Kicking Off Our Home School Compassion Week

The beginning of each month we have started Compassion Week. It's basically a week filled with projects and ideas geared toward others.

We started today, because we received a letter from one of our boys in Africa! The boys were so excited to hear from them and were thrilled to get started on our first compassion project of the week. Each month we write our boys. Boy, we had a great time together talking about and praying for our boys! Please excuse the bad lighting!

 

 

The ribbon letter idea from Impress Your Kids 

We will continue this week to plan ways to help others and show compassion. The list includes, visiting an elderly widow lady (who was our neighbor at our last house), making a meal for one of our close friends who is having surgery, and we are going to try and put an Operation Christmas Child Packing Party together! We'll see if I can get it together for next week, if not we will still do this project with our boys.

Happy Compassion Week! 

a href="http://wp.me/pw8ov-1EP" target="_blank"> 

Pumpkin Week and Other Fun Activities

We kicked off our pumpkin week this past weekend by making these yummy pumpkin treats. Then, this week has been full of fun pumpkin activities and other stuff as well.

 

Working on fine motor skills. I picked up some ideas from Confessions of a Home Schooler. We are just lining gems on the popsicle sticks. We also sorted them out on the stick by color. They had a good time doing this!

 

We read Too Many Pumpkins, which the boys enjoyed so much. It's about a woman who hated anything to do with pumpkins because when she was little, that's all they could afford to eat for a solid month. She never wanted anything to do with pumpkins again! One day a pumpkin truck came by, and one of the pumpkins fell in to her yard. She cleaned it up, but the pumpkin seeds started sprouting the next spring, and covered her yard. She just had to do something with all those pumpkins!

The story is fun, and the pictures are delightful! Our boys talked about the story all week, and asked to read it many times. 

 

He was finding all the "ghost" beans in our sensory bin. 

 

I picked up a book from Michael's last week to take us along through our History lessons in Egypt. This one is full of mazes through Egypt (mummy mazes) with a character named "Dr. Carter" .  Tibby had a lot of fun trying to get through the mazes, and it's something we can do weekly until we get through all of them.

 Breaking for a silly picture =]

 We used big perler beads for fine motor skills AND decided to make a pumpkin for Pumpkin week!  And, a whole lot of race cars....of course!

 

I used foam letters, to let Jaiden "write his name" Spelling practice while using them as a puzzle, and number practice. he really did a great job with this! 

 

And he won the game! (Sum Swamp again)

 

Explode the Code 

 We stopped by a petting zoo that happened to be in town. It had tigers, monkeys, and a kangaroo....not for petting of course!

 

We then, headed to a small pumpkin patch to let the boys pick out their pumpkins, and some for carving. 

 

Our finished haunted house. 

 

Celebration with pumpkin cupcakes! 

 

Pencil sharpening for fine motor skills. 

 

Our indoor pumpkin patch for pretend play and imagination. I told Tibby  I was bringing my "preschool" class to his pumpkin patch, so he gave us a demonstration of the life cycle of a pumpkin. ;) He did a fabulous job!

 

 

Kneeling Down, Reaching Up

 He captivates me. The thought of His presence in my life astounds me. I am left speechless. I offer my gratitude to The One who has provided my every need in true faithfulness. Oh how I pray to be so faithful to Him.

229. every need met. every single day.
230. little boys who love cars
231. reading at bedtime
232. being content
233. holidays
234. a big roll of paper...."big enough to draw a football field!" and that's just what we have hanging on the wall
235. lunch with friends
236. bedtime
237. morning devotionals
238. friends who help
239. old pictures
240. knowing that we don't need more
241. new recipes
242. being in pjs before dinner =]
243. open windows 
244. creativity
245. fuzzy socks

Pumpkin Cake Pops...minus the pop

So last week we went to our cousin's birthday party at a local pumpkin patch. Man did we have a great time! Well, she made the yummiest treat that I attempted to make for the boys this week, you know because we're kickin' off our pumpkin themed week?!

I've never claimed to be a great baker/cake decorator and the IS a reason I haven't. This is it. I will share with you anyways though.

After making Tibby's birthday race car cake, I was SURE this would be ten times easier for me, but not true. I'm not saying this is a hard recipe, but it's just not my sort of thing...I really don't care for my hands to get messy, and I'm not good at dipping items in melted candy melts and have them turn out pretty. BUT, they are very tasty, and kids don't mind how pretty they are, so give it a try anyways. Who knows, you may not have any of the issues I do, so this may be a walk in the park for most.

 

1.First, you want to make a cake. Any cake, any pan will do. I made two of these. 

2.Use whatever icing you want. Start with a tablespoon or two and mix it around. (Do this when the cake is still warm) You want it to be moist, but not too moist. If you us a 9x13 pan, you may use up to 1/4-1/2 cup. 

  

 

3.Roll into 1 inch balls and place on wax paper. Put them in the freezer for 5 min.

 

4. Melt the candy melts according to instructions on pkg. (Usually using an double broiler or microwave 30 seconds at a time and stirring) 

5. Dip, pour, whatever you think is best...(because I don't know) the balls in the candy melts and add a green tick tack for the stem.

AND, you can put them on a lollipop stick to make them pops, if you want.

Put in fridge, then eat them...and you'll probably want another, so then if you're like me you might need to head to the gym. 

 

Happy Fall! 

  

 

Our School Activities and M is for Monster

 

This is our fall sensory tub. It's filled with leaves, beans, (the white beans have black eyes colored on them to make them ghosts) =],  small pumpkins, orange beads, a small apple basket from our playmobile set, a silicone baking moon shape, and I have added fall beads (scarecrows, pumpkins etc) from Oriental Trading Co. All the other stuff was from Dollar Tree.

The boys really have a great time with this. It has provided lots of playtime, exploration, counting, sorting, and much more for all of them! If you haven't made one yet, I encourage you to try one out. 

 

Sum Swamp is one of our favorite math games. Tibby has learned to add and subtract because of it. He can now do most of it in his head, but I still provide counters just in case!

 

This is one of those Rub N Color sheets. You scratch the picture and the color comes through. Great for fine motor skill, as you can see the low muscle tone in J's hands. It also helps to get a character, animals, cars, etc that he likes....it helps with an unmotivated child ;) 

 

This is a sheet from prekinders. I put them in a page protector and they put the correct number of spots on the puppy. Even though this was intended for my preschooler and for Jaiden, Tibby got in on it too as you can see below. 

 

M is for MONSTER  

We got a lot of wonderful ideas from the fabulous KatherineMarie. She inspired me to work on themes as I can, and it has been a ton of fun!

 

These are our paint chip monsters. 

 

I printed the GIANT monster flash cards from somewhere online, and I can't find it anywhere. If you happen to know, feel free to let me know so I can give credit. 

 

We made these monsters out of gloves and sang "Five Little Monsters Jumping on 

the bed." They thought it was a hoot! 

We also ended the week with a Monster Cookie ice cream party, which I have no pictures of. 

 

Making a funny pumpkin face with stickers.

 

Working on those fine motor skills. 

 

Here the boys are playing with an activity kit that I purchased a while back for a few dollars at TJMaxx. It is filled with magnets, and fun worksheets. It is made by School Zone and this is the one we have minus the software.

 

We have been having so much fun lately! We are gearing up for the holidays, and will be doing lots of fun activities with pumpkins, Thanksgiving, apples, and more! I can't wait to share. 

We started last night's movie night by making pumpkin cake pops. I will do a whole post on it tomorrow, but for now, I'll leave you with a sneak peek. Happy weekend!!