The House At Pooh Corner

Our family reads, alot!  While my older children are always reading something on their own, we also read as a family.  It's just a wonderful, bonding time for us! 
The little stuffed bear with very little brains holds a special place for each of us.  The older children loved reading about Pooh and Piglet, Christopher Robin and Tigger when they were little, and now reading about him to my three year old is giving them a chance to relive some of the magic that A. A. Milne brought to their lives (just a few) years ago!

The House At Pooh Corner stands to be one of our favorites.  The second of the four book Milne wrote about the inhabitants of the 100 Acre Woods, it is where Tigger is introduced, undoubtedly our favorite character!  The last chapter of the book, Chapter Ten, "In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there", still brings me to tears as Pooh and his friends tell a maturing Christopher Robin goodbye, knowing he is growing up and leaving them.  I no longer cry for these characters, but for my own children as I watch them transforming from child to pre-teens. 

We often find some activities to incorporate into the reading of our favorite books, and we built Eeyore a house, just as in Chapter One.  My three year old loved running through the woods gathering sticks and building a very good reproduction of Eeyore's, which is simply sticks leaning against one another!  As Eeyore's favorite food is thistles, my little son gathered Sweet Gum Balls and placed before him. 

The sun was to the west of us as we sat in the shade of the trees and read Chapter One again, singing several times another of our favorites from the book;

The more it snows (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
On snowing.
And nobody knows (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
Are growing.

My daughter added the final touch, the Eeyore sign she painted on a half of a small branch she found in the forest. 

We aloud wondered if, when we return, Pooh and Piglet will indeed have moved Eeyore's house to the other side of the forest, as the story goes.  For the sake of the magic still alive in my 3 year old, we may have to make sure they do.

"And by and by Christopher Robin came to an end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there, looking out over the world, just wishing it wouldn't stop."

Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies

Making Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies is a Halloween Tradition with us!  I help the kids, as needed, but I really try to let them do as much as they can on their own.  The kids will love decorating the cookies, too.  Let them let their creativity bring these happy pumpkins to life!    







For the cookies:

3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 cup room temp butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk


1. In one bowl, add the flour, baking powder, salt and pumpkin pie spice, and set aside.
2. In a seperate bowl, add butter and sugar, and mix with a hand or stand mixer.
3. In a small clear glass bowl, break your egg.  Check for eggshells, then add to the butter and sugar.  Mix until incorporated. 
4. Add 2 tablespoons milk.  Mix until incorporated.
5. 1/3 cup at a time, add the dry flour mixture to the wet butter and egg mixture.  Mix well after each 1/3 cup. 
6. The cookie dough will cut and retain it's shape better if it is cold.  Seperate the dough into 2 balls, cover or wrap in Saran Wrap, and place in refrigerator approximately 1 hour.
tick...tock....tick....tock....
7. Take out one of the cookie dough balls, and place on a surface dusted with either flour or powdered sugar.  I prefer the sugar, of course!
8.  Rub your rolling pin in either the flour or powdered sugar until lightly coated.  Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick.  Try to keep the dough the same thickness all the way across. 
9.  Take your pumpkin cookie cutter, and cut out your cookies, being careful to place the cutter to get as many cookies as possible. 
10.  Transfer the cookies to a prepared cookie sheet. I spray with just a little Pam.  Place in a 375 degree preheated oven for 8-10 minutes
11. Let completely cool before decorating!

Decorating the Cookies!

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. Meringue Powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
orange icing coloring

1.  Mix 1 cup powdered sugar with 1 teaspoon Meringe Powder, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and a few drops of orange icing coloring, I use Wilton.  Mix in about 5 teaspoons HOT water.
2.  You can use either a decorating bag with tips, or just a gallon size zip lock bag.  Just cut a very small hole at one corner.  Now fill with your icing.  Use this icing to outline your cookies. 
3. Use the same recipe, but add a few extra drops of HOT water to give it a runnier consistency to "flood" the cookies.  I add this to a small squeeze bottle and slowly apply to the cookies.  Use a toothpick to help spread it around.  Don't eat it until it's dry!

If you want to create a Jack-O-Lantern, make black icing and outline the faces before you flood with the orange! Be sure to let the icing on each stage dry, so that your colors don't run.

Horse Apples

In Texas, these are Horse Apples, but they are also known as Osage Oranges and Hedge Apples.

One of our favorite fall activities is to go hunting for them.  They turn ripe in the fall, and begin falling from the trees.  The kids have a contest on who can find the most, the largest, etc. at our community park.  It's almost like an Autumn Easter Egg hunt. 

Let me say that we take them from our park because otherwise they are just mowed over.  If we were at a state park, or a natural area, we would just leave them alone.

 Once we have collected them, we can put them to lots of uses.  I put them in the sensory tub in my preschool classroom, since they are textured.  We also paint with them, rolling them around on paper.  We have even decoupaged them with glitter, and hung them up as ornaments.

We saw them once at a Halloween party, labeled as Alien Brains.

Their usefulness extends beyond that of a decoration.  The fruit is said to be a natural insect repellent, and you can even find them in stores and online to purchase to keep in your home.  Some even say they can keep flies away.  One can only wish.

The trees which bear the fruit have an interesting history.  Native American would use the dense wood to make bows, and these bows were traded along the trail lines.  The sharp thorns were a suggested use for hedge fences before the introduction of barbed wire.  The wood was also used for fence post, and is still valued for tool and knife handles. 

Dinosaur Puppets

Meet Lenny the Longneck.  My kids and I had a blast making these cute little lunch bag puppets, then they put on a show for my husband and me. 
Thanks to Texas Parks and Wildlife for the idea and tutorial on their web site.  I may or may not have needed the tutorial, but it's a nice place to start.  Because what we sometimes need is a little inspiration.  Inspiration to turn off the tv, or quit folding the laundry, sit down with your children and make something....





http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/kids/fun_stuff/arts_and_crafts/make_trex.phtml

I gathered paper lunch bags, construction paper, glue sticks, crayons and scissors.  You could use hot glue or liquid glue, but with a 3 year old I "stuck" with the glue sticks.  I also used regular scissors and the ones that make jagged edges for different looks for the dinosaurs.

I purchased both the white and the brown paper lunch bags, but we only used the white. 

For this T-Rex puppet, my son colored the the bag green, then cut out the head and lower jaw shapes.  He used the jagged scissors to create a scaley look. 

This one was my little guys, and his sister helped on the face. 














My daughter cut out horns for her Stegosaurus puppet.  She also added a tail to him. 

This is my long neck.  I cut out a long neck, and glued it onto the bag.  I think the large googly eyes would be so cute on these, but we didn't have any. 

 This is my daughter's Brachiosaurus.  She added a pencil on the back for support, and then taped it down using left over masking tape from when we painted her room. 

 My son balled up a piece of black construction paper for their show, End of the Dinosaur Days. I probably should have labeled this with a Spoiler Alert! You can probably guess how it ends.

 I added a tree branch to my long necked dinosaur, using construction paper. 

 Here is a close up of my tree branch, because I thought it was really cute. 

My daughter added some red and orange construction paper flames to a mountain they already had for the volcano scene of their puppet show.

 During the show, my daughter's Brachiosaurus with the engineered neck support.  I'm glad I kept my mouth shut, because I really didn't think it would work. 

Don't you love the legs! Unfortunantly, the cute little dinosaurs were bound for extinction.  We had so much fun, I bet they get brought to life again.  Maybe there will be a sequel.