Pumpkin Playdough?

It's Monday!  For the tot's that means new books on the book shelf and new table time toys.  I rotated a few other toys also.

On the tot table this week we have our new word box, two different sets of nesting/stacking cups,  color bears and cups to sort them into, and the Discovery Toys pegs w/board.  The pegs are also good for lacing so there are some laces in the jar with them.

 Jadon was so excited about the new things on the table he went straight to the table when he got up.  Did not even care about his milk tippy!

 Hmmm....what can I do with these?

They loved pouring and dumping the bears out of the cups.  We need to work on sorting by color.

This is my newest project

I am trying to work with Jadon on his vocabulary so I decided to create word cards for things we are talking about right now, basic things like shapes and colors, and the people in our world.   Here is an example of just a few.  I printed them on cardstock, glued them to notecards, then covered them with contact paper.  The Scotch laminator they sell at Walmart is definitely on my wish list!!  I plan to add to them frequently.  

Today we read these two books.  Jadon loves the "That's Not My....." series of board books from Usborne Books.  We have at least ten of them.  I thought I would get this one out since Halloween is coming up.  These books are great for teaching discriptive words.  They are touchy feely books and those are always a hit.  Another fun feature is that there is a mouse on each page that we like to find.  I highly recommend this series. Click here to find where to buy.

 Jadon skipped music time to look at "That's Not My Monster" by himself after I had read it to the whole group. 

 Our activity for the day was making some new playdough.  It was a group effort.  This was not just any playdough though.  It was pumpkin pie playdough.  I used food coloring to make it orange, and threw in some pumpkin pie spice to make it smell oh so good!!  Thanks to Chasing Cheerios for the pumpkin pie spice idea!

 Nothing better than playing with nice, warm, fresh playdough!!

 Jadon loves the playdough hammers (which are really wooden meat tenderizers I found on the spoon river drive for a nickel).

In case anyone wants it here is my homemade playdough recipe.  I don't remember the last time I bought playdough.  At therapy the first week Matt said that the therapist gave Jadon a choice between a jar of playdough and something else.  The therapist commented to Matt that she was surprised he did not choose  the playdough.  Matt told her he has never seen the jar that playdough comes in because I make ours.

Playdough Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 salt
1 1/2 tsp. Alum
1 1/2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup rapidly boiling water

Mix dry ingredients.  Combine oil with water, and add all at once.  Stir thoroughly, then knead until smooth as soon as it is cool enough to handle.

For a nice scent, try adding mint, lemon, or vanilla extract.  For fruity dough, mix in a packet of Kool-Aid powder (not the sugary kind) with either the flour or hot water.

When you add food coloring, try adding it to the boiling water before adding to the dry ingredients to make it easier to distribute evenly.

Until tomorrow......

"Each Days Comes, Bearing Its Own Gift, Untie The Ribbons"