Getting ready for Fall Fun in Preschool!

LaLa's big preschool pumpkin party is coming up next week. Her little class has a lot of fun things planned. I thought I'd share because I know a lot of mamas, like me, may be planning for parties next week!

Here are some of our food ideas!

• Chicken nuggets
  hot dog mummies
  found at www.Familyfun.com
  fruit salad in orange jack o' lanterns



www.familyfun.com

• chips
• cheese cubes or maybe fun halloween shapes
• grapes
• chips and dip
• Swamp Juice- I think I am just going to get some juice that is green or something...and add some plastic bugs and some gummy worms, but this looks fun!

Here are some of our activity ideas! I'm adding some that I plan to do with my kids and their friends too. LaLa's preschool is a Christian school...so some of the games have to be altered to be non-"halloweenish" and to go along with a Jack o' lantern theme.

• pumpkin hot potato
• paint pumpkins
• pumpkin patch to pick their pumpkins
• parade to show off their class costumes (her teacher is a fireman and the kids are Dalmatians!)
• put together foam pumpkins-This might be fun to do blindfolded...to find the pieces you need for your pumpkin...and we want to include the Christian poem for Jack o'lanterns (I'll post it on another day)
• I'm embroidering cute bags from Oriental Trading Company & parents are sending in goodies.
• Pin the nose on the Jack o'lantern-I'm not sure about this quite yet. Where can I find a huge pumpkin picture?!
  

Other cute activities that I think would be fun!

• the black cat hunt (www.familyfun.com) - we just did a pumpkin hunt in Awana with our class from church. Our lesson was about how the Bible gives us directions & guides us. As a treat & to emphasize what directions and guide mean, we had a hunt that took us from location to location with directions and instructions to find a big basket of pumpkins for all the kids. The instructions had a lot of "hop" "skip" "smile" etc. from place to place that worked very well for 3 year olds...and even my little 1 year old following behind them!





• Race to Sweep the pumpkins (www.familyfun.com) -I think I am going to do this for the kids at our thanksgiving meal. It looks like fun!
• Mash the Pumpkins-my girls would LOVE this. I found it on Melissa Hester's blog (look at my blog links on the right) It's basically hammering golf tees into pumpkins with kid hammers. What's the point? You get to hammer...need I say more? The trick is finding the hammers...the wooden ones with the tool box (Melissa & Doug) were at School Box for about 10 dollars, but maybe you could have enough at home and with other parents that you wouldn't have to buy them.
• A friend of mine has a little girl whose preschool class is doing an "orange party"...I know a lot of places do this too to avoid the halloween aspect. Well, upon searching for ideas for her, I found and thought of several, making t-shirts (orange of course & 2 for 5 at Michaels or trick or treat orange bags & only 1 dollar at Michaels as well!), eating orange foods, scavenger or treasure hunt for orange things, putting their hands into mystery bags of orange things...and guessing what it could be. Examples include carrots, oranges cut, etc.

By the Way, all or most of these ideas were found at wonderful sites like www.familyfun.com (this is my all time favorite site and magazine!) and www.parents.com. Be prepared to spend lots of time and have your brain go in overload at the possibilities! I'd love to hear some of your ideas...and yes, I will probably steal!:)

Mama Drama Rule #62: Don't reinvent the wheel! This is my philosophy for the week!:)