Summer might be gone, but that doesn’t mean ice cream float season has to be over. Swap out the soda for apple cider in this recipe, and you have the perfect fall treat!
Simply pour a glass of apple cider, then add two scoops of your favorite vegan vanilla ice cream and sprinkle with about 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon per serving. Bonus points for big milkshake straws.
Travis came home from school on Friday not only so proud to report that his class was reading Nate the Great, but also that he had a pancake recipe from the book for us to try over the weekend! We adapted the book’s recipe slightly for our vegan household. Brother and sister both loved mixing this up!
Ingredients:
Serve with maple syrup, and then you’ll be ready to tackle any mysteries in the day ahead!
Have you paused recently to make sure your child knows his or her address and phone number by heart? In this era of cell phone speed dial, a reminder on these necessary facts can be fun, thanks to these cute suggestions in Parents magazine.
The first two methods were just right for my toddler to learn the basics. While shouting out my cell phone number we clapped to the first three numbers, stomped to the second three, and clapped to the final four. Veronika thought this was a blast and was soon parroting along!
Then it was time to teach her our address. To the tune of Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone, we sang, “Where oh where does Veronika live? Where oh where does she live? At [insert address here] that is where she lives”.
Now it was Travis’s turn for some advanced learning! There’s no better way to learn a number than to dial it (remember all those old numbers you could dial from muscle memory?). So we played restaurant! He “called” my number on Veronika’s toy phone, and she was the restaurant owner proudly bringing our delivery.
Order up!
For a final challenge, I wrote the numbers of my cell phone on post-its and scrambled them. Travis got them in the right order on his first try. There’s great peace of mind knowing your kids can reach you in an emergency, so give these fun and important activities a try.
Fall weather provides ample beautiful weather to get out in nature and toss some learning into the mix! Here were three fun ways Travis did just that with recent nature projects.
Nature Art
First up was a standard nature walk, equipped with a baggie to collect treasures. Travis took such pride in finding just the right leaf, stick, flower, and more to add to our collection. I loved how intent on nature he was on this particular afternoon, pausing to marvel at birds in the marsh or bees on the flowers.
By the end of your walk, aim to have a variety of textures, colors, and items, so your child can make a fantastic collage once home.
After sorting through the items, Travis left the process of gluing down to little sister Veronika…
…who happily obliged and wanted to add splashes of paint, too! I loved that this turned into a sibling collaboration
Grow a Plant
We don’t always have luck making things grow around here, since my kids are handicapped by mom’s lack of a green thumb. But a potting project with a dose of magic thrown in was one we could definitely get behind! I found a kit for “magic beans” (beans with words and images that show up after they sprout), which were the perfect seeds to plant after reading Jack and the Beanstalk.
To start, we needed to get crafty. Travis painted the provided white pot with bright paints.
Once the paint dried, it was time to set the magic beans to work. Travis filled the pot with soil, then each kid made a wish as they pressed a bean into the dirt. Add water until saturated, and set your plant some place that gets bright sunlight for at least half the day.
Three days in, the magic beans were sprouting. After a week, we had a beanstalk worthy of Jack’s attention!
Although there’s always something “magic” about watching a seed turn into a new plant, we loved the added wow factor in this project.
Nature Word Sort
Finally, we headed to the park, where Travis sat on a bench and I challenged him to write down everything he could see…but didn’t tell him why yet. He proudly scribbled in the dugout.
At home, we looked at his list and came up with three different ways to sort the words. One obvious answer was natural vs. man-made, but I was proud of Travis choosing to also sort them by color and sport.
This was a great quick activity to get him thinking about sorting.
What are your fall outdoor adventures so far? Please share in the comments!
We adapted these delightful cookies from Superkind bakery in Los Angeles, thanks to a recipe in Country Living. They’re perfect with a cup of tea on a rainy fall afternoon!
Ingredients:
You can bring a smile to your kid’s face this school year when they pop open that lunchbox, even without fancy Bento boxes or food in the shape of faces, boats, and any other shape that comes to mind. Instead, simply coordinate lunches by color!
