Yup totally clear and concise that title is… anyway!

On the suggestion of a good friend due to mass mosquito annoyance I decided I would love a bat house. How better to expedite this than to do a BAT UNIT that ends with Daddy and kids making one such thing? Yup totally being devious here! Enter the book Stellaluna. And all the resources here in. Which I will now share with you!!

First of all the book – Stellaluna… check it out HERE. Now onto the fun stuff. I managed to find a free lapbook on Homeschool Share HERE, and more helpful pages:

• Teachers Pay Teachers thanks to Promoting Success HERE
• About.com finger puppet craft HERE
• KidsSoup.com printable for counting HERE
• Classroom Fun has some resources HERE
• Little Miss Glamour Goes to Kindergarten has some helpful printables HERE
• For the pages I printed off on Education.com you can check my collection HERE
• We also used EnchantedLearning HERE
• And of course Activity Village, they are our go to place for printables HERE
• First Grade Wow has a fun printable HERE

For Halloween we really just went with the flow. Trick or treating… decorating for the season… We watched Room on the Broom of course. And of course, read the book HERE. I have a Halloween collection on Education.com HERE that you can check out. Oh and of course, Activity Village – HERE.

We had a few bat books we used for our unit!

• Bats by Michael George
• What’s Awake? Bats by Patricia Whitehouse
• We Both Read About Bats by Sindy McKay
• When I lived with Bats by Faith McNulty
• Outside and Inside Bats by Sandra Markle

I let Emanuel and Trinity assemble their lapbook as they pleased with minimal interference. It was a great wrap up on a unit they got really interested in! Seriously, there are so many interesting bats out there – our favourites were the fruit bat and the bumblebee bat.

We did a mini unit on Owls right after to continue our nocturnal animals/Halloween theme. You can check out my Education.com collection HERE. And of course, go to Activity Village for their printouts HERE. We had a few interesting books:

• National Geographic Kids Owls by Laura Marsh
• Owls by Josh Gregory
• Snowy Owls by Ruth Owen
• And a lovely story called Owl Babies by Martin Waddell

We printed out all the fun and interesting pages we could find and worked on a full on folder of interesting owl facts.

Of course all of this culminated in HALLOWEEN and COSTUMES! So enjoy the images! This year Zander was a wizard, Gavin a pirate, Emanuel a Storm Trooper (he demanded the light saber), Trinity Dorothy off of the Wizard of Oz and Miss Echo the Queen of Hearts thank to costume components from Aunty Shandai.

We trick or treated with our homeschool buddies for the first time! And did quite nicely.

All in all, a great Halloween!

It has happened… I am nearly TWO MONTHS behind on the blog… which begs the question… are we even INTERESTED in rehashing October? So I think, instead of a day by day reflection I will do an overview of some highlights. Let’s see…

We had a pretty amazing experience with working in pairs on the little guys’ Halloween lapbooks AND solo for the twins on their own. I have made up a resource page for our items. I apologize in advance for not linking up all the books but I am sure if you check your local library or bookstore most could be found! A library card is a wonderful thing is it not? Our Halloween resources can be found HERE.

We started up with the Pizza Hut Book It program once again as well. There is a new app to go with it that we are getting used to. There were a few hiccups. We had to just go by Johnson for their last name. No hyphenating. But the kids are so excited to be earning their pizzas once again. You can check out the program HERE.

Ken is also jumping in to help us finish our long enjoyed VOLCANO unit. He had a really creative way to show the creation of a volcano using wash cloths of all things!

This is another blogged resource page. You can find all of that HERE. We took longer than expected but enjoyed it all the same. Some years we bust through these major unit studies… others… not so much!

Of course in October we have Home Depot! November has TWO since they are not doing the normal one in December. Doubly difficult as we have our swimming lessons Saturday mornings so we have to rush from the pool to the store to make it there  before the program is over!

The weather is cooling and the kids are starting to bundle up. It is always a but of a shuffle to go through all the clothes and find out what fits, what leaks and what is worn to pieces.

our big excitement was having Andrew with younger brother Alex in to BABYSIT for us! Ken and I had one last chance to take burnable stuff over to Chris and Renee’s and wanted to really enjoy it. We brought Cousin Robbie along, had drinks and dinner and stayed out SUPER late. Andrew managed fine and is already agreeing to sit again for us!

