Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Happy Halloween!


One of our big Halloween crafts that we're doing this month is our Haunted Gingerbread House! We got it at Walmart for $8 (it's Wilson brand so you can probably get it at craft/art stores as well). It was already assembled which was really cool because we had problems last year with our Christmas Gingerbread house and keeping the roof on!
It was a goopy/messy bunch of fun! And for some reason, whenever anyone got the black icing, their mouths soon turned black as well....hmmmm...wonder why? :)




As you can tell, my son has always been interested in getting things decorated as soon as possible...the quicker to eat it my dear! haha.

His technique was to simply cover his two sides entirely with icing. It works! :)








My daughter on the other hand has that little artist thing kick in and spends so much time going over ever minuscule/minute detail. Do you see how ever candy of her door is placed just so. :)







Here is the finished Haunted House, they were very tickled with it and had so much fun doing it. Isn't that the most important thing! :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

PenPals Are Great!

The kids are working on writing to their penpals today. They are so tickled with them and it makes them both so happy when they get letters in the mail.
To do this and make it easier for them this is our process: We read the letter we've received. Then they tell me what they want to say back. I write it in letter form for them (hopefully we'll bypass this step soon, especially as the year goes on and with practice). Then they copy it over for themselves and the rough draft I wrote for them goes in the notebook of saved work. That'll be great for the future also, they'll have the full conversations to look back on.

October is here....

Well October is here...well about a week ago. It officially feels like fall. Those apples we picked are STILL sitting in my kitchen floor. We have done a lot with them. We dehydrated a bit (didn't want to do a lot until I was sure they liked them that way). And we have made apple pie, apple dessert, cooked apples, etc. The kids have had an active part in making the recipes so they have loved that. They also love showing off their creations to family members.

We have a surprise thing for Halloween that we're doing this evening but I can't write about it yet, they want it to be a surprise. It's a little early but it was cheap at Walmart and I couldn't pass that up. I'll try to take pics and post them soon.

I have to say that of all the time we have homeschooled, so far this year is my favorite. The kids are just doing so good with all of the work. My son has FINALLY stopped fighting me over work! He typically gets it done on time. Our math program (Saxon) is working out wonderfully.

We are even successfully doing journals this year. I had introduced them to my son back in K and 1st with no luck at all. We would do a few weeks then stop because he hated it, would take hours and fought the whole way through.

My rules for journaling are simple. Just draw a pic and write a story about it. It can be about anything you want. I also don't correct for errors in spelling or grammar. This is just to get them writing freely using their thought process to think of sentences and sound out words. I did print out a few different "dictionary" type pages to have at their disposal while writing. That seems to help.

My daughter though is a perfectionist, she is very adamant about getting it right. She wants me to spell her words for her. I don't typically because I want her to think of them. That's the entire reason I printed the dictionary pages, so that they can look up words if they want to, though they don't have to!

But overall, school is going picture perfect this year! We also have penpals now and the kids are loving that! We also joined our first p.e. group! Yay! I might talk more about that later in the week after our next visit.