More Halloween Crafts

So here is Halloween crafts round 2!

Lift-the-Flap Haunted House.  I found the template and instructions here.  Of course my girls picked pink!  If we weren't running low on black construction paper, I would have pushed a little harder for that. 

 

Q-Tip Skeleton.  Note that some of them had to be cut short, just with regular (not kid) scissors (fingers, feet, neck.)  Pour some white glue in a bowl and then dip the cotton end of the q-tips into the glue before putting them on the paper.

 

Spider Web.  Cut out the middle of a paper plate and punch holes all the way around.  Tie one end of a long string to one of the holes.  Put masking tape around the other end to make lacing easier. 

Spider.  Cut 2 black "pipe cleaners" in half, so you end up with 4 pieces.  Twist them together in the middle to make the legs.  Glue on a big black puff ball for the body and a small black puff for the head.  We used Tacky Glue.

 

 

Candy Corn Garland.  Trace a candy corn shape (rounded triangle) on a 8X10 piece of cardboard.  Cut it out and cut into 3 pieces.  Then use your three templates to cut out shapes from white, orange, and yellow.  Glue the colors together in order by overlapping them just a little bit.  We strung 3 candy corns together by simply scotch-taping a length of string between them.



 

Ghost Face.  Put some water in the bottom of a clean, empty gallon milk jug so it won't blow away in the wind.  The face is cut from black construction paper and glued on with Tacky Glue.

 

Witch Broom.  Cut strips in a paper lunch sack from the top all the way to the bottom (leave the bottom in tact.)  Fill a second paper lunch sack with dirt and plant a stick in it.  Gather the pieces of the first paper bag up around the second one.  Tie the top tightly with a string. 

 

Pumpkin.  Color a coffee filter with orange marker.  Then spritz with water and allow to dry.  The water will make the ink bleed and spread.  (If you get it too wet, though, your marker may all wash away.)  For the stem and leaf, color green and brown patches on another filter and cut out shapes when dry.  I laminated our finished pumpkins with clear contact paper to make them more durable and hung them in the window.

 

Monster Masks.  Tape a large tongue-depressor to one side of a paper plate.  Cut eye holes from the plate and decorate with markers, construction paper, and any other collage materials you have on hand.

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Halloween Crafts

We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts.  We don't own many Halloween decorations, and I'm not exactly sure where they would be packed away anyway.  Plus, I still haven't gotten any photographs put up at this house.  So our bare walls definitely welcomed the many wonderful creations we've come up with!

 

I got most of these ideas from doing a quick search on Pinterest.  They are all super easy!

Several of them were done with a paper plate that we painted.  We had to paint the bottoms because the inside of the plate was too glossy for washable tempera paint to stick well.  We used sponges to do the painting so they could experiment with how to paint different textures.  I thought just stamping the sponge looked better.  But the girls mostly liked to just rub the sponge around.

 

 

Pumpkin. Plate painted orange. Green hand prints on white paper, with brown stem painted on. Cut out and stapled to top. 

 

Spider.  Plate painted black.  Crinkled construction paper legs and circle construction paper head stapled on.  Glitter glue to decorate.

Ghost.  Face drawn on paper plate with black marker.  White streamers taped to bottom.

Spider.  Black hand prints (don't put paint on the thumbs!)  Googly eyes glued on and spider web painted.

Witch.  Plate painted green.  For the hair, cut strips in orange construction paper, leaving a couple inches uncut at the top of the paper.  Staple hair and black construction paper hat to plate.  The nose is a small orange paper triangle glued to the plate only at the bottom so it can stand out.  Face and moles drawn with black marker.

Ghost.  Thick bundle of white yarn, folded in half.  Tie string around near top to create head.  Glue on small black puff balls for eyes. 

Ghosts.  White footprints.  Face drawn with black marker.

And there are a few more to come!

