Back-to-School Apple craft

With Big Brother at Kindergarten all day and the baby pleasantly exploring toys, Lauren and I have more one-on-one time and it's been wonderful.

Even though Lauren isn't old enough for school, it doesn't mean that she isn't equally excited. She squeals and points at every school bus that passes by and is proudly wearing her backpack around the house. She wants to do flashcards, "homework", learn to tie shoes, and all of the other things she has watched Turner learn over the summer.

In the theme of Back-to-School and Autumn approaching; I found a simple apple craft for us to do.

Here is what you will need:

Paper plate
Glue
Red tissue paper
Brown construction paper or cardstock
Green construction paper or cardstock

This was a great activity for Lauren to work on her fine motor skills as it involves lots of tearing and/or cutting and lots of object placement.

Here's what you do:

Tear or cut the red tissue paper into several pieces. We attempted to make the paper pieces about the size of Lauren's fist. Some were smaller and some were larger... the more diverse the better! Just make sure the pieces aren't too small as your toddler is going to have to glue each piece onto the plate. Lauren even enjoyed rolling some of the pieces up into little balls to add to her apple. Let them get as creative as they want!

She made tearing tissue paper look a lot harder than it really is!

 

 

While your toddler is tearing paper, cut a stem out of the brown construction paper and a leaf out of the green construction paper.

Now that all of your apple parts are ready, it's time to glue them onto the plate. We covered the plate in glue and started adding the red pieces of tissue paper. While it was drying, we glued on the stem and the leaf. After all of the pieces of paper had dried, we went back over the apple and filled in a few gaps.

Ta-Da!!

 

Kindergarten!!

We were all very excited to go to the open house at Turner's school, but as soon as we pulled into the parking lot, Turner started to freak.

He didn't want to go inside the school. He didn't want to meet his classmates or his teacher. In fact, he just kept repeating, "I want to go home."

Not what we were expecting.

We walked to the classroom and found his name at his table. Then, we found his cubby and put his school supplies away. We did a sweep of  the classroom and met his teacher.

Earlier that day, we were making pasta necklaces and Turner wanted to make a bracelet for his teacher. I remembered to put it in my purse before we left. I wasn't sure if Turner would be brave enough to give it to her considering how uncomfortable he was in his new class, but he surprised us all and politely handed it to her before we left.

The best part is, she wore it on the first day of school. So nice!!

I'm happy to report that Turner did much better during his phase-in day and wasn't clingy or sad when I left after lunch.

Is he enjoying school? For the most part. He gets upset in the mornings when I tell him that he has school and he gets upset at bedtime when I tell him he has school again the next day. But he does great during drop-off and when I pick him up after school, I ask if he had a good day and he always replies with a yes. Every day he shares stories about his day and he always says that he had fun.

When he gets sad about having to go to school, I ask why he feels this way if he enjoys it. He tells me that it's because he has to go every day and he misses playing with his toys and he misses his screen time.

I'm guessing that after a few weeks have passed, he won't miss those things so much because he will have developed friendships and gotten used to his new schedule.

Overall, I have to say so far so good.

 

 

Shaving cream slip and slide.

To celebrate Turner's last day at home before he started Kindergarten, we busted out the shaving cream and had some fun!

The kids played in the shaving cream for a long time and we decided that the best way to cool down was take a break in the shade and enjoy a hot fudge sundae.