Harvest Week

This week was harvest week!  I was a little stumped on how to introduce this concept to the girls, as cattle are the main "crop" that is harvested in our immediate area, and that's not a harvest I'm ready to talk about!   We focused on corn, hay, acorns, etc. instead and we had lots of fun!

The week started off with a bang (or pop, if you will!) as the girls got to pop and eat some corn in our electric popcorn popper!  They weren't so sure at first (their hands on their hips is cracking me up!)...

But before long they were laughing, jumping and making up a popcorn dance!

Snacks are always more fun whe you get to help "make" them.

We have a great need for hay in our area and there are many open fields (and small ones) used just for that purpose.  Right now, some of those fields are being cut and harvested.  

The girls and I found a good paint brush stick and pulled some hay from a hay bale at our barn and make our own paintbrushes.

They enjoyed smearing, swirling and painting (and, yes, ou sweet dog, Ella, is quietly in the middle of everything these days!).

This girl likes to paint with a brush.

This girl wanted hers to stay neat and clean.  She was upset she got paint on the brush and just wanted to use her hands!

It didn't take them long at all, but they had fun.

Our second, and very time consuming, craft was also a favorite.  It was all about corn!  This craft had many stages and parts (probably a little too much, but they did fine) that we broke down over the week.

First we decoupaged tissue paper onto corn husks.

Then we finger painted corn cobs using smearing and dabbing.

The girls worked so hard!  "I yike big cwafts, Mama!" says Charlotte.

After everything was painted and decoupaged, the girls got some cutting practice with their corn cobs and husks.  They also got practice gluing and placing the parts of the corn.  

Then we added bubble wrap for texture and pop corn seeds to our corn.

They came out sooo cute!  

It also helped them mentally link that corn, pop corn and corn cobs go together.  We even ate corn for dinner a couple of nights.

There's not a lot of harvesting corn in our area, but my parents do have persimmon trees, so we went over to harvest persimmons!

We didn't have enough ripe, unblemished persimmons to make muffins or bread, but we will pick again soon.

But, we were able to enjoy harvesting the few we got!

And we were outside in the beautiful Fall sunshine.

And the girls were cute.  : )

While we were outside, a friend who is also from China came to harvest the persimmons as well!  It was fun to talk to her about the girls and their birth country.  She gave the girls a sweet gift of some ceramic animals from a trip to China.  They have enjoyed playing with these special, breakable big girl toys.  : )

We may not have been able to harvest a lot of food this week, but we harvested lots of fun, learning and memories!

Happy Harvest!