Halloween Fun 2013

We had a Monster's University theme for Halloween this year. The idea was that Jackson would be Mike and Holden would be Sully. The big girls were all sorority girls and McKinley was Boo. Unfortunately Jackson decided he wasn't happy with the idea a little too late to change it. Here's the only picture I was able to capture of my 4 together at the BHLC Halloween party.

At least my sweet girls cooperated! Thanks so much to Grammy for making the fur skirts and feet and to Jordan and Rachel for doing all three girl's t-shirts. So cute! :)

 BHLC fun

 The girls sure do love Zoe! :)

 After the BHLC party our homeschool crew headed over to the nursing home to go Trick-Or-Treating. I'm including two pictures since Jackson refused to be in the bigger group photo op.

 Love my sweet little Boo and sure appreciated Miss Leanna keeping her busy while I struggled with Jackson. :)

 

 The three sorority girls 

 Sully and his not so happy little buddy Mike

 Does is it count as a group picture if we have Mike's costume?

 As well as Heidi and Holden our best neighborhood buddies the Veloudis' and Skinners' came to join our fun. Unfortunately the weather was so bad on Halloween they cancelled Trick-Or-Treating in Lexington. We decided to have an impromptu Halloween celebration at our house anyway and the following night everyone came back so we could Trick-Or-Treat together. :)

 Some of our Monster's University fun - thanks to Aunt Jolene for the molds

Happy Halloween baby! :)

 Second night and ready to get some candy! :)

 Most of our crew

The plus to the weather being bad was Aunt Arla, Uncle Scott, Grammy and Grand-Dad were able to participate in our festivities the second night. Such a sweet picture of Miss McKinley and Aunt Arla :)

 Part of Jackson's Mike issue was he decided he wanted to ride his dinosaur Grammy gave him shortly before Halloween. I have to admit this is pretty cute and fun, just didn't fit our theme! lol :)

 Holden was a fabulous Sully though! :)

 All the girls in our happy Halloween crew

 Thanks to everyone who helped make our Halloween so much fun!

Pumpkin Carving 2013

I'm going to do my best to get everyone in the mood for fall with the next few posts. :) It actually strikes me as funny to be posting these pictures now, but I am once again going to do my best to choose the biggest/best/fun activities we've done in the last 9 months and make some attempt to get caught up and stay caught up. Hopefully I won't lose my external hard drive again, that would certainly be a good start! :)

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We were invited to a pumpkin carving party at a friend's house in late October. We decided it would be easier to gut our pumpkins at home. As you'll see below, we also decided to take the easy way out on one pumpkin since our costume theme was "Monster's Inc" last year. Grammy was a good sport helping the kids who as usual were not overly excited about the pumpkin guts.

Jackson's Mike pumpkin :)

 The cutest little pumpkin in the patch enjoying the empty pumpkins :)

 Tim was of course one of the best and busiest carvers

 After the pumpkin carving party we swung by Uncle Dan and Aunt Dorothy's house to finish our pumpkins up and also see some other cousins who were in town. We do love cousin fun! :)

"Going Batty" in the Lueker Household - October 2013

Using the book "Going Batty" from the Magic School Bus series as inspiration, we spent a week in October having fun studying bats. We began our week by reading the book and then making some bats of our own.

 I gave each of the kids a sheet of black construction paper and asked them to fold it in half.

 Next I asked them to begin tearing their paper however they liked but not the folded side.

 Here are the somewhat unique bats we created using this simple technique :)

 Since we learned bats like to eat bugs I decided to let Jackson practice identifying numbers as well as developing his one to one correlation skills by using the bat he made along with our bug manipulatives for the week. I would give him a number and he chose the bugs his bat wanted to eat.

As you can see Jackson thought this math was lots of fun!

 He especially loved feeding his bat spiders.

 Another day we used sponge painting for some more bat art

 The kids all thought the sponges were so much fun. It cracks me up what they find amusing sometimes... lol :) Seeing these smiles makes me realize I need to find another project involving sponge painting for them. :)

 They each chose a couple of colors of paint which I gave them on a plate and they began to sponge away. There was a bit of confusion about whether they were sponging the black sheet of paper (yes) or the bat (ended up being a cool by-product), but once they (specifically Reagan) got it figured out the project turned out pretty well.

 By sponging around the bat image you end up with the black silhouette of the bat.

 We decided we liked our colorful bats that were sponge painted in the process nearly as well as the intended art project. :)

 One of the primary things we learned regarding bats is how they use their ears for echo location. To experience echo location for ourselves we played a game where everyone had the opportunity to use their ears to locate the "bugs" in the room. We created a makeshift bat costume for the kids to try out while pretending to be a bat. By blindfolding them they had to use their ears to find the rest of us "bugs" who were busy making noise with maracas and bells. Missy Reagan volunteered to be our first "Batgirl."

 

 This hiding place of Missy K's was the best. Reagan could not figure out where this meal was located. lol :)

 My own little "Batman"

 The Missy K "Batgirl"

 Among other books, we especially enjoyed this interactive book Grammy gave us some years ago on bats. The book is titled "Misunderstood BATS" by Child's Play.

This was such a fun unit study to do, especially during the month of October. :) I also have to say "The Magic School Bus" series provides such great inspiration for getting going on so many science related subjects. That and a little searching for activities on Pinterest and I find I'm on my way and having nearly as good a time planning as the kids are learning and playing! :)