October 17-18

This longer fall is still an adjustment for us. Where is the snow??? So we started our newest group project… this one a fall tree. Each of the kids got their own 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of white paper and some leaves to rub. Ken myself are doing our part by creating the trunk to assemble our branches and leaves on! 

Of course Emanuel had his dinosaur and the kids their book work. We had a slightly less enthusiastic spelling test with Zander getting 2 wrong. He focused on two words and didn’t pay attention to the sound the y makes in boy and by. BUT we are still happy to see he is reading the words that he has tested on later successfully and is proud of the words he IS getting right!

We had a few errands to run, our tulle stash was short a black… and we needed  to scope out the costume options at Target for the twins… and buy our trick or treating pumpkins. A dollar a piece and LOTS of options! 

Pumpkins!

I also had the twins decorate the poem sheet for Monday’s recitation… Their very own Elf up in a tree. I think they did a great job with the picture. Zander and Gavin worked together on it!

Great art

We have returned to Minnesota with a wonderful library book. Minnesota by Amy Van Zee. We are taking a lot of our larger books and more information packed ones step by step lately. Today we talked about the shape of the state and focused on the fact that there are over 10’000 lakes. I am hoping if we keep trying to come at the information about our new home from different formats and angles we will eventually get it to stick.

Ken and the kids finished up the day with Lego time! His special Legos!

LEGOS

We finished our special family tree on Thursday complete with a cat (Trinity), bat (Emanuel), pumpkins (Zander) and a squirrel with his nut (Gavin). Echo contributed her own leaf picture (at least we ASSUME it is an abstract representation on how leaves make her FEEL). 

Leaf assembly

Complete!

We started our Halloween themed poem memorization as well. A little more complicated as there are words like goblin in it which they are not used to using. I am so proud of Emanuel for standing with with the big boys and learning along with them.

As it was a day that started with the letter T we had our Minecraft day for the boys as well. The agreement is that they get Minecraft time and then draw a picture of progress or a favourite thing done and write about it in their journals. I am hoping to get them thinking more about processes, progress and other problem solving type things. 

Spontaneous mask creation via Zander

We had another art completion as well – Art for Kids is awesome. This time a junior Frankenstein! 

So well done!

We have had a bit of progress with Gavin’s cross stitch. He is thinking of gifting it to Daddy for his birthday on the 23rd but the big question is whether or not it will get DONE in time. I am hoping we can get it done. A completion is always a boost to the confidence and he has already picked out his next project! So with spontaneous crafts, continuing with the “master plan” and finding learning in unexpected places I am starting to feel like our feet are getting under us once again! 

Yah baby!

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 8 (also Canadian Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving belatedly to all my Canadian brethren)

Well, Trinity’s bug bite/cyst finally broke open Monday, after a long period of slowly decreasing in size and looking better and better in colour thanks to b12 and careful lotion application. What surprised me was how she felt NO pain after she broke open the skin (on a chair???). She was more upset about the little bit of blood that came with it. We cleaned it up as best we could and put warm compresses on it until we could determine the extent of the tear and what was coming out of it. Since it was rather icky (best I can come up with) we decided to send her to urgent care. 

After Ken and Nana sat with Trinity for hours the doctor did see her and determined that it was ok, yes it would scar a little but everything is out of it and now it can heal. We also finally got an answer on WHY nothing was done about it sooner. Apparently the location (under her chin) was near too many nerves, glands and blood vessels to mess around with. So what we did the right thing, though he put her on antibiotics for 7 days and told us to clean it 3 times a day and keep it covered. 

Anyway, before all that we had our day back to school… book work, etc but add into that journal-ling about our weekend – very important!  And since part of the excitement of Sunday was coming across that little snake we HAD TO read the website about the Northern Red Bellied Snake and talk about the facts about the one we found. Oh, and have our resident artist draw a rendition of the one we found. Talk about a surprise learning opportunity. Neat to know there are NOT poisonous snakes here in Minnesota! 

Common Minnesota wildlife!

The BIG project for the day was starting our felt ghosts. I was short stuffing so we could only do the stitching around the edges but this was an accomplishment all by itself as this was the first sewing Emanuel has ever done AND the twins learned a new stitch – the blanket stitch. We used a video off of youTube! 

There was some frustration and some needed help but really they did a great job all on their own. Yours truly is going to make Trinity and Echo theirs though Trinity will design her own face. We used a  template that Ken made himself but you can find instructions and a slightly more complicated (to sew) template HERE on our favourite UK site. 

This is Emanuel’s very first sewing project!!!

We ALL (except Ken) had naps and Emanuel covered his dinosaur of the day… with interesting videos! Again he throws me a bone for Tuesday – Tyrannosaurus Rex. Like the Triceratops… too much to find instead of the usual complex hunt. 

Video time!

As a part of our journal process I had the kids draw TWO pictures from the weekend and share their favourite. Gavin actually ended up with too big of a picture so his words spilled onto a third page which he then drew a little snake at the bottom of to ensure the page was full! It was so much fun seeing what part of the weekend was noteworthy for each of the kids.

Emanuel and his corn pit. He is so willing to write his two or three words now it is amazing! And then he tells me what to write.

Zander’s funny chickens and turkey at the petting zoo

Gavin’s filler image

Tuesday we were back on track with our morning. There was of course our usual book work… the kids are right on top of that now, in fact today ZANDER asked for his spelling test a day EARLY and got 100%. Granted this set of words was easier to sound out BUT he rocked it and I am so proud! He had to tell EVERYONE. 

Perfect score!

Our Judy Moody time is continuing on with laughter and good responses. We are not working on the same route we did with Farmer Boy but focusing much more on the character list (we update it each chapter), the simple print outs I found online AND the pure joy of storytelling. After Judy Moody we are probably moving onto the Fudge series… and I found myself a good Halloween themed story to read the week before it. 

Proud members of the T.P. Club

Our pen pal letters have slowed down lately (busy people busy lives) so I am working on motivating the kids to start drawing pictures and getting some little artistic items together to send out and maybe kick start some interest. That and keep the kids busy giving and creating… We did do our errand run… first to Michaels and Walmart for necessities for school and Halloween (I think I have ALL the pieces for Trinity’s costume in hand now, just crafting work to do). And then over to McDonalds for food and PLAY TIME! This was a rather neat one. It had touch screens with games etc at a couple of the table! 

HAMBURGER

Ken and the touch screen

We got some rather neat stuff in a 2.00 grab bag from Michaels… some wedding pieces that will work well for other things and of course the necessary items to finish our ghosts and start our pumpkin bags.

Random items

Our last stop was the local library branch to request books (not a huge surprise they had none on hand in such a small branch) on the platypus… a grand total of TWO in the system! This of course is the precursor to having a library day on Wednesday. Sadly a very BRIEF stop as Miss Echo did NOT approve so no books for me, but we lucked out on the dinosaurs and even one on Minnesota. We are still drifting a little on our social and science interests but the little minds wander and that is ALWAYS helpful in this respect…

Reading with Baba

With the purchase of our stuffing for our ghosties the kids were over the moon to complete their sewing and glue on their googly (seriously is there any better?) eyes (except Echo as I sewed on buttons for safety). That left drying for overnight and the addition of mouths for Wednesday. 

Echo’s stuffed and in need of mouth

Really after we get through a day and look back I feel much more accomplished than I do in the moment. I just hope that I can continue to spur on interest in the children and myself to learn more and more about… well… EVERYTHING!

My babies