Bobbing...Apple Bobbing

This is one of my favorite YouTube videos...it makes me laugh every time and it's so catchy my kids will sing it all day long!

And here are my boys trying out this apple bobbing...

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Not So Spooky Pumpkin Patch

For some reason, book learning has really been a struggle this week, so today I decided to let my boys do a little hands-on creating.  They were excited the moment they saw me pulling out the "painting sheet." (Painting Sheet=cheap vinyl tablecloth I started using for craft-time a long time ago.  It protects the table and makes for super easy clean-up.  It was cute today to see the kids relate the tablecloth to painting without me saying anything.)

Drawing inspiration from an egg carton craft project I saw a couple weeks ago, I gathered the supplies and sat down with my kids to make pumpkin patches!

Usually I choose crafts that don't require a lot of preparation by Mom beforehand, but today I decided the headache I could avoid by doing some of the work myself seemed worth it.  Those steps included:

• Cutting a 12-egg carton in half so each of my boys would have 6 "pumpkins"
• Cutting a green pipe cleaner into 12 short pieces
• Poking a small hole in the top of each "pumpkin" where the "stem" will go
• Hot Glue the "fence"

The boys got to:

• Paint their "pumpkins" and their "fences"

Okay, so Beck got a little confused and painted his paint plate
 before I re-explained it to him

• Push in their stems 

• Draw on their faces

We were running out of googly eyes,
so each boy got one pair and  then  drew the rest of their eyes

• Pick, cut, and glue on the straw

You could use craft straw, but we had an adventure outside finding dry grass we could use instead.  On the way back home from the field down the street, we had a close call with a snake and barely avoided stepping right on top of it.  The boys LOVED that!

• Choose the best place to display their pumpkin patches for everyone to see.  They decided outside on the front porch so that Daddy would be spooked when he came home.  

Aren't those the cutest "spooky" pumpkins you have ever seen?

Happy Trick or Treat Night!

With the anticipation and last minute preparations, we took an extra day off from school today.  Hope you had a happy night of trick or treating!

School Blah Already?

Beck is still loving school, but I'm already in a rut.  Definitely going to have to get over that...

This week for school we're using this preschool pack from 1+1+1=1.  Today Beck LOVED working on the page of patterns.

Here's an update on our Changing Autumn Leaves poster, five weeks into Fall.

And today we had fun painting Halloween Rocks which Beck calls his "Halloween Cars that only come out at Halloween."  (This was our version of the idea we saw at Craft Gossip)

As for today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity, it took a lot of creativity on Mom's part.  Still working on the physical joys, we tried making letters with our bodies.  With just the two of us it took a lot of bending and turning.  It'd be a lot easier if you were able to gather several kids for this activity.  Regardless of how many you have assembled, it makes it fun for the kids to form their letters in front of a mirror (we were mirror-less, but used our reflections in the tv-that was Beck's idea!).  

It's Great To Be Able To Hear

We have cousins at our house today that are almost the exact same ages as Beck and Peyton.  It was fun to have them join us for school (and an eye-opener to the social skills that Beck and I still need to work on).

Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity focused on the sense of hearing.  I found this website with sound effects and had the kids guess what noises they were hearing.  Check them out here:

http://www.audionetwork.com/sound-effects

For the most part they thought this was a very funny activity; even if it took awhile to understand that they weren't going to see the noise on the computer screen.  Their favorite sounds were definitely under the heading, "Bodily Functions."

And then for fun we made Halloween puffball creatures.  

Part of the Body is Our Senses

Today we talked about the five senses.  It was a fun review for Beck and it was a great opportunity to teach Peyton parts of the body.  He loves to point at his mouth, nose, ears, eyes, and hands.

After dancing the "Hokey, Pokey" again (it's total chaos, but my kids have been begging for it since we first did it the other day) we decided to take a walk to the park and use our senses along the way.

We saw the leaves were changing colors and heard them rustling in the wind.  

The wind felt chilly on our skin and we could see it blowing the American flag.

This mailbox was our favorite site along the way:

We heard trucks and vans, wind chimes, and the stroller wheels going through water.

We saw the neighbor's horses and then smelled them, too.

We stopped to smell roses and a lot of other flowers.

We felt flower petals, sticks, the cold metal playground equipment, and wood chips in our shoes.

We tasted water in the fountain and our snacks when we got back home.

(We've scheduled the ultimate in sensory activities for tomorrow night when we'll cut open our Halloween pumpkins for carving.  Is there anything more potent than the initial smell of fresh pumpkin?  And what affects our sense of touch more than squishing your fingers through gooey cold pumpkin innards!)

Learning from Skeletons

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Halloween is the perfect time to be learning about and celebrating the body!  Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity is to make a body puzzle that will help your child learn the names and placement of body parts.  A few weeks ago I'd bought a foam skeleton and it worked perfectly to use it today!

We added googly eyes and a bright red heart to make the skeleton a little less creepy.  We identified everything visible from the skull down to the toes first on the skeleton and then on ourselves.  It turned out to be a great lesson as I found out that B was confused about which is the elbow and which is the shoulder.

Once assembled, the real fun began! 

 B was still making his skeleton dance and groove hours later, and when his dad got home from work it was the only thing B wanted to show him.

Check out this educational foam skeleton puzzle for more learning fun!