A Scottish Story

For our literature curriculum, we have been studying various Caldecott Winners using this book from Evan Moor.  Our latest book was "Always Room for One More" which was illustrated by Nonny Hogrogian.  It's actually based on a Scottish folksong. 
To learn and remember what several of the Scottish words mean, the kids were supposed to write each of them in a sentence.  From the beginning, Secundus was very insistent that she wasn't just going to think of individual sentences; she wanted to write a story.

Following is what she dictated to me.  (the underlined words are the vocabulary words.)

One bairn was walking along.  My daddy's mother said, "You can't walk in the middle of the street at night!"  That's blether.  And my daddy's mother didn't know he was walking on a brae.  She thought he was walking in the middle of the street.  Daddy didn't know that his mother was canny, which is smart.  "Och!"  My daddy didn't know that it was raining.  My daddy's mother made porridge for him when he came inside.  But when his mother slammed the door he saw something wee which was a little mouse.

I was very impressed with what she came up with.  When I read it to Hubby, he almost choked because he started laughing so hard.  Apparently that very morning as he was walking down the street with the girls (they had to park around the corner because of street work going on) he told them about when he was younger he would sometimes walk in the middle of the street at night.  I guess the girls got very passionate and told him all about how awful and dangerous that was for him to do and that Grandma shouldn't have let him do that.
So now her story makes sense!  Apparently the topic was fresh in her mind.

Talent Show

Tonight we had the grandparents over for a Talent Show.  We also invited an Aunt, Uncle, and cousins.  I didn't get many good pictures, and it takes too long to load a video on here, but here is a recap:

We started the night with Primus and Secundus singing Fifty Nifty United States.  Their brother was supposed to sing with them, but he was more interested in running around and occasionally hitting his sister.

Next was Secundus' puppet show.  This girl LOVES to do puppet shows.  Any time she has a craft that vaguely resembles a puppet, she insists on making up a (long and rambling) story and doing a show for us.  For this Talent Show I printed out some pictures for Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and she did a great job performing it.

Then Primus showed off some of the moves they do in ballet class for warm up.  She's not very good at them yet or very graceful, but it was awfully cute!

For the girls' concluding performance, they sung a song they learned at Cherubs (mommy-and-me music class).  It goes, "Knock, knock.  Trick or Treat.  Who are you?  I'm a ...  I'm a little..."  Each time you sing it, you insert another Halloween costume name.  So they grabbed several hats out of their dress up box and took turns showing off a verse.

I'm so glad we were able to convince their cousins to participate, too.  Their 2 older cousins danced to the "Cha Cha Slide." 

And finally their little 3 year old cousin danced to Owl City's "Fireflies."  She must have gotten stage fright cause she didn't do as many cute dance moves for performance as she did during rehearsal.  But that was ok because she is just adorable no matter what she does!

We ended the evening with yummy slightly undercooked brownies while the kids ran wild in the dark backyard and Primus convinced everyone to buy stuff for her dance recital fundraiser.  It was a great time!

Time to Brag

Our ES (basically my supervising teacher) assesses Primus at the beginning of every school year.  Last year and this year it was an oral test.  Next year, second grade, she will have to start doing it herself on paper. 

Last time we met, ES showed me the results of the test.  Primus scored as a 3rd grader for oral vocab and comprehension!  I am not surprised.  I could have told you that she had a big vocabulary and could remember and understand things really well.  But it is so awesome to see it officially recorded in writing!  My kid is super smart!

In light of that, my ES held up the two book reports that Primus had done this month for the Magic Tree House books she read.  She looked at me and basically said, "Next month don't let her dictate the plot to you.  She should be doing it herself." 
Ouch!  Yes, I suppose I baby her too much at times.  She is very smart in her oral skills, but not so much on paper.  Truthfully, she has a really hard time focusing enough to write very much or very fast.  And I definitely do not have the patience for her to spend several hours writing the summary of a plot of one chapter book. 

So I have been letting her get away with dictating a lot of things to me instead.  It's been tough these last couple weeks, but Primus knows that she is being expected to write more.  For example, instead of just 2 sentences about a prompt in her morning journal, she now has to do 3. 

