmart for the next size up. I also found a really cute mask on Amazon that has a squeaker in the nose.
The base of the costume isn’t homemade, but the rest of the costume will be. I need to make JDaniel a tail, some mice hands, and a trick or treat bag.
Outside Play- Apples and Apple Orchards Link Up
JDaniel took charge of the basket they gave us for gathering apples on the way down the hill toward the Jonathan Gold. An apple guide in the store had said that the trees in that section would be just the right size for JDaniel to pick apples from all by himself.
They were right. JDaniel was able to gather a basket full of apples without even having to stand on his tiptoes. The Jonathan Gold trees were loaded down with beautiful apples.
Then we headed over to check out the goats who didn’t seem to hold JDaniel’s attention and the bamboo forest which did.
JDaniel wanted to know if there were pandas in the forest. I told him that there are not enough pandas in the from there to be some everywhere there is bamboo in the world.
The best part of the bamboo forest was this little bridge. It looked like we were entering a foreign land while crossing it.
If you have an outdoor post with an apple or apple orchards theme you would like to link up, please take a moment and add the badge below to it.
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