Homeschool Kindergarten and Preschool: Week 10Thanksgiving!

One of the easiest and our favorite craft for this time of year was the Give Thanks banner we made from a variety of beans, glue, yarn and construction paper. I wrote out the letters on the construction paper, the boys and I covered the letters with glue and the boys went to town placing the beans on the letters. We will definitely do this again next year.


The boys and I went shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes a few weeks back...and Penny went to. That is going to take some getting use to, I am so accustomed to saying just the "boys" :) The boys picked out some toy trucks, stickers, harmonicas etc as well as some fun toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap etc. We did this last year and Charlie really remembered the meaning behind what we were doing and was excited to pick out the different things to send to his "friend".
We had a lot of fun last week and did a BUNCH of school work and lots of fun activities gearing up for Thanksgiving.

There was also a lot of loving going on. Both boys are still smitten with their little sister :)

Tommy had fun playing playdough.

Charlie concentrated on Math and Phonics again this week. His teacher gave us permission to skip through a lot of the lesson since most of them are review for him at this point. I am carefully going through the lessons to make sure that we aren't overlooking any concepts that he does not know. I am excited to see him be a bit more challenged!

Both boys had fun with our Fall sensory bin. I added plastic gourds, paper leaves, crystal pumpkins, pine cones from Grandma Candace and a few trucks. I gave the boys some measuring cups, spoons and containers and let them go to town. They really enjoy these sensory bins and it really holds their attention.

We had fun making these Turkey hand print cookies. The boys helped with the entire process and had just as much fun eating them as they did decorating them ;)



They also completed some foam Turkeys that I picked up either at the art store or at the dollar store.


I also made a Cornucopia out of dough for our table centerpiece. It turned out ok, but I have bigger and better plans to do it again next year.


We read a few books about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate. I had wanted to make a Mayflower ship with Charlie but we didn't get to it...maybe next year.

We have so much to be thankful for! It was a great week!

Published

Charlie wants to be published in the Lego Club magazine. He made this super cool mobile crane and we are going to send this photo off to Lego. He thinks it is super cool that Lego actually publishes kids pictures and their creations. I think his imagination and mad Lego building skills are even cooler.

Penelope Jane

November 1, 2010
11:04 AM
8lbs, 21 in

Halloween 2010

Charlie wanted to be a robot and Tommy wanted to be a "Scary Skeleton and I am going to eat you up" for Halloween this year.

Trent and Charlie made his costume together. It was AWESOME and Charlie LOVED it!! It had all kinds of wires and lights, gadgets galore. The had a lot of fun doing it together and Trent was so cool about allowing Charlie to place things where he wanted them.

Tommy wore his skeleton pajamas and a skeleton sweatshirt along with some glove we found at the dollar store. But his favorite part of his costume was his face paint. After I put it on him he looked at himself in the mirror and started running around the house like a crazy "scary skeleton". He was so funny!

We stopped by our friends house to take a picture with Miss Mags, the Monarch Butterfly.

Tommy and Daddy carving a scary face on the pumpkin.


Charlie took control of his pumpkin this year.

We went trick or treating on our favorite street in Mayfield and Grandma Candace came along too. The whole street decorates and participates in trick or treating. One house pulls their pick up truck up on the front yard and has the car and yard decked out in scary garb. They don't just hand out candy but actual Halloween toys that glow in the dark etc. They also have a "scary chain saw guy" who runs around and chases the older kids with his reeved up saw (with chain removed). The boys are fascinated, scared to death but LOVE it and ask to go to that house first.

It was a great Halloween. We had so much fun trick or treating and watching the boys. It is amazing how much they change from year to year. It was so fun to watch how involved they wanted to be in putting together their costumes together and how brave and excited they were to get their "treats". I just love spending these moments with our boys, together as a family.

Lake Farm Park

Our last family of 4 field trip was to Lake Farm Park, one of our favorite places to visit. We have a yearly membership there and never grow tired of all they have to offer. We decided to go the day before I was to be induced with Miss Penny.

Charlie and the big shovel, Tommy and the great tomato
We visited the green house, looked at all the plants and played a few games about bees and pollenation.

The ponies were out and the boys both wanted to go for a ride.

(Tom)
Tommy was a bit nervous but once he saw how much fun Charlie had on the ride, then he was eager to have his turn.

(Charlie)

(Trent showing Mommy pig who was boss)
We also stopped by the barn and saw the new born piggies. They were about 2 weeks old and so cute. The boys loved petting them. Their mommy piggy was being a little aggressive and was kind of charging the gate (which I happened to be kneeling down by to pet one of her babies).

Charlie petting baby pigs

It was great cool Fall afternoon with our boys. We had a great time just taking our time and being together.

Charlie's Natural History Museum Classes (Monkey & Spiders)

I thought it would be fun to sign Charlie up for some classes at the Natural History Museum to do with Daddy, once a month on Saturdays. Not only do they offer some supplemental hours for his K12 school, but most importantly they give Daddy and Charlie to spend the morning together, just the two of them.

Charlie's first class was in September and they studied Monkeys. They made a monkey mask, looked for Monkey's through out the museum, learned about different kinds of monkeys like the spider monkey and had different monkey themed activity centers set up around the Discovery Room.

Last weekend Charlie and Daddy went to his October class that was on spiders. hey learned different facts about spiders, listened spider stories, had themed spider activities, looked at a real spider and made a fun spider and water spout craft
.

Apple Picking

Every year we have wanted to go apple picking but haven't gotten around to doing so. This year we made out way out to Eddy's Orchard and picked apples to our hearts content.

It was such a nice Fall day, cool, crisp air, slightly overcast with a mix of brilliant blue skies and warm sun rays.

It was so relaxing, not busy at all with crowds of people, and just a great family outing. Not to mention that we never want to buy apples at the grocery store again!!!

Wow, it is amazing the difference FRESH off the tree apples taste!

I think we all ate about 3 apples in our 30+ minutes that we picked, they are that good!
We will definitely be apple picking in the future. In fact we had to tell Tommy we would go back as soon as we ate all 18lbs of apples that we picked.
Which will probably be next week :)