This month at RisingOaks | St Patrick, the toddler 2 classroom explored the fall season with engaging and meaningful hands on activities. One activity that the toddlers found engaging was decorating foam pumpkins using puffy paint and buttons. At first, the toddlers were interested in the cloud like texture of the paints. Using their sense of touch, many of the toddlers rubbed the paint between their fingers, noticing how it felt and moved across their hands and pumpkins. As they began to decorate their pumpkins, they noticed how the paints were thick and sticky, finding their paintbrushes stuck to the foam pumpkins. Evelina and Max explored the activity by dipping their buttons into the puffy paints first before sticking them onto their pumpkins. They then added even more paint over the buttons, creating colourful and textured patterns to their pumpkin. Audrey, Lalega, and Wyatt enjoyed placing large amounts of paint onto their pumpkins and using the paintbrushes to spread the paint around. Harjas and Logan, noticing that sticky texture of the puffy paints, used it as glue to help stick their buttons onto their pumpkins. They first spread a generous amount of the paint onto their pumpkins and then grabbed a button to squish into the paint. Harjas, at one point, poured a few buttons onto his pumpkin, looking to see how many would stick and then using his palm to press the buttons down. The toddlers were very engaged throughout the experience and had lots of fun experimenting with the different materials and textures. Many enjoyed the activity, and were eager to do the activity again! To expand on their creative exploration, we added paper to the table and invited the toddlers to make their own pictures using the puffy paint and buttons. It was great to see the toddlers excited, curious and being creative as they explored the puffy paints in different ways.