Latticed Learning - Monsters!

Learn while playing with Latticed Learning!  This week's theme has plenty of activities to go along with it - keep reading to find out more!

Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and purchase something, I'll receive a small affiliate commission at no cost to you. Thanks so much for supporting my efforts with this blog!

Welcome back to Latticed Learning!  This year, we're continuing to learn while we play - repeating many of our favorites from the past while adding in all sorts of new activities as well.

This day's post is devoted to our weekly themes - some weeks have more activities than others, but each lesson will be fun for you to explore with your little one!

Friday Frivolity, Halloween Edition

It's time for this week's edition of Friday Frivolity - the blog party for all things fun, funny, hopeful & happy!

Just wait until you see what we dug up for this week's theme...

Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and purchase something, I'll receive a small affiliate commission at no cost to you. Thanks so much for supporting my efforts with this blog!

At last week's party, we kept the pre-Halloween hype going by sharing some of the craziest costumes we've ever seen.

This week, we're concluding our Halloween series with general holiday silliness - and I've got some goofy memes for you, with plenty of puns.

We're also welcoming a new host to our party, so be sure to get to know her a bit below!

Easy Popcorn Costume

If you want to support what I’m doing with this blog, just follow any of the product links and order whatever you want at no additional cost to you.  That’s it and I’ll get a little bonus.  Thanks so much for clicking!

Last year, Gv was so still so little, it didn't make sense to haul her around trick-or-treating, so we created our own Halloween fun by holding a little book character parade, just the two of us.  This year, I knew she'd enjoy an introduction to the whole trick-or-treat experience, so I started pondering what would make a cute {and cheap!} costume for her early on in the month.

I was inspired by some laundry antics she engaged in one day - we have one of those mesh-and-wire foldable hampers and she'd started dancing around with it over her head.  I thought, "Hmmm, I could cut out a hole in the bottom, put her arms through the handles, and then fill it with towels and washcloths and she could be some laundry."

I headed to the dollar store to get a new hamper, because I only wanted to cut up the one we had if I could get a replacement.

No hampers.

I was so disappointed, because I'd gotten myself all jazzed for this idea, but then I saw this nifty popcorn box.

We love popcorn at our house and when I first noticed this box, I thought it would make the basis for a good gift basket (I still do!), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it might also be the solution to my costume angst.  I bought the box and headed home.

First, I measured the base of the box and Gv's waist diameter, to make sure she would fit.  I was thinking I'd need to create straps so it could hang on her shoulders.  I had an extra set of shoelaces, so I figured I'd just punch some small holes in the top and thread them through.

Next, I took my trusty utility knife and sliced along the bottom edge.  I popped out the base and then covered the rough edge with regular old duct tape.  Ideally, it would have been nicer to use white duct tape , but I didn't have any on hand and figured it wasn't worth spending another dollar to get white, when it most likely wouldn't show too badly on the bottom anyway (I was right).

I grabbed a white onesie and slipped her legs through the bottom of the popcorn box to see how it fit.

She wasn't quite sure what to think of this contraption at first, but quickly became distracted by the sound of a dog barking in the distance and completely forgot she was wearing it.  I left it on a good half hour, just to make sure she'd tolerate it on Halloween night.

I was excited to discover that I didn't need to do anything else - it sat right on her little hips and still allowed her full range of movement in her arms and legs - she could even sit down in it with no trouble!

Finally, I added the finishing touch:  wadded-up white tissue paper to be the "popcorn" in her box!  On Halloween, I also dressed her in some white tights, but that's just because it was a little chilly (by Florida standards) and I wanted a little more of a barrier between her legs and the gazillion blood-thirsty mosquitoes who were also enjoying the trick-or-treating fun.

Now that Halloween is over, Gv's been playing with this box quite a bit.  She'll put it over her head for a game of peek-a-boo and then pull it down over her body before stepping out to repeat the whole process again.  It's been keeping her entertained quite a bit - Bonus!
 

Do you have a popcorn lover in your house?  If so, this easy, inexpensive costume might be just the thing for you!  And if you have a larger popcorn-lover, you could easily recreate this idea using a cardboard box and some paint.  What do you think?  Will you be buying your next costume, or making it yourself?  I'd love to hear - leave them here in the comments or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com!

