This is a great activity for hand-eye coordination and for practicing letter recognition and order for a name. 

To start, try to find a long duplo block with the same amount of pegs as letters in your child's name. I couldn't find one with 5, so I glued one extra onto a long 4-peg block. Then I wrote each letter of his name with sharpie under each peg. I chose different colored individual blocks and wrote on them the matching letters. If you don't want to "ruin" the blocks, I've seen this activity done by putting tape on the blocks and writing the letter on that.

Initially, I held the connected name pieces while he matched the individual blocks to the letters, but eventually he wanted to do it all by himself. We named the letters as he put them in his name. You could let them pick up random blocks and put them on their name, or have them look for the letters sequentially. 

​For more teaching and learning ideas, check out this page! 🌎

I think of all the ones I've done so far, this name activity probably required the least amount of prep. I got the editable file off of one of my favorite kid activity websites and once I inserted H's name, it generated several fun puzzles. 

​For more teaching and learning ideas, check out this page! 🌎

I am forever trying to figure out ways to trick H into doing crafts that also involve vehicles. 😅 
This one is fiddly to start, but super fun. I recommend using Crayola color wonder markers and paper unless you want your table colored by cars too. 🤪

I first did this activity to decorate a thank you card, but now that he's started "school," I've been having him practice letters, so this worked great for "tracing" those (lemonade and letters name-learning has diverted into learning the whole alphabet 😂).

To start, find a toy vehicle that is fairly tall with a tall back or front. I used a tractor and a hot wheels Lego delivery van. Then get a long piece of scotch tape and hold the marker up to the vehicle, uncapped, tip down and touching the paper. I tried on the sides, the front, and the back of a vehicle and on the back was preferred. It kind of varied on the vehicle too. Tape it fairly securely and let them drive! 🚙

It's less than 2 weeks until the spooky holiday (that isn't normally my fave)!! The best part has been seeing H's excitement to read themed books and do activities related to the season (and especially eat special snacks)! Here are some of my simple, but festive, decor and food!

I have very few decorations for each holiday, but I’ve tried to start using photos from past holidays to spruce up the house. So I started by getting this great Etsy collage printed (after a bit of my own tweaking) to display our costumes from years past with room for future photos.

I also did a super easy frame decoration to display my favorite photo from last year’s pumpkin patch picture. I had H put thumb prints around the border of the frame and I used a sharpie to draw little jack-o-lantern faces in each one. I used a little extra paint to do polkadots and stems, but you could use a sharpie for that as well. 🎃

This frame craft required a little bit more effort than thumb prints. I covered a frame with black paint and then painstakingly painted little ghosties all around it. Not my best work, but it was perfect to show off H’s ghost pic from this year. 👻

Last week, I had some friends over for s’mores and book talk, so of course had to have themed snackies. Pigs in a blanket are always a hit, so I tried two different methods. For the “spiders,” I cut beef hotdogs in half and then cut the ends into four pieces for the legs by making 3 slices. Then I cut uncooked Pillsbury crescent rolls in half and wrapped it around the middle of the hot dog. Once cooked, I used food dye and a toothpick to put two little eyes. I had hoped that the legs would spread out a bit more, but still cute.🕷️

The “mummy” pigs in a blanket were similarly fiddly to the spiders. To start, I cut an uncooked crescent roll into three strips. I stretched it out and wrapped it haphazardly around a hotdog that was cut in half, leaving a space for the face. I then got two tiny pieces of the rolls and squished it into a ball-shape and set them on the hot dog for the eyes. Some of the eyes fell off during cooking, but it still was a good effect! 👀

The Oreo spiders were H’s favorite of the snacks. I started by twisting the two Oreo cookie wafers apart and scraping all the icing to be on only one cookie. I just put the non-icinged cookie aside and ate them all later. You probably could put regular icing on one side instead of having to use two Oreos per spider just for their icing, but this way meant I got to eat more. 😂 Next, I broke 4 pretzel sticks in half and put four halves on opposites sides of the Oreo cookie for legs. Then I took another half of an Oreo with icing and put it on top of the legs to sandwich the pretzels in there good. Then I took regular icing to do dots for eyes. I used the rest of the regular icing and pretzels to make a “web” as display decoration. 🕸️

The skeleton cookies were the most complex, but probably my favorite. I used my favorite gingerbread recipe to make gingerbread man shaped cookies. H loved helping me cut out each one and I saved half the dough to use in a few months for CHRISTMAS!! But I digress. Once the cookies cooled, I mixed powdered sugar and oat milk to make icing and piped my best attempt at a skeleton. I broke sprinkles in half to use for the eyes (because I was too cheap to buy eyeball sprinkles 🙃). Delicious, spooky, and yet somehow adorable. 💀

I always try to do some sort of treat for H's friends that doesn't involve candy. Target supplied these goodies and I made some cute tags to attach to the outside. (click the image for a copy for yourself!) 🍬

And of course, the teachers need some fall-themed happiness too in this wild season. 🤩

Happy Haunting!