Jack-o-lanterns 2011

It's that time of year again!!!

Always fun to see what others choose to carve their pumpkins.

This year my two oldest went to the pumpkin patch with school so they carved what they brought home.

They are a bit smaller than we usually get, but we paid much more for them, go figure. :)

We finally bought my youngest his pumpkin today. Good old Campbell Supply had their pumpkins 50% off and theirs were the cheapest to begin with that I had seen. So his was a whole $1.50!

It was one of 4 left when we got there, and it doesn't stand upright. But that is ok.

My youngest is 2, so I don't think he remembers much from last year. So here is his pic by pic.

Gotta love discovering pumpkin guts for the first time!

All three of my kiddos ended up with pumpkins that totally fit them this year. My youngest is NUTS about STICKS!!! The antlers were his idea.

Meet his creation "Buck-kin"

He stuck the sticks in and proclaimed.. "Deer!"

Uncle Chet will LOVE it!

 Then of course my dog crazy daughter this year went with her idea.

Meet her creation "Pup-kin"!

Then my son insisted on Batman this year.

His totally cool idea to add the black paint!

My children are genius!

I was really impressed that their pumpkins are totally representative of themselves this year.

Pant Chip Spooky Garland

I saw some cute paint chip Frankenstein and Candy Corn Characters on Pinterest. I even grabbed some paint chips to make them.

But I ran out of time to make the ones like I saw on Pinterest. Only two days away from Halloween now and the paint chips were still sitting in the car. I noticed them right as we were walking into a sit down restaurant for lunch today. I knew the restaurant didn't have a fun activity type children's menu so I took them in with me thinking we could possibly use them to keep us busy.

My husband has a pocket knife that has a little scissors on it so I went to work cutting up the paint swatches right away when we got to our table. I also had a couple crayons and a pen in my purse.
The kids passed the time waiting, by coloring faces on the paint swatch shapes I cut out.

Then when we got home we taped them onto a string and hung them up.

Fancy??  Nope.

 Free? Yep.

Adorable because the kiddos did them? You bet.

And a great way for them to keep busy in the restaurant!

 

Addition and Subtraction Practice 1-10 Using a Deck of Cards

My girly is home today.. with pinkeye. Doesn't she look horrible. Poor thing.

She is on eye drops and will go back to school tomorrow I just didn't want her to have to mess with eye gunk at school today. Little ones are not as conscious of where their fingers go.

 I decided to let her stay home today although the school said she could go. I figured a good 24 hours on the eye drops would be the best route.

Just because she is home, doesn't mean she is sick. She is fine so she is capable of practicing her school work. This means I get to be a homeschool mom for the day!

Her teacher replied to my email and said to practice addition and subtraction with numbers 1-10.

How will I make that fun?

We created a little card game.

We put all the number cards A-10 in one stack. We put all the face cards Q K J and Joker in another.

Here is the "Key" she made, I let her choose what each face card represented.

K= (-) 

Q= (+)

J= (Ask her 2 year old brother Jack if she should use plus or minus.)

Joker= (Ask her 4 year old brother if she should use plus or minus.)

Yes we need to work on writing our "J"s today too. :)

So then she drew a number card, then a face card, then a second number card. Just for the ease of subtraction I told her she had to always put the larger number first.

This became her equation

Her brothers are getting a HUGE kick out of their job in the game. It is keeping them from grabbing the cards because they have a job to do.

She needed to do some writing today too, so for that I had her write the directions for the game so she can show her teacher what she did for math and writing.

Happy Learning!

Baby Shark! doo doo doo doo...

Ok ok I know I said I was done with costumes, but who can resist the idea of a baby shark???

 I know I can't. So I made one more costume for a cutie patootie.

Just like my killer whale costume, but with a modified tail.

Plus I didn't do the shopping for materials, I told them what I needed to make it, and they delivered.
SWEET! 

Oh for cutness don't you think?

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Practice Those Spelling Words (Three Ideas)

Dinner Time Window Word Quiz

Now that I have a first grader we get to study spelling words during the week for tests on Fridays.
I will show you three fun ways we practice at home.