Linked up with Thrifty Thursday , Creative Ways , Mommy Needs a Time-Out  , Creative Exchange , Frugal Family Linky , Yes Works for Me , Halloween Blog Hop,  Anything Halloween 
 

Spookily-Adorable Halloween Decorations With Your Little Ghoul or Boy

  
I know, I know, Halloween's over and trust me, we're all about gearing up for Thanksgiving around our house these days, but because I was immersed in the 31 days of Great Children's Music all throughout the month of October, I missed out on the chance to share what we've been up to lately.

I figured I'd go ahead and show you these ideas now and then you can just pin them for next year.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet

I came across the inspiration for these ideas while searching for painted footprint crafts.  However, after last year's Christmas-gifts-to-family experience (footprint reindeer), I knew I didn't want to deal with having paint everywhere, just for the sake of a couple cute Halloween decorations.

So I decided to go the tracing route, and I'm so happy I did!

Friendly Phantasmic Feet

For these friendly little ghosts, I had Gv stand on a piece of white paper (I even used the blank side of already-used paper from our "scrap" pile, to save trees) while I traced around her feet with a pencil.

That in itself was an experience, since Gv giggled and wiggled as the pencil tickled her tootsies.  Although she moved around quite a bit, I wasn't worried about the outlines being perfect, because I knew I'd be tracing over them with thick black marker and could easily "fix" any wiggles that showed up on the paper.

The next step was to do just that.  I traced over the pencil marks with the marker and then drew in ghost eyes and mouths.

After that, it was time for the artist to go to work and add her own personal flair to the project:

Already contemplating her next masterpiece

I definitely recommend not cutting out the shapes until after your child has decorated them, even if he or she is older.  That was one of the main rules in my classroom, to always color before you cut!  It's just so much easier that way.

Now you just cut out all of the ghost shapes:

I know you won't believe this, but I did NOT make her color these in rainbow-order.  She did that completely on her own - she is SO my child!

You could hang these up in lots of different ways (from a string or dental floss, tape them to a window, or just stick them on the fridge), but I had these dollar store hangers that I'd used for word family displays in my classroom just sitting around, so I decided to hang them off of those with plain old clear tape.

We made these six for our house (yes, the larger feet are mine - I let Gv help trace my feet for those, which produced even more giggles) and then made a set for G to hang in his classroom as well as another set for the twins I tutor.  

We hung ours on the mantle and Gv enjoyed the little game G taught her of walking up to them on tiptoe and blowing them to make them move.

If you're doing this with a child who's a bit older, then they could obviously be more involved in this project (tracing, drawing, cutting), but I was really happy with how engaged Gv was in the activity, even at her age (about a year and a half old).  We spent a couple of hours doing this.

Between the ticklish tootsie tracing, the coloring, and the putting-on-and-taking-off of the marker caps, there was lots to keep even a young toddler occupied.

Frankenfeet

We had so much fun with that project, I decided to try out another one later on in the week.  This time, I decided to use construction paper:

I traced Gv's foot on green paper, cut it out and glue-sticked it (oh yes, glue-sticked is a verb) to a piece of brown paper, then used black marker to add the eyes, mouth, bolts and hair (over her toes).  I was planning to let her decorate this one, too, but she went down for her nap and so I just decided to let it be done as it was.  She still enjoyed the foot-tickle experience of the tracing and if we do this again when she's older, she'll be able to draw the features on herself.

I hung this one in the sidelight window next to our front door and gave the other one to Grammy and Grandpa to display.

Spider Hands

The same day we made the Frankenfeet, I decided to try tracing her hands.  This was a totally different experience (although still one full of giggles) because Gv tended to wiggle her fingers even more than her toes while I traced them.

I originally had planned on making lots and lots of these and putting them all over our front door (or hanging them in our entryway), but I could tell she was ready for her nap, so I just stopped at the one spider and put it in the window with the Frankenfoot.

I traced both her hands on black construction paper, cut them out and glued them onto a piece of orange paper, then used a white crayon to add eyes and a mouth:

 If I had made another of these, I wouldn't have added the mouth.  I also lightly outlined the body, which looks pretty goofy, so I wouldn't do that again, either.  I was also waffling between which way to position the thumbs - at the top, or bottom - which do you think would look best?

