Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

This post was shared at: Our friends are starting to get very excited about Halloween! We decided that it was time to start taking down our summer decor, and opted to make a few spooky totem poles to help decorate our rock garden for fall. The original idea for the totem pole came from Family Fun Magazine . You can see our original totem pole in this post. Our spooky totems were a lot of fun to make. Some of our friends opted to paint their coffee cans. (I sprayed them in various "fall"/"halloween" colors as a base to get them ready for decorating). After we finished with the paint, some of our friends added pieces of foam and googly eyes to their creatures. Our cans turned out fantastic! Check out the cool totems we have out front! Here is the one on the right: The one in the middle is pictured at the top of this post. The one on the left has room for 3 more cans, and will be finished tomorrow when some more of our friends have an opportunity to join in the fun...

We have been focused on bugs for quite some time now. The children are not quite ready to move on from this subject, so we keep repeating some activities and I keep looking for more ways to extend the theme. One great way to make a buzzing bug I found in my Family Fun Magazine . The buzzing sound it makes is AWESOME! (This is the first video I have tried to upload, so if it doesn't work, please be patient with me as I learn the best way to approach videos! I appologize that the video is sideways, but I can't find my software to flip it, and the video is more for the sound than it is for the picture!) First, we had the children decorate a 3X3 piece of cardstock (We cut 3X5 cards into squares). Then each child chose a colored craft stick and 2 pencil erasers. The children placed the erasers on each end of the craft stick. Then we stapled the 3X3 card to the craft stick on both ends. After that, we tied a piece of yarn to the craft stick. The last step before using your buzzing b...

One of my favorite magazines and websites to visit for ideas is Family Fun Magazine. In a recent issue, I found this great idea for shaving cream prints. (If you click on the link, you will be directed to the online version of the article). We opted to use a Medium sized Plastic Tote rather than a large pan for our attempt. I found some shave cream at the dollar store that has a lovely fruity scent to it, and it is made for sensitive skin. We put a small layer of shaving cream in the tote and spread it as even as we could get it with a squeegee. Then came the fun part.... adding the food coloring. After the food coloring was added, the children were allowed to marblize the cream with their fingers, a plastic knife, or a small wooden dowel. They were creating their works of art in the shave cream. Dane made up his own little song for this part of the project, it went something like "cutting the cake, cutting the cake, cutting, cutting, cutting the c...