One fun way I learned how to study spelling words came from my friends family. I remember they had a wipe off board in their dinning room on which their spelling lists were written for the week and their mom would be able to see the board, which was behind the kids, to read the word lists in order to quiz them. 

I however didn't have any available wall space for a marker board in the dinning room. Nor did I want a marker board up in the dining room as wall art. So... I used the next best thing.

The window...

Now I can see the words at the table, but my daughter can not without turning her head.

We tried it out with just wipe off markers but they didn't show up enough...

But these Crayola Window Markers work great!

You have to use water to wash it off, but we only have to do that once a week and it keeps little brother fingers from erasing the list as well.

Let the dinnertime "Quiz Bowl" begin!


Duplo Spelling Blocks

We have a pretty large collection of Duplo blocks thanks to a nice garage sale hit. So my 2 year old can part with enough for his big sister and brother to use for spelling.

I had seen them made with address labels for the stickers.

I couldn't find my blank address labels even though I have a whole pack in this house someplace.

But... I did have some sticky back craft foam I rescued from the landfill last week at a kids craft event. I actually think I like the puffy texture of my letter blocks better than the flat original.

So..

Writting on the Wall.
We have a large wipe off board, but it was not located in a common area of our home. When I saw this reposable adhesive poster that doesn't hurt walls, and also had nice handwriting lines on it at Walmart on clearance for $5, I knew I wanted one. Now it is right in the kitchen area and I can give her her words to write while I am doing food prep or clean up from dinner. Writing the word is in many cases harder than spelling it out loud. I even give her sentences to write using the spelling words on this board. Erasing is much easier on a wipe off board than in a notebook, plus we are saving paper, and using fun colored wipe off markers is way more fun than a pencil and paper.

Any other fun ways you practice spelling words?
I would love to know more to keep things new and interesting.

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Shutterfly Photo Cards!

Christmas Cards Already?

Sure when they are free! I got an email for 10 free photo cards from Shutterfly. Then the website was offering one free photo card. So I got 11 free photo cards and only paid shipping.

Last year I made and printed my own cards.

But I noticed I didn't need as many as I printed and I had to figure out envelopes, and they didn't end up printing so well.

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

I think it was much easier to just do them on Shutterfly than to use the free download software I used last year. I never could figure out how to get new templates for it. Didn't have to worry about that with Shutterfly. They have a ton of choices and it was easy enough for me to find something that worked with my photo.

I will let you know how they turned out when they get here!

Halloween Window #2 Spider Webs and Bats

Well we did our first window, as a Jack-0-Lantern Window then had so much fun the kids wanted to do a second window.

My daughter made a spider.

I made the web just by drawing a giant web on a piece of black poster board we had leftover from a science project. The green is a plastic table cloth from my daughter's birthday party. Yes I save everything!

Next we taped all of our shapes to the window glass and then hung the green plastic table cloth over the whole window.

Here is how it looked from the back. I just happen to have a lamp right there. I just turn one light bulb on to light it from behind uses less energy than the two in the room's light fixture and is plenty to light the window.

Again I need some tips on night photos, but here are both windows together.

Should we do some more? What color next? What image? humm...

We have one more window that is easy to reach.

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Thankful Burlap Pennant Banner

The time had come to replace my old paper Thankful Banner. It had seen a few years use and since it was made of paper it was showing some wear. I was excited to see this idea for a banner that I knew will last years longer than the paper one.

First I needed some burlap. I am not one for buying new, I like to upcycle and reuse so I didn't even bother searching for burlap in a fabric store. I am not even sure if you can find it there to be honest. I lucked out and came across this for $1.

It is for potato sack racing I am guessing. There was only one so it would make for a pretty boring race. It did have frogs on the front. But the back was free from any printing. Just the exact amount I needed.

I cut them out and backed them with some muslin fabric I had. I want them to last a while and not fray. Then I did some freezer paper printing to make my letters.

I printed out a font I liked, traced it on freezer paper, cut out the letters using a blade and cutting board. Then I ironed on the freezer paper letter stencils I made, applied the fabric paint, let dry, then peeled off the freezer paper.

Next I use a large needle and some brown string to string the pennants together.

Then all that was left was to hang it up.

Now to fix and update that ugly brass on the gass fireplace...

but that is a post for another day.

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