Weekly Wrap Up

I'm not sure why I have skipped a couple weeks of our weekly wrap up, but I am back now.  This week we learned all about plants.  It is amazing how God designed everything including the bees that He specifically made to help the flowers.  I have been reiterating to the girls that EVERYTHING God made was part of his perfect plan.  He didn't just make the bees and the flowers and they just happened to need each other.  No, when He made the bees He knew they would need the flowers and vice versa.  I have been amazed when studying the creation of His beautiful world. 

I wanted the girls to be able to identify the parts of a plant (flower, stem, leaves and roots). Kristen pretty much had this down. They also drew pictures of what plants need to grow. (Which I can assure you is not always just water, sunlight and soil. I have attempted to get a flower to grow with just sunlight, soil and water and it hasn't yet worked for me). We planted a garden, but not a real one because I was not blessed with a green thumb. If you give me a plant that is living it will not be living by the end of the week. I figured I wouldn't waste my money on seeds. We also learned the difference between fruits and vegetables and played a couple games to go along with this lesson.

 

We have been reviewing memory verses this week.  The girls are doing VERY good with their memory verses.  The letter of the week was C.  We are learning the letters, upper and lower and their sound.  Kristen already knew some, but I can't start her hooked on phonics until she gets all of the letters down and most of the sounds.  I am going to order Lauren the preschool version to start this summer so she will be on target to start the kindergarten in the fall.  Lauren is working on memorizing her numbers and Kristen has been working on adding the last few weeks.  She asked the other night if she could start having homework.  We'll see how long this lasts.

 



Halloween

I just love holidays!  I love making it an all day celebration for my kids and seeing their excitement.  This year we were in our new house and I was really excited to decorate.  I decided that we would take a day off from school and have a little Halloween party. I stayed up late cutting out ghosts, pumpkins and bats (with Paul's help) to hang from the ceiling.  I was really impressed with my bats because they actually looked like they were flying. 

I also made some Halloween cupcakes the night before.  (By the way, Kristen informed me that she no longer likes cupcakes.  Really?  I can see not liking carrots or broccoli, but cupcakes).

So, we started the morning off with Halloween shaped pancakes. 

We had a Halloween party where we played monster memory, did a Halloween dot-to-dot, played peek-a-boo tic tack toe, did a graveyard look and find, played find the black cats, played creature mix match, did a fill in the tale worksheet and carved pumpkins. 

My thought was to have the girls paint faces on their pumpkin this year because they usually don't participate at all with the carving.  When I brought the pumpkins in to paint Kristen said, "We have to carve pumpkins because that's what you do on halloween." So they picked out faces they wanted carved in the pumpkins and Paul ended up doing pretty much all of the work.  I tried to pretend I was helping for a little bit, but then I bailed on him too.  I hate carving pumpkins!  They turned out good even though we didn't have a carving kit.  It is hard to make heart eyes with a regular sharp kitchen knife.  Now I know why our pumpkins growing up always had triangle eyes and nose.  Next year I will purchase a kit if I can't talk them into painting them. Here are the three pictures I snapped during the 3 seconds they were interested in trying to carve and clean out their pumpkin.

We also had mummies in a blanket for lunch and for an afternoon snack I cut out Halloween shapes in crescent rolls, put cinnamon and sugar on them and baked them.  I then made a spiced apple dip to eat with them.  My kids love spiced apples.  It was a big hit! 

We ended the night having pizza and cupcakes (since I made 24 and no one wanted to eat them) at my sisters and going trick or treating.  It was a great Halloween for the Harris'.  I can't believe it's already November 1st!