Halloween Night

The kids had a lot of fun trick-or-treating in Grammy and Papa's new subdivision. We couldn't have asked for better weather, or for a cuter bat, witch or vampire.

 Getting ready.

Here we go!

Grandma and Grandpa's Spooky House

Going through the goodies...

Happy Halloween!

Noah's Ark

Starting off the week on Halloween day, Grant and I didn't do as much spelling and math review as we usually do.  We also didn't practice the penny whistle.  I knew we would need some extra time to carve our pumpkins, and get ready to celebrate Halloween.

I did however, read Johanna this book:

While I was reading the book to Johanna, Grant drew this chalkboard drawing to go with it.  I guess he didn't like mine.

After I read the story, we set up the scene with toys, and we all played with it for a little while before Grant and I moved onto our main lesson work.

I told Grant a few short stories about Noah. These were stories about Noah before he built the ark.

After I read the stories, Grant and I drew pictures in our main lesson book.  These pictures go with the story of Noah protecting his herd of sheep from a group of young men from the nearby city who were up to no good.

Mom's Picture

 Grant's Picture

Once we were done with our drawings, we all moved up to the kitchen to carve our pumpkins.  Grant designed a face he wanted to carve into his, while Johanna, Julia and I voted for a cat face.  Grant and Julia worked on Grant's pumpkin, while Johanna and I worked on "the cat".

Here are the finished pumpkins:

Later on that evening, we packed up our pumpkins, Halloween costumes, our wagon and some pumpkin whoopie pies, and headed for Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner and trick-or-treating. 

On Tuesday, we started off our school day with a French lesson and Grant also did some spelling practice. Once we were done with that, I re-told Johanna (and Grant and Julia) the story of Woody, Hazel and Little Pip using the toys as props. 

Once I was finished with that, Grant told me the stories about Noah from Monday, and then he copied a summary into his lesson book.

While Grant was doing his copy work, Johanna helped me make buns (Mrs. Hazelnut brought them over to Mrs. Acorn's house, in case you were wondering..).  We ate the buns for lunch along with some chocolate hazelnut spread.

After Johanna and I were done making the buns, and I reviewed Grant's copy work, I told Grant a few stories about the building of the ark, and the loading of the animals.  I read from the bible how God instructed the ark to be built 300 cubits long, by 50 cubits wide, by 30 cubits high.  I showed Grant a piece of wood that was 18 inches, which is about the length of a cubit.  After that we headed outside to measure off the length of the ark for ourselves so Grant could get an idea of just how big it was. 

 Here are three short videos showing how we measured it off.  Unfortunately, the memory card filled up while I was shooting the third and final video showing how far 300 cubits was.  The video got cut off, after about 4 seconds, but you can still see how far Grant and I are away from our starting point.

In the afternoon, Grant decided he wanted to do some needle felting, and felted Johanna a heart.

 

On Wednesday, I told the story of Woody, Hazel and Little Pip again, but this time Johanna helped me.

Afterward, Grant and I talked about the animals that were loaded onto the ark, and how there were actually seven of all the clean animals on the ark.  We also talked more about what the ark may have looked liked using this book for pictures.

This book has some awesome pictures!

After we finished looking at the book, Grant and I drew a picture of the outside of the ark.

Mom's Picture

 Grant's Picture

On Thursday, we wrapped up our study of the ark with a few more stories from the book we have been using for our lessons, and I also read the above book all the way through. Once I was done reading the book, Grant and I drew a cross section of what the ark may have looked like on the inside.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

Once we were done with that, we continued to talk about linear measurement, and I had Grant draw out a design for a chicken coop.  He figured out what the measurements would have to be if each chicken needed 1 cubit of space. He decided he wanted 55 chickens, so he figured he would need 55 nesting boxes each measuring 1 cubit across.

Next week we will continue to talk about linear measurement, and get ready for Martinmas.

A Halloween Song

First, some background on this funny little video.  Grant practiced this song for weeks to get ready for this recording, so he was already tired of hearing it.  I worked with Johanna on memorizing the song, but she totally forgot the words while she was singing.  I didn't want to stop the recording because this was the third time trying to record it, plus three practice runs before that.  I don't know if I could have persuaded Grant to try it a fourth time.  I was lucky to even get him to do it a third time!  Enjoy!

Cain's Sons, Enoch and Some Halloween Fun

As always, we started off the days of our school week with some seasonal songs and verses for the girls, French lessons for all, and math review, spelling, penny whistle lessons and exercises from "The Extra Lesson" book for Grant. Last week I began teaching the French words for face, ears, nose, eyes, and mouth to the kids, and asked them to touch all those different parts of the face. (In French, of course!)

On Monday, I introduced the form drawing for the week and read Grant many short stories about the three sons of Cain.  The story I decided to draw on the chalkboard, and then have Grant and I draw in our lesson books was about Jubal playing music for the animals.

After I read the story, Grant and I drew a picture in our lesson books. We continue to use only our red, blue and yellow block crayons to draw our pictures.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

I also read the kids this book which is fun to read around Halloween:

Everyone was feeling a little under the weather on Tuesday, so I kept it pretty light.  Grant and I reviewed some math and worked on some spelling, then the kids painted some jack-o-lantern lanterns.

On Wednesday, Grant told me the story of Jubal playing for the animals, and then we summarized the story together and Grant copied the summary into his lesson book.

Grant also enjoyed doing some Star Wars Mad Libs.

We also did another Family Fun magazine Halloween activity and made some spiders out of wire and dimensional fabric paint. 

Once we were done with the spiders, Grant and I drew spider webs on some of our windows using puffy fabric paint. 

I set Grant loose with a bottle of the black paint, and let's just say he embellished a few all of his window web drawings.

Once the spiders and the webs were dry, we stuck the spiders to the windows around the webs. 

The nice part is when Halloween is over, they will all peel right off.

On Thursday, I read Grant another handful of short stories.  These stories were about the rise of evil in the hearts of men as they began to forget about God after the death of Seth, who was a very prominent and important priest.  God decided to send Enoch to be born on earth to once again teach men about God and goodness.

The picture I chose for us to draw comes from the story of the birth of Enoch.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

Afterward, I read the kids a fun Halloween story about a little hobgoblin who liked to play tricks on people until they carved jack-o-lanterns to scare him away. The story came from this book:

After I read the story, Grant chose to draw a picture from it.

Grant also drew the form drawing for the week into his book.

On Friday, Grant and I worked together to create a summary for the stories about Enoch.  When we were done he copied it into his lesson book.

On Friday evening, we took the kids to their first "trunk-or-treat" with Grant's Hapkido school. They had hot dogs, apple cider, a bonfire for roasting marshmallows, and lots of trunks for trunk-or-treating.  Our vampire, princess and witch had a blast!