A week with fall and apples

Happy first day of Fall!

Die Cut Leaves - I pulled out my die cut machine (from Stampin' Up) for the kiddos to punch out fall leaves.  They LOVED doing this.  I suspect we'll be doing this all week.  I sent some of the leaves home in their bags the rest they helped me hang up in the preschool.

Fall Walk - Even though we knew there wouldn't be too many fall leaves on the ground yet, we decided to take a walk and see what bits of fall we could see.

We were excited to find this tiny slug on a pine cone (look at the top of the cone).  We also found a few fall leaves on the ground.  Our bush in front of the preschool steps has about 5 red-ish leaves and a neighbor had a few on a tree.  We'll have to look again in another week or two (or four - ha).

 

Stamping with Apples - The kiddos helped stamp apples for a project on Wednesday.  So fun!

This was a great way to cut the apples to make it easier to stamp with.  I saw this idea on Preschool Alphabet blog.

Apple Wreaths - Using the wonderful apples the kiddos stamped on Monday, we created lovely apple wreaths.

 They turned out lovely!  I just cut the center out of paper plates to create their wreaths.

Circle Time! - We read one of my favorite apple books:
 
Then we decided to try balancing apples on our own heads.  The kiddos did very well with this.  Here am I looking a bit overly excited that I could do it too!

Apples Up On Top! - This was an easier balancing act.  The kiddos glued craft foam apples on their heads - on a photo of themselves.

Science - Apple Investigation - We labeled the parts of an apple and talked about their functions.  Then we cut it open to discover the hidden star in our apple.  The kiddos were way jazzed about the seeds, they each took some home.  We cut open several different kinds of apples for tasting.  They were all yummy.

Silky Apple Scented Play Dough - Ok, we tried a new recipe today.  We mixed a box of cornstarch (12 oz.) and apple scented hair conditioner (about 10 oz.) to create a lovely, silky and yes a bit crumbly play dough.  

The preschool smelled lovely!  I found this recipe on Kid's Activity Blog.

Pine Cone Soup - Just for Fall fun, I put together a pine cone soup for the kiddos to play with.  It was warm water, cinnamon and pine cones!  We were amazed to notice that our dry pine cones closed right up when they got wet.  Nature is so cool! 

 Apple Baking - Muffins & Pancakes - We had requests for both, so we made muffins from half our batter and pancakes from the other half.  The kiddos were expert helpers at this.  We even had extra apples to make chunky applesauce with!  The kiddos helped measure in all the ingredients, then we let the mixer do the hard work.

Here's our pancakes on the griddle.   They were a bit thick, but still tasty.  I guess we should have added some milk.

Here's our muffins.  We made mini muffins.

Here's our chunky applesauce cooking. 

Tp Apple Cores - While we waited for everything to bake/cook, we made these super cute apple cores.

Apple Trees - We made these apple trees using squares of tissue paper to scrunch up for the lovely green leaves.  The kiddo on the right really, really scrunched his tissue paper up.  Ha!