October 12-13

And so our week, that started so oddly with a trip to an Urgent Care facility ended rather quietly… We took a light day with school as the kids simply were not focused, but I was determined to finish our basics. In what is now our dinosaur pattern, today was a drawing day and draw Emanuel did. First we worked out the name of the dinosaurs we have covered to date!

1. Coelophysis
2. Xiaosaurus
3. Nodosaurus
4. Triceratops
5. Deinoychus
6. Quetzalcoatlus
7. Tyrannosaurus
8. Sauroposeidon

So far we have actually gone 50/50 on our herbivores and carnivores and I DO promise that each of these dinosaurs WILL end up on the blog. I am double posting for a while just to get them up and out. I have linked everything we looked at and included our videos of choice. So, hopefully they will come in handy for other people! 

Drawing those herbivores

Very creative

We have finished our Halloween book… it covered the origins of a lot of the things we do and ways we celebrate the season. Really a great read though I am not sure the boys took too much from it. It is called The Story of Halloween by Carol Greene. 

Gavin finally caught a break and was able to do his SCARY Jack-o-lantern (whose history we traced back to Ireland and a bad man name Jack) off of our absolutely favourite art instruction site Art For Kids. You can find them HERE. Remember to join their Facebook site! 

Pumpkin patch

We have continued our work on the poem of the week. I think ALL of the boys will be ready to debut it on Monday! So watch for the video. Emanuel was absolutely excited to get a chance to learn it with the twins. 

Gavin wrote HIS spelling test again, and this week was a straight across 100%!!!

PROUD!

Saturday was a full day – we had not only our kids and Nana and Baba but ALSO the cousins (Gabriella and Zachary). They got here late Friday night when the kids were already in bed so in the morning it was happiness overload… inside, outside, up in trees… noise and laughter and tons of fun going on!

TREES

So Ken and I snuck out (sanctioned by Nana and Baba of course)… our first time out just the TWO of us in AGES. A definite necessary recharge! We drove a bit, walked through Jo-Ann’s a bit AND spent quality time just talking, holding hands and being together. I have missed our time together, when we left Canada we left behind a rather amazing network of friends and family who were often willing to take over the supervising of the minions. 

See the snood!

It was nice to not have to be somewhere at some time and still have the kids in the middle of a playdate! A movie and popcorn later and the day was over and the kids in bed. A success! AND Trinity’s owey is looking GREAT! YAY!

Bitty Baby

October 10-11

Middle of the week can be interesting, Thursday always feel slightly anti climatic, not quite Friday not the middle of the week. 

Busy AND productive!

With Tuesday being a tip to the library Wednesday was a READING DAY! We started with dinosaur books (I listed them on the Tyrannosaurus dinosaur page… which will be up… eventually). Our Halloween story of the day was a silly one called Cheech and the Spooky Ghost Bus. A giggle of a book and a great first one for our Halloween stories.

Story time

We did our next Halloween themed craft as well – pumpkin bags. We had to make them slightly smaller than it called for as I could not get sheets of felt bigger than 9X12 inches at Michaels. But the kids had a blast weaving the ribbon and gluing on their faces. Tiny bags they are PERFECT for our finished ghosts. Now I just need to get some black ink to make some fingerprint art!! One step at a time.

Making pumpkin bags

Ken found us a season of Word World for the boys to work on their simple language structure issues. I love how they give jingles for the sounds of letter combos. 

Word World

Thursday morning was exciting for Emanuel and Gavin… though Ken forgot the camera while he let me sleep in (seriously!). The tooth fairy left her tooth offerings under our fairy looms! You can make your own fairy loom HERE. She brought them Playdoh no less! I was told in great detail about how wonderful she is and how happy they are. I think a precedent has been set. 

We have continued on with our book work. In fact, Zander had a completion – the reading review book  I bought halfway through summer is finally completed. Gavin still has a couple pages in the same book and Emanuel in his leveled reader. I am so impressed at how much progression there has been in their reading. Even Emanuel is trying to learn the sounds of letters a little more. 

Zander and his finished review book

We started our second Halloween book but as it is the HISTORY of Halloween we are taking it as a two parter. BUT we finished our Velocoraptor book… Velociraptor by Janet Riehecky (in Spanish and English). Friday is a no new dinosaur day so tomorrow Emanuel and I are going to go through ALL of our dinos and make a page of the herbivores. Today we looked at the Sauroposeidon… arguably one of the TALLEST dinosaurs ever found. OH and then I found out that one of the videos we have been using – a Discovery one got this particular dinosaur pretty much COMPLETELY wrong! I will share those links on the Sauroposeidon entry… eventually. I am so far behind on these! Time for some two post days I guess. 

A bit of Halloween

Ken had a second interview as well. It went rather well with a potential THIRD interview next week with the owner. So please keep a positive thought and a prayer for Ken and his job hunt!

Creative boys