I picked up Which Way to Witch School on Amazon and we've read it at least once a day every day since then. It's super cute and is probably Griffin's favorite Halloween book. The book makes us giggle and the illustrations are entertaining.... and it rhymes which we love. She's going to be a witch for Halloween and is into ALL things "witch" right now which is cracking me up because when I was her age I was OBSESSED with the Dorrie the Witch book series.
I still haven't pulled out Fall decor yet BUT we did indulge some holiday urges with some after school activities based on the book The Spooky Wheels on the Bus.
I picked up The Pajama Zoo Parade after falling down a rabbit hole of "if you like this book, you might like this one..." and I am so glad I did! The illustrations are super sweet and the story follows the alphabet through a cast of pajama clad zoo animals as they make their way to bedtime.
When picking our our next Family Book Club selection I was immediately intrigued by Secret Pizza Party. All three kids are pretty pizza-crazy so I knew it would be a book they would all be excited about (I also knew that finding/creating pizza-themed activities wouldn't be super difficult!)
We've had the book Aliens Love Underpants in our "family library" for years! It's funny and cute and anything about underpants is going to make my kids giggle :)
Since our days are pretty packed now that we're back in school I spread the activities out over the last few days and we had so much fun reading, rereading and being creative.
Our first activity was probably my favorite. I drew out a bunch of different underpants and then let Mason and Griffin pick how they wanted to decorate them. They chose paint and so I ran with that. (Luke was out with my mom so he missed the painting - boo!)
I put all the printables for everything we did (including the underpants we painted) HERE. It's one big PDF file so you can pick and choose what you want to print - but it's all there in one location.
We let the painted underpants dry overnight and then I surprised them the next morning with this...
I strung up all their underpants on our own clothes line and they got the biggest kick out of seeing their work displayed (and yes... a couple are mine because how could I just sit by while they painted?!?! hahaha)
LOVE!!!
While the paint was drying on their underpants we worked on making their own aliens. I gave them each a little "prompt page" (also included in the pdf above) and they colored those while I got supplies ready. Mason's said "Aliens love underpants and ______" and GG's said "If an alien came to visit we would _______ "
I got out all kinds of paper, tapes, stickers, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, pom poms, etc. and let them just go to town. Mason picked all super hero paper and GG watned hers to be pink so I helped them cut out the shapes and then let them do their thing.
Their finished products turned out so cute!!!
Peek-A-Boo!
SO proud!
And can you tell what he said aliens love? Pizza!
I drew out a blank math maze, made copies and then filled them in with problems appropriate for each of the boys. Luke's had two digit addition/subtraction and then basic multiplication facts. Mason had one where he had to count and another where he did some simple addition. They had to solve the problems and then shade in the boxes that had a 6 in the answer. The paths were different on each of the sheets.
Afterward I wished that I'd left the instruction section blank because I could have easily put sight words in the boxes or uppercase/lowercase letters and had a reading/writing application as well.
The blank maze as well as the 4 math variations that I did are included in the PDF file that you can get HERE.
I also made this "doubling" page for Mason that we forgot to do. He was going to mirror the dots on the underpants and then fill in the blanks with "double one is two... double two is four" and so on. (I got the idea from HERE, but couldn't get their download to work so I made my own version. Mine is included in the big PDF file... see a theme? hahaha)
Next up we made aliens and their spaceship!
I drew out these three little guys (this page is also in the PDF!) and they got to coloring...
... While I cut a half circle out of a paper plate to make a spaceship.
I hope my pictures makes sense... but all we did next was fold the paper plate in half so the part I cut out stuck up like the glass bubble part of the ship.
I have zero pictures of the kids working on these because I was helping cover the plate in foil (not our original plan... but ended up being so cute!) and was putting hot glue dots in Mason's specified locations. ;)
I glued his aliens onto popsicle sticks so he had little alien puppets he could put in and out of the ship.
Craft face :)
Both my boys love playing on ABC YA and I found a couple of cute alien games that Luke really enjoyed.
This game is more of just a typical video game where you have to move the alien around and occasionally "flip" the world in a direction to get where you need to go.
Next up I whipped up a few batches of our favorite homemade playdough. I originally blogged about it HERE and it had been a while so I had forgotten how EASY this play dough is!
What you'll need is...
- 1 cup flour
- 1/3 cup salt
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1 cup water
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- food coloring
Step 1 - Combine the flour, salt and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan (GG was mixing the dry ingredients while the elements were off).
Step 2 - Add in the water and oil and cook over medium heat until it all starts to stick together. When some of it starts to look dry and it starts to form a ball plop it all on your counter and knead until it's cool. That's it!
You can add the food coloring while you're cooking it (before it starts to form the ball) or after it's all cooked (while you're kneading).
This is what mine looked like before it started to all lump together and cook.
This playdough is soft and not crumbly at all. It keeps well in an airtight container or ziplock bag and makes a great party favor. In about 20 minutes I made three separate batches... one for each of the kids.
I set the play dough out with a variety of other little supplies that I put together. I cut pipe cleaners in half (or thirds in some cases) and hot glued pom poms and googly eyes onto a few pairs of them. I also set out a few loose eyes, some star stickers and extra pom poms.
The boys got home from school and they immediately jumped right in to creating their aliens...
It was so much fun watching them use their imaginations and create (and then destruct and recreate).
Group photo ;)
The pipe cleaners came right out of the play dough perfectly clean (woo hoo!) and we had to force them to put the play dough away so we could eat dinner.
This was Mason's taco alien ;)
I pulled all of the pipe cleaners and googly eyes out, we bagged up the dough and put it all in one of these storage containers for play another day. And the trays that we use for all our crafts (and meals!) can be found HERE for under $20 for a set of 4... and they go in the dishwasher!
We watched this YouTube video and called it a successful family book club.
I hope you and your kids have fun reading the book together and picking and choosing a few activities to do ;) Happy Wednesday, Friends!
PS - this post contained a few affiliate links, which means that if you clicked on a link and made a purchase I may receive a small commission. THANK YOU!
