Decorating Home for Fall

check out the websites for Better Homes & Gardens, Family Fun, & Parenting magazines. They usually have excellent ideas!

A fun project for you to do with your son is to do handprints in fall colors with paint to make "leaves", and cut out. Then you can put those on a wreath instead of fake leaves you buy, or on anything else you decide.

A cute Halloween thing I like is this: Paint the bottom of his foot white and do his footprint on black paper. The toes are the bottom of the ghost, the heel is the head. When the paint is dry, draw a simple ghost face.

I L. pumpkins and gourds for decorations. Simple and easy! Same with apples....great decorations!

Wish I could think of more, but right now my brain is fried after a long day. I'm going to check back here though so I can get some ideas, too!

I got a bunch of small plastic pumpkins from walmart (they were a dollar). I am going to paint them with glue and shake fall colored glitter on them. I saw ones already glittered up for sale, but they were expensive! So I figured why not do it myself, and have my baby help shake the glitter on them. =)

Go on a walk with him around the neighborhood and have him collect fallen Autumn treasures with you, like leaves, acorns, etc.. Then make a college together.
Another fun thing is find different shape leaves and arrange them on the table, then cover the table with butcher paper and show him how to rub with a crayon and see the magic leaves come through.
Go to the farmers market and buy some gourds, dried corn and mini pumpkins to decorate around the house.
When they are that young they appreciate the simple things.

Some things I've done with little ones...they won't look perfect, but they're perfectly fun:

Painting pumpkins with tempera paints. Little or big pumpkins, the babies L. to paint. Dress your little one in too-small pajamas (you can cut out the feet to make 'painting pjs' and they provide more coverage than a smock) or old clothes and give them a brush. Let them paint the pumpkins as they like. If you don't want the painted effect, let them have a brush with just water and let them paint pumpkins with this instead.

More painting: in the high chair, you can introduce red and yellow blobs of paint on paper and let your child moosh and mix them up with a brush, sponge brush or fingers. Then you can cut it out into a pumpkin shape and hang it up where your little one can see it. Kids get very tactile with paint. Temperas are relatively non-toxic (check the bottle first) and if baby gets a mouthful of paint, remove what you can and have them drink some water to dilute. They'll be fine.

Collect some leaves, press them in phone book and then let your child stick them onto a gluey sheet of paper. Likely, some leaves will be crumbled up, but it's fun all the same. Add some acorns,etc for a more three-dimensional effect.

Or do this together; make a fist-sized ball of modeling clay, sink a candle into the middle, and then decorate with seed pods and acorns/nuts all around. I know a few preschools that send this sort of project home as a Thanksgiving centerpiece.

One more suggestion for when you are ready: the book "Preschool Art" by MaryAnn Kohl. Wonderful resource to have on the shelf and offers a wealth of ideas. Most of the projects are for 3-5, but some can be adapted. It discusses, too, the importance of the "doing" and not the product in and of itself. Have fun!

I L. going to Michael's and getting gourds and pumpkins to put around. They're really cheap! You can get large glass hurricane lamps and fill them with realistic looking fall leaves and pumpkins/gourds for your table. I also like to put a garland of fall leaves around my front door w/ a dried sunflower and leaf wreath. All of this is cheap!