October 29, 2011 - Posted by CayleenRae - 0 Comments
On Saturday we went to a Corn Maze! Giant was elated. He had been asking to go ever since we’d mentioned the idea over a month ago. Which is kind of funny since I don’t think he had any idea what a Corn Maze was!
I took some pictures at the front gate:
Yes, those were the best ones I got. Sorry Giant.
We warmed up our a-maze-ing abilities in the pint-sized hay-bale maze:
And then entered the Corn Maze:
Decisions, decisions:
Every so often we could see the tower we were aiming for (it’s there, way in the distance, between the two rows):
Ettin was the pokey puppy of the bunch, tiptoeing along slowly behind the group. Which was actually kind of smart on his part since it left him first in line when we all turned around after hitting dead ends:
One sweet cousin found a great big walking stalk to help him navigate the paths:
The view from the Tower:
All many of us on the Tower:
Hubby took some cute pics of the entry to the Kid’s Maze. I can’t tell if they are pretty, or hauntingly spooky. Part of me expects the spirits of lost children to wander through the stalks at night:
Then the special incentive at the end, the Cow Train!!!:
Pretty cute, and the kids thought it was fun:
My favourite part? Feeding the animals!
Each kid got a cup full of feed (in an icecream cup, how smart is that?!)
…almost like Fossil Rim. Minus the Zebras, Giraffes, and Emus. Really, just a lot of friendly and hopeful goats::
We sped home for a delicious supper and cake, then we were off to a haunted house! The gymnasium where the cousins have gymnastics was rearranged into a giant play arena, complete with haunted house tunnel. The kids went through again and again. I think my favourite part was watching Ettin trying to copy the tumbling of the kids playing around on the mats. He whirled and swirled wildly all over the place, laughing and rolling as he went.
The kids each got a sweet bag of candy.
And slept hard that night!
October 28, 2011 - Posted by CayleenRae - 0 Comments
Gospel Message
We learned about Showing Love for our Parents. We talked about what parents do for us, what we can do for our parents, and what our Heavenly Father does for us and what we can do for Him:
Interestingly, the answers were fairly similar. The constant reminder to show love every day made for a lot of nice learning moments. Like, “Mommy, I can share wif Galoot!”:
(Galoot thanks you)
And like showing love for someone by taking care of their puppy. We were worried about somebody’s puppy that was running around the streets. We would have shown love and walked her home if she’d had tags, but she wasn’t wearing any so we had to call our very sweet by-law officer to help her find her home:
Reading
Just lots of lovely snuggle time with books. Oh, and we found a fun ipad app that teaches (flashcard style) dolch sight words, so Giant had been practicing a LOT of those!
Writing
In the same ipad app, there is also has a writing recognition program where the kids write words. It’s a little picky (not accepting some letters that I think are just fine), but the kids love it. Giant does have a tendency to doodle though… (he was supposed to spell bat. Not bat and a snowman):
The boys made haunted mansions:
…which we turned into a halloween book:
“A Halloween Story”
“Three little chicks [the hero’s of most of our family stories] went trick or treating. They went to a spooky house. They knocked on the door.” [Ettin helped with some letters]:
“Happy Halloween said the Ghost. He gave them spooky stuff.”
“The spooky stuff crawled on them. They ran away. They went to another house.They knocked on the door.”
The Ghost gave them candy. [cute picture with a ghost and two lights and a table with candy on it]:
“They said thank you.”
“The End”
After writing our book together, Giant went on to make books out of all sorts of materials. Write on little buddy!:
Art
What to do when you have a zillion pumpkins and Halloween is just around the corner?
Carve lots of pumpkins!:
We also painted monster rocks:
Galoot was SO meticulous:
They finished painting. Cute, but I thought they could use just a little something extra:
Hee hee. Cutest monster rocks ever!
We spent one lovely sunny afternoon drawing all over our sidewalk and driveway:
Math
In addition to the ipad app (which also teaches addition and subtraction), the boys played math games:
Built nifty structures:
And sorted colours and shapes:
We did some pumpkin math. Estimating the seeds in a pumpkin, and skip counting with seeds:
Geography
Giant spent some time flying around the earth:
Science
We played around with the Laws of Aerodynamics:
Zoom!
Is cooking science? I think so! Especially when the experiment threatens to bubble over the bowl:
The fact that it tastes good is just a bonus!:
Music
I’m trying to make this part of our morning Gospel Lesson. So every morning is a little bit noisier around our home…:
Giant was exploring the pages in the back of the song book, which led for a great discussion on beats and chords and notes!:
We also snuck in some sign language, thanks to some signs included in the song book:
Physical Education
Gymnastics
We brought up a beam to practice balancing on:
And Giant showed me a few moves he was particularly proud of (you can be sure I didn’t teach him this!):
He kneels, grabs his toes, and rolls forward:
He rocks himself up from laying down:
Outside!
Snow! Our first snow of the year fell on Tuesday. The boys were ecstatic!:
Thankfully it didn’t last long, and we had a lot of fun bike riding on Wednesday:
Oh, and for the next pictures, please just know that I am still wondering where my brain was. The boys, however, had a blast!!!
Some friends came over looking for cardboard boxes to go sliding down the VERY STEEP AND LONG HILL next to our house. I gave them the boxes. Giant looked on wistfully at all the happy kids and asked what they were doing…
Which led us to this next adventure. I loaded up a tired and cranky Galoot in the stroller, and took my just turned 5 and 3 year old over to the hill. I then lost my sanity and encouraged them to hold on for dear life to the giant cardboard box:
They wizzed down the hill (the older protectorate girls having jumped off near the top), with looks of terror on their sweet little faces:
Then they grabbed the box and hauled it up the hill to go again. And again. And again.
Okay, Ettin chose to just watch after that first run, but Giant came home freezing, scratched, bleeding, and entirely happy.
It was good for them. I think.
As we were coming home the boys found lots of rocks. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the rocks.
Why do I buy toys, again?
😉
October 27, 2011 - Posted by CayleenRae - 0 Comments
Sometimes I can be a bit of a bear.
Not just a momma bear, with three very cute little cubs, but a grumpy just-wanna-hibernate-until-spring kind of bear.
Thursday afternoon I was that bear.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than curl up under a blanket and have a nap on the couch.
However, there were those cute little cubs I mentioned. The baby one had just woken up, way too soon, from his afternoon nap. I was grumping to the boys, directing them to remove the dang-nabbed rocks (the really cute rocks they’d decorated like monsters) from the house and put them outside in the freezing and inhospitable cold. I snugged up the blanket further as they went to do as I’d commanded, the cold breeze finding its way into my den. After a minute listening to their happy chatter as they moved their little rock friends, I decided that the breeze wasn’t so bad. Not freezing, anyway. Maybe brisk. And I thought I might have sensed some sunshine out there. And anyway, the baby had escaped and I should probably be somewhat responsible and make sure he at least stayed off the road. So I shook myself out of my cozy den…
…and I was so very glad I did…
We spent the afternoon playing and colouring (yes, I did too):
Sooooo much better than den-ing up and the dark cave:
I got in some cute fall photo-ops:
And Giant made games for us to play:
Ettin drew almost our entire extended family:
Ettin and Galoot giggled non-stop playing together with the stroller:
Thank you for dragging me out of the cave, little cubs, and letting a bit of sun shine warm up this momma’s heart.
