Jack-o'-Lantern Pancakes

Using my pancake recipe (http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/02/pancakes.html), we created pumpkin pancakes for dinner tonight. 

1 1/3 cup flour

 1 1/4 cup milk

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

food coloring

Mix ingredients together. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter in a separate bowl. Add a few drops of green food coloring. In another bowl, add about 2 tablespoons of batter and a little bit of black food gel. Place the black batter in a decorating tool if you have one. Color the remaining batter orange by using red and yellow food coloring. 

I poured the orange and green batter in a hot pan and helped the kids squirt on their "faces". 

 You could do them without the black faces as well.

The kids really enjoyed their creations though. 

Crock-Pot White Turkey Chili

A friend of mine passed along a white chicken chili recipe that I was very anxious to try. I made my crockpot turkey breast recipe (http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/06/crockpot-turkey-breast.html) yesterday and had lots of extra turkey, so I turned the chicken chili into turkey chili.

Ingredients: 

2 cans northern or white kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups turkey (or cooked chicken)

1/2 cup diced onion

40-48 oz chicken broth

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. chili powder

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp. cumin

1 Tbls. parsley

3 tsp. oregano

Place in crockpot and cook on low.

National Grouch Day

October 15th is "National Grouch Day", and because my daughter loves Oscar the Grouch, we found it fitting to celebrate the day. I just made chocolate cupcakes in tin-lined cupcake liners (to look like a trash can). Using a grass decorating tip, I piped on green frosting, added candy eyes, and half of an Oreo creme-filled cookie. Using a bow tip, I added brown eyebrows. 

We listened to "The Grouch Anthem" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8IHMctrKCg while we ate our cupcakes :) 

Nature Scavenger Hunt for the Whole Family

It was a beautiful fall night after school today, so we decided to make a scavenger hunt our activity for the day. The boys wanted to pair up--boys vs. girls, so I wrote items on two brown paper lunch sacks. I just wrote some random fall objects on the bag: Rock, Leaf, Pine cone, wildflower, stick, green grass, brown grass, 3-leaf clover, tree bark, berry, something green, something brown, something red, something yellow, something soft, something rough, something circle, something square. We went outside and walked around, racing to find all of the objects. We met back up and compared objects.

Fall Tree Made with Noodles

Here is a simple craft done with inexpensive materials you may already have in your house.

We used grass scrapbook paper, but any color construction paper would work. Using tacky glue, paste your spaghetti noodles on the paper. Fettuccine noodles would have worked well too, but I didn't have those in the house.

Glue down tri-colored bow tie noodles. 

We added decorative stickers to dress up the entire picture. 

Caramel Apple Chocolate-Covered Pretzels

Ingredients:

24 twist pretzels

1/2 cup red melting chocolate discs

1/2 tsp. apple pie spice

2 Tbls. caramel bits

1 tsp milk

6 green melting chocolate discs

(The other ingredients pictured below are for my pumpkin pie spice chocolate covered pretzels: http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/10/pumpkin-spice-chocolate-covered-pretzels.html) 

Melt red chocolate in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until melted. Add apple pie spice. Stir. 

Dip the pretzels in the chocolate. Let rest on wax paper. Meanwhile, cut each green melting disc into four pieces. Attach one piece of the cut disc to the top of the pretzel with the melted red chocolate. 

Place caramel bits and milk in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Drizzle caramel on pretzels with a toothpick. 

Pictured below are both the caramel apple pretzels and the pumpkin spice pretzels. 

Pumpkin Spice Chocolate-Covered Pretzels

Ingredients:

20 twist pretzels

1/2 cup orange melting chocolates

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

5 green melting chocolate discs

(The other ingredients pictures below go with my caramel apple chocolate covered pretzels: http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/10/caramel-apple-chocolate-covered-pretzels.html)

Melt the chocolate in a bowl, stirring every 30 seconds until melted. Add the pumpkin pie spice and nutmeg. Stir.  Dip the pretzels in the chocolate and let rest on wax paper. 

Cut green melting discs into four pieces each for the stem of the pumpkin. Attach the stem by dipping the edge in orange chocolate. If you want to make the pumpkins jack-o-lanterns, add a face with black food gel. 

Slime Sensory Bags

These sensory bags are inexpensive and a lot of fun to play with. All of the supplies came from the dollar store.

We put one bottle of gel in the gallon bag and split a bottle of gel between the two quart-size bags.

To color the gel, simply add a few drops of food coloring.

We added google eyes, Halloween creatures, and gummy worms to our bags. Close the bags up and they are ready.

Halloween Activity Wall

Our next activity wall is centered around Halloween. I started by drawing a web on a large sheet of white paper and hung it on the wall. 

To create the spiders, I cut 4 sheets of white cardstock into four pieces each. I then cut black, red, and purple construction paper into 8 pieces. From the cut construction paper, I cut out circles. I glued a circle on each of the white pieces of cardstock. I glued on google eyes and drew legs and a mouth on each spider.

Each of the spiders is a daily activity. The spider hanging down from the web has the activity we will do that day. 

Here are our activities: 

Make pumpkin and Frankenstein faces on paint swatches

Make slim sensory bags

Use pumpkin seeds to create pumpkin pictures

Play pumpkin bowling

Make a hand print spider craft

Make a skeleton out of marshmallows

Make a haunted house craft

Turn the hallway into a haunted hallway

Make Halloween cookies

Paper plate Halloween faces

Make slime punch and watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"

Go to the library and check out Halloween books

Make ghosts

Make Kleenex box monsters

Carve pumpkins

Make a witch craft

Fall Tree Craft

We had some paper leaves left from my cousin's bridal shower last weekend. So, the kids and I used them for our activity tonight. We dipped their hands and forearm in brown paint and made a tree trunk and branches. 

