We love to do themed projects at our house! When I ask Jasper if he wants to do a project, he is always super excited. I am so glad he loves to learn!

I have a degree in education. However, I graduated from college around the time many school were losing funding and letting teachers go. For this reason, I spent a few years at a daycare as their lead School Age teacher. I was responsible for before and after school care for 5-13 year olds. In addition, I was responsible for care during days off school and the summer holidays. Many people don’t think much of daycares. However, the daycare that I worked at required a lesson plan to be made and carried out each day. I spent years coming up with projects that would interest children of multiple age groups. I love sharing these projects with Jasper and coming up with new ones!

Pumpkin Patch Alphabet

We are just beginning to work on letters. Currently he is under the impression that every letter is called “E”. I found these cute little pumpkins on a great website that offers free clip art, called   My Cute Graphics. I love this website and I highly recommend it! They have high quality and cute clip art that is great for preschool projects! I created a pumpkins with a different letter of the alphabet on each. Then I printed them out, and because I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, I also laminated the pumpkins, before having Jasper help me hang them on the wall. Each time I handed Jasper a letter I said the name and had him repeat it (or try to). Once all of the alphabet was on the wall, I hung it in order and we went over the alphabet multiple times while pointing at each pumpkin letter.

We love to paint here! When we first moved to Alaska, all of our stuff was six weeks behind us. I bought a bunch of finger paints and for those six weeks we did a lot of painting on the kitchen floor (because our table was still in transit too). Now Jasper always wants to paint, or just mix colors together. I try to add variety to painting because he is still in the stage where his artwork is often just blobs on the paper. While I love his blobs, I’m not sure anyone else is too impressed with them.

Corn Cob Painting

For our Thanksgiving themed painting, I gave Jasper a corn cob instead of a paintbrush. This not only gave him a different tool to make prints with, it allowed him to explore the texture of the corn cob, and how to make it roll across his paper. He had lots of fun exploring the paint and the corn cob.

Cranberry Sensory Bin

I personally LOVE sensory bins. I think they are fun to think up ideas for and put together. Plus, kids always seem to have a blast with them! Sensory play offers so much! It’s a chance to let children explore cause and effect. They get hands on experience with different materials, giving them better understanding of the world around them.

I have wanted to do this cranberry sensory bin for a long time now. Last year I felt Jasper was to young to explore freely with cranberries due to their size. However, this year he did great with them! He squished, poured, stacked, strained, dropped, scooped, and stirred! This sensory bin kept him busy for almost an hour!

Thankfulness Tree

Jasper is only two, and I don’t think he really understands the concept of being Thankful. However, we discussed what Thankful means in terms of things we like and enjoy, and we read books about Thankfulness. Each day we asked Jasper what he was Thankful for. Sometimes to get an answer was like pulling teeth and often he just told us over and over again that he was Thankful for our friend Tricia. However, we attempted to get a different answer for every day, though we failed a few times. Also, not all of the answers really made since, but hey, he’s two. I created a tree out of construction paper and we added a leaf for everyday leading up to, and including Thanksgiving. On each leaf we wrote what Jasper was Thankful for that day. I’m not sure how much Jasper got out of this exercise. However, I think I will go back one day, read where I recorded these answers, and be really please that I had done this.

Jasper’s Thankful List 2017:

Nov 1st- McDonalds

Nov 2nd – Trains

Nov 3rd- Thomas, James, Gordon, Henry, Edward, Toby, Hatt (Sir Topham Hatt)

Nov 4th – A Pumpkin

Nov 5th – Cup

Nov 6th – Playroom

Nov 7th – McDonalds, Daddy, Calling Alisa (Grandma)

Nov 8th – Rhino

Nov 9th – Diesel

Nov 10th – Penguins

Nov 11th – Mickey

Nov 12th – Tricia

Nov 13th – Thomas

Nov 14th – Cats Doctor

Nov 15th – Juice All Gone

Nov 16th – Goofy

Nov 17th – Pizza

Nov 18th – Zeke (A Friend)

Nov 19th – Shelia (A Stuffed Animal)

Nov 20th – Cars

Nov 21st – Boom!

Nov 22nd – Books

Nov 23rd – Alisa (Grandma)

To see more of our adventures visit us at: https://www.instagram.com/fromthestates/!