The boys’ newest addiction along with playing Pokemon is to play Munchkin.. my boardgame! They are even attempting fair play with their siblings! NOT BAD!!!

To celebrate CANADIAN Thanksgiving we not only called Grandma to say hello but did up a poster of things we are grateful for.

Then to top it off we had dinner at KFC (a Reinsch family tradition). Nana and Baba came as well as they plan to be in Florida over the American one. HAPPY THANKSGIVING CANADIAN FRIENDS AND FAMILY (BELATEDLY).

We had some crafting fun…

A trip to Mall of America to thoroughly enjoy LegoLand and spend some of their Gammie treat money on a container of hand picked lego pieces! Not too bad of a family excursion. We also brought snacks which always smooths the road.

AND a homeschool special for the aquarium in the mall! Everything from jellyfish to sharks to a tide pool you could touch!

We snuck in a babysitting experience or two with the Schwartz boys. Jeffrey and his brothers are a family favouite.

Emanuel, Trinity, Ken and I went to a Scouts day camp that included siblings. Sadly we lost our rocket to the great unknown but did it every FLY!

Indoor games and colouring were the favourite with Trinity now in love with the idea of archery.

OH and a messy snack!

We got another dose of baby time…

Celebrated Daddy’s birthday with PIE!

Carved pumpkins… sort of… and sent the seeds to Future Uncle Ravyn for roasting! Aunty Shandai came over especially to share the good news! Mommy is now to be a part of an OCTOBER wedding! We are so pleased for them! CONGRATS YOU TWO!!!!!

We crafted it up…

You can enjoy our leaf experience in an additional blog entry HERE.

And see our Halloween AMAZING costumes HERE.

Yup basically October in a rather lengthy picture filled entry!

November 3-4

Our first weekend without Nana and Baba while they are on their Mexican vacation… of course Ken and myself ended up sick. BUT we managed to make it a rather memorable weekend… This was our first go at the Home Depot monthly kids’ activity. The age range is 5-12 so I kept the girls home with me where we made our own little craft using some of the Halloween colour themed craft supplies. Lots of glue and paper and of course some sparkly cupcake stickers!

Sisters crafting together

The boys went with Ken to the Home Depot nearby and did their first craft. They got an apron with their name on it and a pin for the craft. Each time they go back they get another pin for their apron! This month – turkey themed napkin holders.

Oops Emanuel’s eyes were closed!

They had a blast making them! When they got back I retired to the bedroom for a 3+ hour nap… totally meant to just lay down for a few but apparently was not in the cards! I did manage some cleaning, laundry and a completion in my crochet though after I woke up! Sometimes you just need to stop for a while, even though it DOES go against the grain!

Sunday was another lazy day for us. Ken and I needed to get over our colds and really we needed to stay in one place and just RELAX for a while. Oh and clean… bedrooms, sunroom, school corner… I am still on the hunt for Thanksgiving this and that and hope to send Ken and a kid or two to the library this week for some books. 

Couldn’t resist a picture

Miss Echo DEMANDED Ken put her costume back on cape and all and ran around for half the day all dressed up. Did you know that Death loves fruit snacks??? Cuz this one does!!

She just LOVES this costume

Death eating… fruit snacks???

Amazingly enough after my 3 hour bath (oh yea combo of cold and taking a day off I mean REALLY CHOOSING TO! CRAZY! I feel so lazy!!) 4 of the kids took initiative and coloured some fall pictures we are going to mail to friends and family this week… while Zander (#5) did some cleaning and found his missing US map (thank you Gammie).

Colouring!

So now, we have TWO maps up in the boys’ room – Emanuel’s Little Passports map waiting for its first adventure and Zander’s US map. I am debating starting a new unit study across the US… You can check it out HERE. I just need to budget in the funds to purchase! This who no funding thing is certainly something to  get used to! 

Little Passports

Ken and the US

So with Echo sleeping away in her costume and Trinity still hacking a lung I am keeping fingers crossed for a decent Monday. We are starting to talk about Thanksgiving, going back to our dinosaur a day AND trying to finish that Halloween book! I am just glad that the boys are starting to actually get excited about new projects and ideas! Especially about sending notes and pictures to the friends and family back north! 

Speaking of friends up North… here is Echo chatting with Aunty Esther!