You can serve the following in rainbow order (serving red the first day, orange the second, and so forth), but we jumped around a little bit to fit weather or certain themes. Here’s the full spectrum that the kids ended up enjoying over a few weeks! And although certainly not necessary, it was fun to dress up in the hue that corresponded to lunch each day. Thanks to Parents magazine for all these suggestions!
Red:
This meal was served in the first week of school when the weather still felt like summer, so napkins with red lobsters felt right on point. The kids munched on:
Orange:
We saved this one early fall and closer to Halloween! Slip in a Halloween-themed napkin and serve up:
Yellow:
For a sunshine-y week in mid-September, we had sunflower-themed napkins and dined on:
Green:
Friends just might be green with envy when your kid pops open a lunch of green goodies including:
Blue/Purple:
We did a combo of the rainbow’s final hues, and the kids enjoyed:
Travis hasn’t had to produce a research project for school yet, but the basics behind researching and presenting are great skills to teach young elementary school kids. They’ll enjoy the exploration, plus be prepared when the times comes for their first such future assignment. Here were two fun projects Travis tackled at home, one even complete with a final report!
Project 1: The State of Things
His first task was to use the internet to research our home state. Whatever state you live in, a great first resource is the Internet Public Library.
From here, Travis wrote Massachusetts on the middle of a piece of poster board. Whoops, the word is so long that it nearly didn’t fit! We then had fun printing images to highlight some of the fun facts he learned, like sports teams, sites to visit, and our state bird.
Gluing everything down was half the fun; even little sister Veronika wanted to join in!
Have your child “present” their poster to you as a final step in the lesson.
Project 2: International Cuisine
The second project had no final poster, but it did culminate with a culinary report! Travis’s task was to select a country and research its cuisine and he chose India. It was a great chance to check out a few library books and read together about common festivals and holidays.
We also checked out an Indian cookbook and had so much fun leafing through images and recipes together. Whatever country your child chooses, have him or her select a recipe that sounds appealing. In our case, Travis chose a red lentil coconut dal…
…and a kheer rice pudding for dessert!
Make sure to have your child present the meal to friends or family before everyone digs in!
Learning to draw things from a bird’s eye view is a crucial step for kids as they start to understand and read maps. This was a fun activity (with a treat at the end!) to help Travis visualize our home as if he were poised up above.
I told him we were each going to draw the other person a map with a hunt through the house, starting at one point and following a path to end at another. Dessert (the always-vegan Oreo cookie!) would be waiting at the end.
It was fascinating to see how Travis pictured things, including attention to detail like his coiled stuffed snake on top of our living room couch, or the arched doorway between the hall and kitchen.
He was proud to make the staircase look like “stepping stones”. My surprise cookies were at the top of the stairs.
Then it was his turn to navigate my map, which proved to be an interesting lesson in how he interpreted my drawing. “Is that the couch or table?” he asked, for example, before finding his way.
X marked the spot and he found his sweet reward.
Here’s an adaptation from a recipe in Country Living, perfect for these first few cozy mornings that feel like fall. For a more classic taste, use cinnamon instead of the nutmeg and cloves.
Ingredients:
The kids helped prepare this as a birthday breakfast-in-bed surprise; it’s definitely a recipe with a special occasion feel to it.
When you think of pumpkins and fall décor, the color orange likely comes to mind. But this beautiful, more subtly-shaded pumpkin decoration feels just right as summer gives way to fall, when the world is still mostly green and hasn’t yet turned to autumn’s vivid oranges, yellows, and reds.
Travis has been very into ferns lately, so as soon as I spotted this front-porch pumpkin idea in Country Living, I knew he’d love it, too. First up was a fern hunt! We did a family nature walk and were careful to take only a few fern tips here and there, leaving most of nature undisturbed.
What a beautiful fern glen we stumbled upon!
Make the next stop your local farm or farmer’s market, because the best background for these ferns will be white, not a standard orange. Fun fact: these pumpkins are called Snowball or Ghost Pumpkins.
All we needed to do was glue down the ferns with clear tacky glue, applying a few strips to each. A green Hubbard squash added height and fit the color palette perfectly, to complete the ensemble.
How do you decorate your porch in early fall? Please share in the comments!
joyful parenting 