Whenever she gets whiny about having to write so much, I just blame it on the ES.  And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm glad we homeschool with a charter school instead of just on our own.  :)

I'm excited to see if at the beginning of next year Primus will be able to prove that her written vocabulary and comprehension have caught up with her oral scores!

Unexpected Beanstalk

The kids got a little out of control a while ago with our beans-and-rice sensory box.  The box stays on the patio and the beans and rice are supposed to stay in the box.  On this day, handfuls got thrown all about and some landed on the grass. 

 

Today we noticed that they had sprouted and grown!  It is so cool to look at and kind of mind-blowing that they grew so fast (well, honestly, we hadn't been on the grass much lately so just hadn't noticed-not sure when exactly the seeds were sown.)

 

It was great to have an impromptu, hands-on, real-life science lesson.

 

Old Town Field Trip

This week we took a field trip to historic Old Sacramento with our dear friends Cindy and Candy. 

Here is the summary that Primus dictated to me:
We went to Candy Heaven.  And we tasted some blue candy. I tasted Bit-O-Honey.  Secundus tasted caramel.  And then we all went downtown.  And on the way there, as Cindy and Candy went to a store to buy rocks, me and my siblings played on the statue buffalo.  And each time when I got up there, once my sister and brother both wanted to get on the buffalo with me so I could hold them safe and not fall if my arms were on them.  And then I said, "One at a time!"  And I said, "Secundus, can I please let Tertius go first."  And then she said, "No."  And then Cindy and Candy walked back with our bags full of rocks.  Tertius got all different kind of colors, just like Cindy.  Secundus got red.  And I got green, my favorite color.
And before we went to old town, me and Secundus got on our M&M shirts and Mommy asked me to get Tertius' M&M shirt. 
As we walked, we saw a carriage.  And as we walked more, we saw a train and we saw a place that led down to the river that Sacramento was built near. 
When we came back to Cindy's house to drop her off, we stayed for a little while. And as we got in, Cindy asked me if I wanted to pick apples from her apple bush.  And then after that we went into Cindy's room and we watched Disney Junior and watched Mickey Mouse.  And that Mickey Mouse title was called, the Golden Booboo with Daisy O'Dare.  And then we came home and tasted some of our taffy and then we ate my gummies and Secundus' lollipop. 

Secundus' summary:

When we were walking to the candy shop, I buyed a lollipop. And the words on each lollipop wrapper, they had a W so that word looked like Willy Wonka. But it wasn't. It was Whirly Pop. And when I tasted it, it tasted great! And I decided that I'll eat it at home. Then my mother said when we were home, she said, "If you want to buy candy, then you have to get a wallet to carry your money." So we wanted to get candy, then we got a wallet and it was full of money from our banks. Then I thought it was in Missouri. And I asked Cindy when we were getting her, "Do you know how to get to Old Sacramento?" "No." "Are you sure?" And then she said, "Yes." And then when we got home, we ate our candy. And we saved the licorice for school and that was the end.

Some extra details:

I was very sad that we couldn't get very close to the old one-room schoolhouse.  There were a ton of volunteers working to spruce things up.  While we stood across the street, Cindy and I explained what it would have been like back then.  The girls thought it was cool that they could see a couple swings outside of the school.

Note the cool old boardwalks.

Sacramento was built right next to the river.  It was really cool to be able to make connections to our recent history lesson about why ancient cities were built near rivers (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.)
This was also there first time seeing the big paddle on the back of a boat so I got to explain how that worked.

We saw several trains.

Cool old firetruck.

There is some kind of event coming up in Old Town so there were several people rehearsing and blocking for a play.  The only one in full costume was Abraham Lincoln.  We have a fondness for Abe because Grandpa has the same style beard.  We hung around and watched for quite a while.  When they were all done, the kids had stopped paying attention and were instead concerned with staying out of the way of the trucks spraying down the dust.  Apparently he was watching them and said, "You don't want to get wet, do you?"  Primus thought that was so cool that he talked to them.

Here's that buffalo she talked about.

It was a great trip and we were all exhausted when it was over.