Halloween Party

Even though Halloween was last week, I figured I would still post what we did for our party.  We had a lot of fun!

We decided to paint our pumpkins this year instead of carving them.  Hunter painted his green so it could be Mike from Monsters Inc.

Hailey painted hers blue so it could be Sully from Monsters Inc.

Sully and Mike… Hailey did most of the work and she did such a good job!

For our party we had some yummy, unhealthy snacks.  There were apple slices too, but they weren’t as popular as the cookies and donuts.

We listened to Halloween music and danced 🙂  Hailey wore her costume, she was Ariel.  Hunter insisted on wearing his Lightning McQueen pajamas instead of his Spiderman costume.

I hung donuts up on or deck and we tried to eat them without using our hands.

We played “Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin”

We played a spider toss game- we threw little plastic spiders onto the web and then added up our points to see who won.

Rich had fun playing all of our games too 🙂

We also make these cute spiders- you can see my Spider Glyph post here.

It was a fun party!!

Also, coming up-K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students.  I’ve been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program.  If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their open invitation to write an online learning review of their program.

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Heart of Dakota- BLHFHG Unit 6

I am still a week behind in posting what we did for school and it’s confusing me :-/  We are getting ready to start unit 8, but I am only posting about unit 6.  Last week when I posted pictures for unit 5, I had things in there that we actually did in unit 6.  I am going to try to get caught up this week so I don’t confuse myself anymore!

History:

In history we learned a bit about what life was like as the Pilgrims adjusted to life in Holland. We talked about how they had a scrubbing day once each week where everyone scrubbed and cleaned.

Hailey and Hunter scrubbed the kitchen floor. They loved it and begged to do the dining room too 🙂

Geography:

We are using Road Trip USA and this week we studied Maine.

We learned that Maine produces 98% of America’s low-bush blueberries, so we made some delicious blue berry muffins.  Even Hailey, who does not like blueberries, loved the muffins!

Language Arts:

Our poem this week was “The Months” and Hailey enjoyed adding illustrations to it.

Hailey learned about collective nouns this week.  I saw this anchor chart and used that as a guide to do our own anchor chart.

We played a Fishing for Collective Nouns game, which Hailey loved!  It was a lot of fun and a great way to practice collective nouns.

Unit Study:

In our unit study this week we learned all about bats.  This unit covers science, language arts and math.  I love teaching using themes and Hailey really loved it too!  She learned so much (and so did I!) and had a lot of fun doing it!

(Several of the activities we did came from Batty for Bats and Stellaluna.)

We started out our unit making a Bat Schema chart.  Hailey listed the information she knew about bats and we added it to the Schema side.  As the week went on we added lots of information to the New Learning side and moved some of the information from Schema to Misconceptions.

One thing we learned is that bats wings are like our hands.  They have fingers and thumbs just like we do.  They are connected by a thin membrane.  Hailey put plastic bags on her hands to represent what the wings are like.

Hailey wrapped herself up in a towel, pretending that was her wings, and hung upside down to go to sleep.  Or maybe I just flipped the picture upside down 😉

Since bats use echolocation to find their food, we played a little echolocation game.  Hailey was blindfolded to pretend she was flying at night.  (Bats are not actually blind, as many people think they are, they just search for food at night which is why they need to use echolocation.)  She would call out “echo” and I would reply “location” and she had to try to find me.  It was so much fun!

We did a lot of activities after reading Stellaluna.

We played this game where we took turns spinning a spinner and seeing which category we landed on.  Then the other person got to select a question from that category to ask the person who spun the spinner.

Hailey loved it!

Hailey acted out the story of Stellaluna.

We made a Venn Diagram about bats vs birds, using information we learned in Stellaluna.

Hailey made her own Venn Diagram.

We filled out a bat attribute chart about 4 different bats.  We included how big the bats were.  The smallest bat has a wing span of only 1 inch.  The largest one we studied has a wing span of 5+ feet!  To try to help Hailey understand how big those measurements are she used Unifix cubes to measure and see how many cubes it would take for each bat.

I found this silly little poem about Bat Poop and Hailey laughed so hard when she read it!

We had another fun week and I am looking forward to the week ahead!

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Bee Crafty Kids- Spider Glyph

Welcome back to the Bee Crafty Kids link up that I am co-hosting with To The Moon and Back and Look! We’re Learning.

We are starting a fun unit all about spiders… at least I’m hoping it will be fun.  I like making spider crafts, but when it comes to looking at real spiders it’s not quite so fun 🙂

Our first spider craft was a fun spider glyph I got from Spiders: A Creepy Crawly Extravaganza.

I set up all the parts of the craft and the directions.
Some of the directions included- add a bow if you are girl, add stripes on the legs if fall is your favorite season, etc.

Hunter is happy anytime he can glue, so he had fun making his spider.

Hailey had fun creating her spider and following the directions.

Putting everything together.

Hailey’s finished spider

Hunter’s finished spider

Rich made one too, and when my parents came over on Halloween they each made one as well.

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Now it’s your turn! Link up and share what you and your kids have been busy making. Grab a button so others can join in the crafting fun too 🙂

<div align="center"><a href="http://ourcraftsnthings.com/" title="Our Crafts N Things"><img src="http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q594/dustybug83/BeeCraftyKids3_zps44074ad6.png" alt="Our Crafts N Things" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Rules are simple:

~Enter the direct link to one or more of your own posts that showcase a craft or hands on activity for children.

~A link back with the above button is appreciated, but not required

~Try to at least comment on one or two of the other blogs that took the time to share and join!

Poppins Book Nook- Seasons

The theme this month for the Poppins Book Nook is seasons.

We read the book “The reasons for the Seasons” by Gail Gibbons and learned why the seasons change.

Since the current season is fall and we have been working on a fall unit study, I decided to focus on fall and leaves.  This binder has the different mini-units that we are covering this fall- apples, leaves, etc.

Each mini-unit has a section in the binder.  This is the leaf section with this printable from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom glued onto a divider for our leaf section.

Since we made a lapbook for our apple study, I decided to do something a little smaller for our leaf study.  Hailey glued these few activities onto the back side of the divider for the leaf mini-unit.

The Leaves book comes from Enchanted Learning.

You can find the accordion style book about why leaves change color here.

I wrote leaf related vocabulary words on leaf shaped cards and we did several activities with those.

There are many pages of work that Hailey did in this mini-unit.  This leaf observation page comes from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom and the super fun leaf unit she has available.

Hailey also did a leaf rubbing.

She made this Fall Tree Craft, using a leaf to paint.

We also made this Fall Tree Handprint Craft.

Hailey and Hunter dressed up in the color of chlorophyll one day.  It was amazing how excited Hailey was about doing this and how quickly she got ready for school!

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Check out some (or all!) of the other bloggers participating in Poppins Book Nook:

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom – 3 Dinosaurs – Monsters Ed – Chestnut Grove Academy – Growing in God’s Grace – Royal Little Lambs – Life with Moore Babies – Teach Beside Me – The Usual Mayhem – Mum Central – Fantastic Fun and Learning – Kathys Cluttered Mind – Toddler Approved – Growing Book by Book – Adventures in Mommydom – B-Inspired Mama – Edventures with Kids – Learning & Growing the Piwi way – A Gluten Free Journey – Preschool Powol Packets – To The Moon and Back – Our Craft ~N~ Things – Fresh Farm Adventures – Are We There Yet? – Afterschool for Smarty Pants

Each month you will have a chance to win a book from the Poppins Book Nook group related to the theme of the month.  This month you have a chance to win Four Seasons Make a Year.  The only rule is that you must live in the US to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
If you have your own fun activity to link up, you can that here: