We had a bit of a rough Halloween but we still managed to go trick or treating.  Austin and Adelaide both weren't feeling great today so we had a quiet day at home.  But, Austin insisted he wanted to go trick or treating this evening so we went on a bit shorter route than usual but the kids got plenty of candy.  Adelaide had no problem following her brothers and even carried her candy basket the whole time.  She screamed when someone opened the door at the first few houses but she soon caught on to the idea and was marching right up and taking her candy.  Here are some pictures.

Austin has a helmet to match this knight outfit but insisted on wearing the blue one.  

Adelaide made a very cute little owl.

Here are the kids setting off on their adventure.  It rained all day but was nice enough to stop in time for kids to go trick or treating.

This week Gavin has been learning about crystals and making some of his own using this kit from Smithsonian.  The kit has been okay.  We haven't gotten anything even close to the pictures on the box but Gavin has been happy with what he has gotten.

Adelaide is obsessed with glue.  I finally gave in and let her use it while Austin was gluing yesterday.

This week Austin is learning the letter S with a snow theme.  I found a great little snow unit to use this week on TeachersPayTeachers.com for free!  Yesterday I gave Austin a bunch of little cutouts of kids playing in the snow and had him glue them into little boxes on a piece of paper.  Then he had to graph how many he had of each child and then he answered questions using his graph.  He really enjoyed this activity.

Adelaide glued the extra pieces onto a piece of paper.

Our neighbor got the kids a bloody doctor set.  I'm not really sure what else to call it.  It's really gross but Austin and Adelaide both love it.  Adelaide was wearing the hat around and then stuck it on the cat's head!

Then she was playing veterinarian with Austin.

Gavin is still learning about ancient China this week.  He put together a display about Chinese inventions.

Here is the first crystal Gavin made.

This morning Austin played with Hot Dot cards.  Basically you use the dog to point to the right answer and he barks and makes noise for yes or no.  He really liked this.  He did some counting cards, some phonics cards (beginning and ending sounds) and rhyming words.  His Halloween party at school was this afternoon so he wore his costume all day.

Today Gavin looked at all his crystals under a magnifying glass and drew what he saw in his science journal. 

Here we are at the party.  Actually, this is pre-party, Adelaide and I had an hour and a half to blow before party time. 

I was getting things ready and lost Adelaide only to find her participating in story time with her big brother's arm around her.

Austin declared it the best party ever so I guess it was successful.  Here are some of the books I've read with Austin this week.

One of the things the moose in 'If You Give a Moose a Muffin' does is make sock puppets, so this week Austin made a sock puppet.  Gavin just had to do it too.  He was supposed to be reading about China but when he heard sock puppets and then Austin said he was making a dragon puppet, Gavin came out and said that he should do one too because dragons are very important to the Chinese...I couldn't really argue with that, so, it ended up being a project for both of them.  

The pipe cleaners would be the flames of fire coming from their mouths.

Gavin made another salt dough map of China.  He wasn't feeling well on Friday so he hasn't labelled it yet.

Austin made his own salt dough creation, which he then dropped into a cup full of water and carried around the house dropping water everywhere and then turned it into a ball and set it on the counter to dry, so I'm not sure that was really worth it.

Another thing the moose does in Austin's book this week is to sew on a button.  Austin tried his hand at the lacing cards.

Here is Gavin painting his salt dough map of China.

Adelaide and Austin had fun playing on the couch.  Apparently it was a ship in a bad storm about to be shipwrecked.

Gavin worked on another Matisse inspired art project, exploring shape and dimension.  First he traced his hand many times on his paper, then traced over each outline with black marker and then used bright colors to make patterns inside each hand.

We finally finished learning about the periodic table and how atoms work (at least as much as we will learn this year).  We didn't do any exciting experiments this week but next week (well, really this week since I'm typing at 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning) we will be growing crystals and learning about acids and bases.

Here are the books about China Gavin read this week.

Sorry I'm behind in posting to the blog.  I'll try to be better this week!