We made paper plate gingerbread and they really turned out super cute. Not only did the children enjoy making this project but they also got lots of fine motor practice. 

You will need to have:

paper plates (we glued two together)
white yarn
black yarn or pipe cleaner
brown paint
paint brush
scissors
black and pink craft foam or construction paper
white sequins (optional)

The first step is to paint the paper plate brown and let it dry. While the paper plate is drying we cut out two circles from the black craft foam and two from the pink.  You can also use construction or cardstock paper if you do not have craft foam.

We glue the black circles on for the gingerbread eyes and formed a smile shape with a black pipe cleaner and also glued that on (you can substitue black yarn if you do not have pipe cleaners). We then glue a pink circle on each side of the mouth to from the gingerbread cheeks. 

The next step was to apply glue around the edge of the paper plate and press the yarn on to make the gingerbread icing.

We went around the the paper plate twice with the white yarn.  To add an optional sparkle we then pressed white iridescent sequins on the glue as well adding more glue dots if we need them.

You can see a video of this project by clicking below:
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This is one of our favorite shamrock projects to make! I printed the shamrock pattern on cardstock paper and traced around it on a piece of green cardstock paper. After the shamrock was cut out the children applied glue drops and pressed sequins on the glue. For easier use of the glue I put glue into small cups and children dip a q-tip in and then dot the glue onto the shamrock.

You can see a video of this project by clicking here or below:

Our room is filled with all kinds of hearts!!  The latest addition is our coffee filter hearts.  We helped those who needed it cut heart shapes out of coffee filters and then they colored them with markers.  We used just the regular crayola markers.

After the coffee filters were colored the children lightly sprayed water on the hearts which caused the colors to spread.  I lined the table with wax paper before the children sprayed the hearts with water and put the wet hearts on paper towels to dry.

Here is a wonderful project for fine motor development that goes great with a turkey or Thanksgiving theme.  You will need colored cardstock paper ... scissors ... glue/glue sticks ... sequins ... and wiggle eyes.

Children cut a turkey body shape out of brown cardstock paper. Next they cut five turkey feathers from five different colors of cardstock paper and glued them onto the turkey body. They glued on wiggle eyes and cut a beak and gobbler from from orange and red cardstock paper. They then cut turkey legs from yellow cardstock paper and glued them on together with the beak and gobbler. The last step was to apply glue drops to turkey and press on the sequins.

You can see a video of this project below:

I recently attended a make and take session and one of the things we made was pumpkin spice paint.  It is super easy to make but I felt the recipe we used was a bit too runny so I modified it a little.

To make the paint I put three packets of unflavored gelatine into a jar along with 1 cup of boiling water and mixed the two together until the gelatine was dissolved.  I added yellow and red food coloring and stirred until I had an orange color I was happy with.

The last step was to add the pumpkin pie spice into the paint.  I just continued to shake some in until I got the scent that I wanted.  Everyone loved how the paint smelled and were very excited to paint with it.

I let the paint cool down which also helped to thicken it.  The children then painted large circles on cardstock paper.  When they painted they could see the specks of pumpkin spice.  We let that paint dry and cut out the circle and glue it on to a sheet of colored cardstock paper.  The children cut out a leaf and stem and glue that on the pumpkin.  They then glue pumpkin seeds on for extra fine motor work.
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You can see a video of our pumpkin spice paint below:

This is one of our favorite fall craft projects to make!!  We do it over a span of two to three days but you can adjust it to fit the needs of your early learners.  We use large sheets of construction paper (usually sold right next to the regular sized construction paper) but if you do not want to make giant scarecrows you can scale the project down to make smaller ones.

You can either have the pieces already cut out for younger children to put together or have guide pieces set out for the children to use as a reference for cutting their scarecrow pieces.

You will need to have a head ... hat ... pants ... shirt body ... sleeves ... straw ... eyes and a nose.  You will also need to have various colors of tissue paper that has been cut or torn into squares.

Once all of the pieces have been cut out it is time to put them all together.  You can put them together any way you wish but I found that we had the most success starting with the head and working our way down.

The hat gets glued at the very top of the head and the shirt body on top of the bottom of the head.  You want to make sure to leave enough room  to make a face on the head.

The sleeves the next to get glued on and they should be glued behind the shirt body.  The sleeves can be angled in any direction.

The pants are glued under the bottom of the shirt.  We used three inch long strips of yellow paper glued to the bottom of the hat ... arms ... and legs to represent straw.

We glued the eyes and nose on the scarecrow head and also drew a mouth with a marker. The last step was to glue the tissue paper squares on the scarecrow.

You can see a video of this project below: