Going Batty

C loves bats. In fact, his favorite stuffed animal is a vampire bat! Last Christmas, we let each of our children choose an animal to adopt through WWF, and C chose the vampire bat.



We recently found a Magic School Bus video about bats at the library and decided to have a day of bat fun. Books are always involved in our themes and we have a few bat favorites. We read Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and Bats at the Library by Brian Lies. Both of these books are wonderful and I definitely recommend them.



C and R really enjoy crafts and snacks that match our theme days. I found some good ones for bat day! The Enchanted Learning website has simple directions to make bat clips.


I drew bat wings onto craft foam and bat bodies onto black construction paper (I thought the construction paper would make the wings flap a little more and the foam bodies might hold up better). C and I cut them out and glued them to clothespins. First glue the wings and then glue the body on top of the wings. Then add googly eyes and you are done! I used a hot glue gun but you can certainly use regular glue.

We clipped the bats to our drapes and plan on making more for Halloween decorations. Super frugal and cute Halloween decorations! We might even glue on some black glitter. I know it's early, but my children have been excited about Halloween for months now.


I found the perfect cupcake recipe for our batty day, and they will definitely be reappearing for Halloween. How great is this?
They are super easy to make too. 1. Frost your cupcake (I may use orange frosting for Halloween). 2. Cut a Keebler Fudge Stripe (don't skimp on the cookies, the cheap kind don't taste as good and sometimes they don't have holes) cookie in half and push the halves into the cupcake to look like bat wings. 3. Place a Hershey's Kiss in front of the wings as shown above. 4. Add red eyes with red decorating gel.


As you can tell, we had a lot of fun with this theme!

Muffin Tin Monday

I am showing off our very first muffin tin meal today. We had a mermaid theme day, and the muffin cups were perfect for our lunch. The four muffin cups on the side of the pan hold shells and cheese, of course. The top row of the pan is filled with goldfish crackers, and the bottom row has ocean blue jello!

After lunch, C and R painted seashells. I'm thinking of a project that will feature those seashells another day.

Our music of the day was the soundtrack from The Little Mermaid. C and R love the music, but I often find myself explaining why they both talk about "body language" on occasion. If you recall, Ursula the evil octopus tells Ariel that she does not need her voice to get the attention of Prince Eric. This is the line: "You'll have your looks, your pretty face. And don't underestimate the importance of body language, ha!" My children love that line and recite it with great regularity.


Finally, we snuggled on the couch and read The Tiniest Mermaid by Laura Garnham.Another successful theme day topped off with our very first muffin tin Monday! To learn more about Muffin Tin Monday and see more Muffin Tin Meals, visit Her Cup Overfloweth.

Monster Mania!

We enjoyed our last theme day so much that we decided to have another one. This time the theme was monsters and we had a blast.

C and R love these monster books:

The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley

C is YELLING his best monster yell!

R is showing me her scary monster face complete with claws!

Dancing like monsters was fun too! Two of our favorite monster songs are The Monster Mash by Boris Pickett (click on that link and watch the animated sing-along; it's super cute!) and The Monster Boogie by Laurie Berkner.

C and R created their own monsters:

R's monster

C's monster

Finally, this Melissa & Doug make your own monster puppet kit
was just sitting in a closet for the longest time. I don't know what I was waiting for; it was a big hit. C and R created different monsters for the better part of the afternoon.The body of the monster puppet is a plain purple sock just waiting to be decorated with all of these very cool monster parts. All of the parts have velcro and are easily attached to and detached from the body.We are looking forward to our next theme day. What should it be? So far, we have had a dragon day and a monster day so I think it is time for something girly! What do you think?