When the paint was dry, we glued on the leaves with Tacky glue. That was the only glue that held the leaves down. We tried Elmer's glue and a glue stick, but those didn't work. 

Number or Letter Hockey

This activity works great for not only number recognition, but also for getting your kids up and moving around. 

Simply write numbers on pieces of paper and tape them to the floor. (This would also work great for letter recognition.) My son made a "hockey puck" out of an old roll of duct tape. He used construction paper to fill in the circle to make it look more like a puck. One person calls off a number and he has three hits with his stick (could be anything you have around the house--a broom, a horse on a stick, a plastic bat, etc.) to get the puck to the correct number. If he gets it right, he gets another turn. If he gets it wrong, it is another person's turn. 

If you don't have a hard floor you could do the same thing--just have the kids roll a ball or object to the correct piece of paper. 

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients: 

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup sour cream

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

4 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

Start by creaming butter and sugar in a mixer. Add the egg, sour cream, and vanilla. 

 In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture. Place the dough in the refrigerator for four hours, or overnight. (I have placed the dough in the freezer for about an hour if I need to make them right away.)

When the dough is cold, scoop out about 1 cup of the dough on a lightly-floured surface. Roll the dough with a rolling pin. Cut out your shapes with a cookie cutter (I have also used the top of a coffee cup if I just want a circle.)  Place the cookie cut-outs on a baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes on 350 degrees. 

Remove cookies from the pan and place on wax paper to cool. 

Frost and decorate. 

Roaster Liners

My aunt shared this amazing idea with me today as we prepared for a bridal shower. This saved us so much time during clean-up! The cheesy potatoes below were prepared in this tin liner and baked in the oven. When it was time to serve, we simply placed the liner in the roaster, keeping the potatoes warm all afternoon.

Halloween Bat Craft

This craft is incredibly easy for a busy school night. We started with colored toilet paper rolls I bought this summer from Michaels. If you don't have colored ones, either paint them or wrap them with construction paper.  Next, we cut out wings from construction paper and glued them on the toilet paper roll. 

 We used glitter glue and a sharpie to decorate the bats. I taped on some ribbon and David hung his bat on his bedroom doorknob.

Paper/Magnet Football Game

Tonight the boys really wanted to do something football related. We saw a picture of a jersey on a Popsicle stick and came up with this idea for a new game. 

We started by drawing a jersey to be used as a template. We traced the jersey on the colors of their choice. They decided to make two players' jerseys per team (one was a quarterback and the other a wide receiver or running back).

The boys wrote the team name and number on the front of the jersey and the last name and number on the back of the jersey. 

We took a piece of brown foam and cut out a football. We had some textured scrapbook paper left from our football activity wall, so we hot glued that to one side of the foam. I also hot glued a magnet button to the other side of the foam. (I bought a pack of magnet buttons from the crafting section at Wal-Mart.)

Then we hot glued another piece of the football paper on top of the magnet. 

 We hot glued popsicle sticks together to make goal posts. We also hot glued magnet buttons to the front of each jersey. (The boys made Broncos, 49ers, Seahawks, and Lions' players.)

I cut a piece of floral foam and stuck the goal posts in the foam. We used scrapbook paper for the field. 

 The boys used the end of the popsicle stick to "kick" the football. Then the player picked up the football magnet with their jersey and made their way to the other side of the field. If the opposing team gets the football magnet to stick to their own jersey, they can then try to get a touchdown.

Letter Sounds Recognition Activity

This method of letter sound recognition has been working very well for my five-year-old.  Using stickers of random pictures, little erasers with pictures on them, and other little trinkets we find either at home or the dollar store, he says the word and determines which tray to place the item in. 

If your child is like mine, he never wants to throw ANYTHING away. This works well for those little trinkets you want to get rid of, but they just don't have the heart to part with. They can store their treasures in the corresponding letter drawers. 

Math Card Game for Preschoolers--War

After receiving a pack of Duck Dynasty playing cards for Trick-or-Treating last night, my 5-year-old wanted to play something right away with them. 

I remember playing the game "War" from my childhood, so this became the perfect opportunity for me to teach him how to play. Not only that, I secretly had him practice the math terms he will need to know for kindergarten! I took out the Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces until he got the hang of the game. We each got an equal amount of cards. We then each flipped up a card. I used the questions, Which card has fewer/more items?, Which number is higher/lower?,  etc. It was great for his number recognition as well. 

If we both flipped a card that was "equal", we got to play "War". (Both players place a card down and then another card up. The winner with the highest bottom card takes all six cards.)

College Logo Candle Holders

After making the Halloween jars out of tissue paper, my oldest wanted to make a Michigan State Spartan jar. So, we cut a Spartan logo out of white tissue paper and applied it on green tissue paper with Modge Podge. For the full directions, see http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/09/halloween-jars.html

Crock-pot Potato Soup

This crock-pot potato soup is simple and comforting. 

Ingredients:

1 bag of Ore-Ida frozen diced potatoes

1 box of chicken broth 

1 can of cream of chicken soup

1 medium onion, diced

1 bag of real, uncured bacon bits, or any diced cooked bacon

4 oz cream cheese

6 oz shredded cheddar cheese

Place the potatoes, chicken broth, cream of chicken soup, onion, and bacon bits in a crock-pot. This can be done on low or high-- It only takes about 4 hours on high. Plan on 6-8 hours on low.

About 30 minutes before serving, add in cream cheese and shredded cheese. Stir until melted and let simmer until ready to serve. I eat mine with oyster crackers, although crackers aren't necessary.