This Cretaceous period herbivore is part of the duck-billed family. Emanuel was especially impressed by the Corythosaurus’ hollow, bony crest. It walked on two legs or 4 at times with a long, stiff tail to facilitate that. Found in North America it is believed to be a herding animal that potentially migrated to reproduce. We had TWO videos for this interesting herbivore. First, I’m a Dinosaur…

And then a second gem off of youTube, a video done by a young student for a class assignment.

And now for our links! We used EnchantedLearning’s page HERE. Jurassic Park included a page due to this dinosaur being a part of their game HERE. KidsDinos has its usual helpful map and charts HERE. We found a great artist’s rendition HERE. Kidzworld has some great images of the skeleton HERE. Our colouring page is HERE. And of course the Wiki article HERE.

Gotta love that smile

I have to say some of these Chinese dinosaurs are the most interesting and amazing finds! This oddly named one is no exception! The Sinosauropteryx is a carnivore found in China. It has been equated to being the size of a dog and very light weight. There are actually a few interesting things that have been recognized with this dinosaur. First of all there have been TWO full skeletons found in dig sites and along with these finds  this is the first dinosaur to have the remains of a MAMMAL found in its stomach! This is also the first dinosaur to be found with feather like (proto-feathers) coverings. Add to the amazing with something even more ground breaking, scientists were able to look at these fossil remains and discern the COLOUR of the feathers!! That is right, this dinosaur had orange and white stripes along its tail! Which apparently was amazingly long for the type of dinosaur it was. What an amazing late Jurassic to early Cretaceous period dinosaur, but don’t take my word for it! Check out the links and enjoy the videos!

I’m a Dinosaur has a cute video to watch.

Science.Discovery.com has a brief video you need to view on their site HERE. As I am sure all you dinosaur loving individuals are aware, the determining of an actual COLOUR for a dinosaur is a HUGE deal… And there are multiple sites with information on it! National Geographic has an article AND a great artist’s rendition HERE and their news portion has one HERE. NewYork Daily News has their article about the find HERE.

Of course we found some general resources on our rather interesting dinosaur… KidsDinos.com has an article with maps etc HERE. EnchantedLearning has a rather extensive fact page HERE. Academic Kids Encyclopedia has a paragraph HERE with links to other items of interest and relevance. Dinosaurs.about.com has a great image of a full skeleton and some great point form points HERE. Of course Wiki has an article HERE. And our colouring page can be found HERE. Please enjoy the links and the amazing finds! This dinosaur is an absolute gem for new and interesting information!

Feathers AND we know had rings of white and orange!

October 30-31

The day before Halloween was the best day for us to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was surprised… Trinity watched it one and a half times! Even Echo sat through most of it. They giggled, they wiggled along to the music… it was great! I really need to get my hands on a copy of The Corpse Bride.  The kids decided the front needed some Halloween decorations and went out and did all this wonderful art on the sidewalk without telling us as a surprise!!

I think this is the haunted house

Jack-o-lanterns

Zander’s skeleton

What else did Tuesday have going for it? Well, we worked on our pictures from our Lego and birthday party sticker sets… the kids did their spelling and such as usual.. Emanuel coloured a child in a DINOSAUR costumepicture instead of learning about a NEW dinosaurs…

In dinosaur costume

There was also that SECOND pumpkin to spiffy up. This time everyone but Trinity put their hands in (or spoons at least) and got it cleaned out. We did a ghosty, vampire face on this one! I think it turned out rather neat!

Group effort

Gavin trying carving

Pumpkins together

And then to top off the day we took the kids out in the front yard for a trial run of the costumes! I will definitely redo the ones of Trinity and Echo, Trinity with face paint and Echo to get the BEST image we can of her with the Death of Rats (seriously we love Terry Pratchett can you tell?). In fact, that feltie is my idea designed by Ken and stitched by yours truly! 

Death and her Death of Rats!

Our very own Chococat

Batman (Zander) and Spiderman (Gavin in ACTION POSES

One of my all time favourites… PENGUIN !!!

The 5 together

We took the advice of Art for Kids and did our own water colour resist using crayons and black water colour paint. You can find instructions HERE. They had a blast drawing their spooky pictures and then painting the black over. I am not sure where all my water colours went as I am rather sure I had some small packages BUT Gavin was nice enough to share his set! 

The painting

Our finished art!

Now HALLOWEEN! Well, it was a wonderful day! I slept in way more than I expected to… this bug had me looped and I was up late the night before working on Echo’s Christmas present (photos  to come), thankfully Ken was able to continue his application code and job search and let me sleep while the kids had fun with Legos and toys and things. We have recently done a clothes sort for the season so it SHOULD be easier for the boys to keep their room clean with less clothing in the drawers. Note I said SHOULD. We did work on some pictures I printed from Activity Village(my go to place for so many crafty things) and enjoyed the sunshine at the kitchen table. 

Playing with goo

I have yet to let the twins know but as of Halloween they BOTH met their 20 sessions of reading and earned their pizza coupons! So now we have to determine when they can use them.  I took some time and baked some chocolate cakes and as per Darcy’s request we covered one in ORANGE cream cheese icing (sorry no picture). I actually found a nice and simple recipe for it as follows (ok not the cake, that was a box mix!): Quick and Easy Cream Cheese Icing Ingredients:

Once all of that was done, Ken showered and the kids prepped to go we packed our pumpkins up and headed out to the Novak’s. When we got there they were having an impromptu dance/carving party so our pumpkins fit right in. 

Carving

Our pumpkins came along for the ride

Since Andrew and Anthony were not ready for their plans Ken and I took Aidan (and briefly Alex before he headed back to wait for his ride) and our 5 and started trick or treating on the street the Novaks live on. We made it all around and back to wait for Darcy while she dropped off the 3 big boys for their groups. Darcy got back and we piled into their van and headed to a newer neighbourhood to round off our fun with a couple more streets.

Trick or treat!

The 6 we took out all together

After that it was back to the house to eat some candy and play some bingo! 

Bingo!

We hung out until nearly 10 when Echo was definitely in need of bed and all of the Novak boys were home (well except Big Andy who ended up with truck issues).

The whole group!

On the ride home we had 4 of 5 kids ASLEEP in the van (Echo went back and forth, I think she is getting closer to potty training and was annoyed that her diaper was wet… sadly with all the goings on we have been doing disposable more now). We stopped off for the closest thing I could get to a slurpee – fountain pop… and then home we went.  Definitely different from our previous Halloweens but in a good way. Our kids had fun, they spent time with special friends and basically family and Ken and I got to spend time with not only an amazing friend but our godson too. The kids really look forward to their time with the Novaks and when they ARE all together it seems like they do nothing but have fun. 

We had soooo much fun!