Happy Halloween!

Hoping every one has a safe and
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

It has been a good week on the homeschooling front, meaning that we actually followed my basic plans for education! So here's my Weekly Report (though I honestly never say I do this on a weekly basis)...

Language Arts
the Elf:
This week the Elf read a silly story aloud. He then answered 4 comprehension questions and wrote his own ending for the story. He also drew a picture and wrote about Paddy Muskrat (Oak Meadow) in his main lesson book. He continued reading from Ben & Meg. He also started (4 pages) another unit in ETC 3, which we are almost finished with. Then I need to decide if we want to do ETC 4 or just stop with ETC for now!

the Fairy:
This week was the letter "G", so we read The Golden Goose (Oak Meadow version) and the Fairy drew the goose letter G's in her main lesson book. We also read Three Billy Goats Gruff, which is one of her favorite stories. She did 4 pages in HWOT and 4 in Go For The Code this week. She colored the Gorse Fairy in the Flower Fairies coloring book.

We are continuing to read from Charlotte's Web at bedtime on the evenings I am home.

Math
the Elf:
Did 2 lessons from MathSteps (addition and subtraction with #'s 11-20) and a lesson from Saxon Math 2. I also taught him a game called Circles & Stars, which he begs to play every day now. I'll have to scan and post one of his pages full of circles and dots ("stars") and multiplication.

the Fairy:
Conquered another 2 lessons in Saxon Math 1. She also loves playing Circles and Stars. We read a book called Count Your Way through Brazil, which was okay but not as great as some of the counting books we have read.

Social Studies & Science
We started our journey through South America with Brazil. We read about Brazil in our Children's Atlas, colored a map & flag page, and watched Families of Brazil. We also read two versions of a Brazilian legend - version 1 and version 2 (our preferred version), and a couple of books about families/children in Brazil. Tomorrow we are having black beans and rice (a Brazilian staple food), along with roasted pork and veggies for dinner, and I might make a Brazilian coffee cake for breakfast. Craft-wise, see rainforests below.

They watched the Magic School Bus Rainforest episode this week. We are planning on making tissue paper collages of rainforest animals - the Elf wants to make an iguana and the Fairy is interested in a jaguar or quetzel. We may do a project in the next week or two on rainforest strata, in which I will print out the forest page (from Enchanted Learning), and print out the animals, have the kids watercolor everything, and then place the animals in their respective rainforest habitats. We did a similar project last year for temperate woodlands, and they really enoyed it.

Nature Studies
All about pumpkins this week! We read From Seed to Pumpkin (part of the great Let's Read & Find Out science series). the Fairy made a jack o'lantern out of construction paper, while the Elf made a paper scarecrow to go with it. Today we made delicious pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and we'll be carving our jack o'lanterns this afternoon when M is home.

Other than that
We made some paper ghosts for our front window. We read a few other stories, went to a fall festival at the charter school (where they made apple juice and corn husk dollies), and spent a lot of time playing. We had one day where the Elf did not want to do any lessons and so gave me a hard time, but the other 3 days, he did very well. the Fairy did very well all week. I volunteered in the Fairy's classroom (arts, crafts, stories, songs) on Monday and we painted paper-mache skulls for Dia de los Muertos. I have found I really love working with kindergarteners!

I also wanted to highly recommend the following Halloween books... The Soup Bone and The Witch's Hat, both by Tony Johnston. I thought they were charming, just funny/silly enough without being over the top, and not too scary. The kids really enjoyed them too!

We're not doing anything academic today. The kids have their costumes ready (one vampire, one fairy princess, and I promise to post pics). We were going to go to Best Park Day with pumpkin muffins in hand, but it's been very rainy. We already trick-or-treated my dad, and later will go see my mom, maybe going around her neighborhood a little if the rain lets up. I do have a fun evening at home planned though - pizza, both the Addams Family movies, popcorn, hot apple cider, etc. I think that'll be okay in place of going door-to-door for candy.