Sunday, November 3, 2013

My homeschool mother's journal: Halloween week

So You Call Yourself A Homeschooler?




In my life this week...I decided to dye my white couches over the weekend.  I love the white, but I couldn't take all the dirt smudges anymore.  They are now a Cocoa brown.  It was kind of fun, but I think I'm going to have to give them one more dunk in the brown to get them a little darker.  Maybe I'll share a picture later this week.

In our homeschool this week...

Aaron did his first book report.  Book reports are a new goal this year, especially for him.  I think this will really help with his reading/listening.  He did the paper book bag report found at the Magic Treehouse website.  He was actually really excited about this when I told him.  He loved finding items to put in the bag from the story, and drawing pictures on the outside of the bag to tell more parts of the story.  Then he presented his book report to the whole family at breakfast one morning before Daddy went to work.  The idea was that he tells about the things as he takes them out of the bag.  He was so thoughtful though and let his siblings each take one thing out of the bag for him.  Way to go!  Loved how he thought of getting his audience involved.  We also filled out the book bag report outline together.  He already wants to do another one.  Oh, and his report was about the Magic Tree house book # 50 "Hurry up Houdini!."

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Aaron also finally finished up the state of California for his Road trip USA.  He made this postcard.  Then he wanted to send it to himself so it would have a stamp on it.
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In science this week...

April finally did her first official experiment.  It's the Apologia General Science Experiment 1.1.  It is all about density and proving that atoms exist.  Pretty cool experiment.  I'd have to go get the book to explain it, but April totally got it, and even wrote a great explanation in her journal.  Aaron joined in with her for this experiment just for fun.  He thought it was fun to see how the grape, cork, and rock floated (or not) in different liquids.

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 Tot school this week...

 Alex had a lot of halloween theme fun.  I pulled out this haunted house building game I made a few years ago.  All the kids had fun with this actually.

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I laminated some leaves to do some counting with.
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 He did some halloween ball sorting
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He used halloween stickers to find the shapes as I called them out.  He started on the letter G tot school printables, and this is one of the sheets.
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In art this week...

We made pumpkins and spider webs.  We did a lesson on drawing pumpkins from draw, write, now book # 2 using oil pastels as you can see in Aaron's picture below.  He loves using oil pastels.  That's his pumpkin drawing.  This kid is amazing me with his art skills this year, and he is discovering that he really does like art!

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Aric got too frustrated with the pumpkins, so I'll show his spider web.  We used chalk pastels for this and used the Hodgepodge chalk pastels lesson.  He did pretty good, and I love how he decided to add a tree in the background.  It looks like you are looking at the spider web really close up how he drew it.
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Aaron's spider web.  He liked the tree idea and decided to put his web between 2 trees.
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April's picture of Mt. Hood for her online art class.
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Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share...

Don't stress about how each day is going to go.  Just enjoy each moment as it comes.  Do your best, and always hope for the best.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

We went to the library, and co-op as usual.  For our special activities this week... On halloween day we went up to Portland to visit a friend.  Ended up going to Chuck 'e cheese for lunch.  Then we rushed back home to go trick or treating at the outlet mall with Rya and her kiddos (our homeschool friends).  On Friday morning April's Scholar class (from co-op) was getting together to watch a Shakespeare play, so we dropped her off there and went shopping at Target.  After the Shakespeare play we came back to town just in time to join our friends at Pizza Hut to redeem our Book-it coupons.  (Pizza 2 days in a row wasn't originally on my plan, oh well!)  On Friday night we had our trunk or treat at church.  It was kind of fun to have one more day of halloween.  On Saturday Aric had his last soccer game, and he scored his first goal!  Then, we went to The Portland Aquarium as a family later in the day.

My favorite thing this week was...

All the halloween fun, and trick or treating with friends.

My kiddos favorite thing this week was...

Aric loved that I was a substitute teacher for his class at church last Sunday.  He loved that I had a fun train craft for his class too.  The lesson was about being honest, so we made honesty "trains."  Here is Aric's hanging up on the front door.  This activity was found here at the LDS.org website.

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Some photos to share...

From halloween

The kids' pumpkins...
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A skeleton...
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a green crayon...
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a crayon box...
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Merida from Brave...
(credit goes to Grandma for making that beautiful dress)
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The younger boys and their friends.  We loved trick-or-treating with them!
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My gang...
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Some of the trick-or-treating action.  We hit almost every store that was giving out candy.  Amazing how they didn't get tired at all, but when we go shopping they can hardly make it to 2 stores :-)
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That's all for this week!

I'm linking this up with The Homeschool mother's journal at So you call yourself a homeschooler.


Desiree

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