Two points if you just tilted your head over to see about the answer to my question. 

So there you have it.  Three really easy Halloween decorations to make with your little ghoul or boy.  We'll definitely be repeating them next year around the Healy House and I'll be brainstorming other designs to create and add to the collection.

Do you have any ideas for other characters we could make in this way?  What do you think about the spider hands?  Thumbs up or down?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

Linked up with Thrifty Thursday, Creative Ways  , Mommy Needs a Time-Out , Creative Exchange , Frugal Family Linky , Yes Works for Me, Makeovers & Motherhood , Kids Activities Blog 
Drop & Run, Halloween Blog Hop, Anything Halloween

Halloween Book Character Parade

If you want to support what I’m doing with this blog, just follow any of the product links and order whatever you want off of Amazon at no additional cost to you.  That’s it and I’ll get a little bonus.  Thanks so much for clicking!

  
It was my first year at home with a new baby and I was missing the fall routine I was used to having with my classroom of second-graders.

Gv was beyond the "slug" baby stage, but not yet ambulatory, so it didn't make much sense to consider dressing her up and dragging her around the neighborhood for some trick-or-treating.

I still wanted to do something to mark the occasion, so I went through my "few" books and picked out all the Halloween/pumpkin/fall themed titles I could find.  As I was reading through them with her, I thought about the tradition my school always had of holding a book character parade for Halloween, and decided to hold our own little one-baby version here at home.

So I dived back into my boxes of children's books, but this time I was searching for those having characters or themes I could dress Gv up to match using items I already had from around the house as costumes.

I was surprised at how many ideas I was able to come up with in just a few minutes:

Seeing the contrast-filled board book Black on White made me think of a onesie she had

I knew we had enough pink to dress her in, so I just had to get creative with a headband, pipe cleaner, and two pieces of felt (that I safety-pinned to the headband) to have her match this adorable board book version of The Three Little Pigs

G had a bunch of these hats from an activity he did in one of his classrooms, which of course was perfect for the classic kid's staple The Cat in the Hat !

Another pajama outfit that had me searching for a book to match - the feet of this outfit had ballet slippers stitched on, so I just added a tutu and she was all set for the sweet "God's Little Princess" book, The Pink Ballerina

These pirate pajamas had me searching for the perfect pirate book - the funny Pirates Don't Change Diapers - and a plastic sword and bandanna completed the look!

Another raid of G's classroom props uncovered these Minnie/Mickey gloves.  I knew this dress was close enough to match Minnie's in the cool foam board book Minnie's Day Out

Duck footie pajamas were the perfect companion to Ten Little Ducklings !

So this wasn't so much a parade as it was a fashion show, but it was a fun, free activity that made me feel like we were somehow celebrating the holiday and creating memories (or at least pictures for Gv to look back on and have a memory from!)

If you have a child who is old enough to read (or at least choose a book as a favorite), then you could have them dress up to match it and parade around the neighborhood.  You might even rope some neighbors into joining the fun and truly create an event to remember.

And if a parade doesn't quite seem your style, you could hold a book character fashion show.  Have your child search for books with themes or stand-out characters and then spend the day creating matching costumes from whatever you already have around the house, then hold a photo shoot to capture the fun.

Does this sound like something your little boo or ghoul might enjoy?  I'd love to see pictures and hear about it, if you try it yourself this year!  Leave a comment or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com. 

Also, if you don't want to miss a single minute of great tips like this and all the fun around here, be sure to sign up for free updates and then look forward to having each post delivered right to your inbox.  

Linked up with In the Playroom , Good Tips Tuesday , The Mommy Club , Yes Works for Me , Super Mommy Club Party, Creative Ways  , Thrifty Thursday, I'm Lovin It, Kitchen Fun & Crafty , Creative Collection  , Motivation Mondays , Merry Monday , Simple Saturdays Blog Hop   , Inspire Me Mondays , Mommy Needs a Timeout Thursday ,  In & Out of the Kitchen, , Thoughtful Spot 
Inspiration Spotlight Party , We Love Weekends , Totally Terrific Tuesday  , The Creative Exchange , Frugal Family Linky , Life of the Party Linkup ,, Halloween Blog Hop, Anything Halloween