Halloween / Trick or Treating

Wander didn't get around to haunting the house until the actual day of Halloween. The past few years Glitter was too scared to let Wander decorate much, but this year she has gotten braver.


Both girls were fairy princesses for Halloween, once again. On the advice of a friend, I let the girls put together their own costumes this year, pulling from all the dress-up they have. They have on their Easter dresses, with ballet tutu's underneath to make the skirts extra poofy.

We hooked up with some neighbors to go trick-or-treating. Trick-or-treating is more fun with a group, especially if the other girl is dressed as a fairy, just like Sparkle and Glitter.


Here's the kids wandering the neighborhood in search of candy. We have an awesome neighborhood; everyone is friendly, and many people recognized the girls from their nightly walks with Wander.


Back home, the girls gorged themselves on candy. I'm not planning on doing much school in the coming week. Hopefully all the candy will be gone by the time we start school again the following week.

All Saints Party

This was our third year attending the annual All Saints Party at the farm of a family in our homeschool group. I let the girls decided which saints they wanted to be this year, as long as it was a nun, a queen, or St. Joan of Arc. (Their dress-up wardrobe includes nun costumes from last year, princess dresses newly sewn for Renaissance Festival, plus a sword and shield.) I pulled out our books of saints and let them browse through the pages.





Sparkle chose St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Glitter chose St. Therese, the Little Flower, same as last year.

Here are the kids on the parade. This year the kids sang "When the Saints Come Marching In" as they marched. I liked the added touch of music to the parade.




After we got home, Sparkle asked why Glitter didn't wear the white collar that goes with her costume. Oops. The girls used the collar as an apron for the dolls, and it got forgotten since it wasn't with the dress-up.


After the parade it was time for the games, and then food, and then random play. I didn't get any pictures of that stuff. Sorry.

Carving Pumpkins

Due to a hectic schedule, we didn't get to carve pumpkins until Friday night.


Glitter, elbow deep in her pumpkin


Sparkle, "Eew, it feels gross." Um, then why do you keep putting your hands in it?


Glitter, still pulling gunk out of her pumpkin



Wander, planning his design


Watch out, Sparkle has a knife


Reading a book while Dad and Mom clean up


Everyone next to his or her pumpkin


Spooky. I love Sparkle's snaggle-tooth pumpkin that she carved herself. Glitter's happy smiley face pumpkin is like a great big hug (she drew the face and had Wander cut it out.). Wander's pumpkin is fierce.


Pumpkins outside for all to enjoy


After admiring the lit jack-o-lanterns, Sparkle and Glitter chased each other in the dark driveway. Surprisingly, neither crashed to the cement.

Glitter can sit and do math

I started bribing Glitter to be quiet. If she sits still, with no toys, not making a sound for 10 minutes, I pay her 10 cents. Co-incidentally, I will give her a manicure (fingernail polish) for 10 cents.

Today she had an assortment of nickels and pennies and wanted both her fingers and toes painted. She knows that a nickel is 5 cents and two five cents make 10 cents. So, she set aside two nickels for her fingernails. Then she counted out her pennies, but had only 9 pennies. No problem, she combined a third nickel with five pennies to get her toenails painted. (It took Sparkle years and much prompting to figure this out! Until last year, Sparkle would only buy something if she could use only coins of the same type, even if she had more than enough money.)


BTW, yes, I have the girls store their money in ketchup squeeze bottles in a cardboard beer carrier. Hey, it works.

Glitter writes

I wasn't planning on teaching Glitter any handwriting until after she could read, but she had different ideas. She started trying to form letters on her own, mostly capital letters with strange stroke orders. So, I decided to step in and teach handwriting before she developed too many bad habits. I thought I'd go slowly with one or two letters a week, as I did with her sister, but I'm finding that Glitter wants to know how to write "all the letters in the factory" right away. Even more surprising is that she has the stamina and patience to work at it.

I originally planned to start Glitter with the salt tray, like Sparkle, but I decided that was too messy. Instead, I got a little magnadoodle that was just the right size for one letter at a time. (Glitter even figured out on her own to turn the magnadoodle landscape to write "m" and "w." She is so much more visual/spacial than Sparkle!) I liked the magnadoodle because it is so quick to erase and less messy, compared to the salt tray.

Once Glitter had the general concept of stroke order for most of her letters, I decided to move her to lined paper to work on letter placement and size. I tried real paper and pencil once, but she just wasn't ready for it. So, I dug out this old dry-erase white board that I got for Sparkle but never used. It was just right for Glitter. The lines are nice and large. It erases quickly and cleanly. Oh, and Glitter is right-handed, so we don't have inky pinky problems.

Here is Glitter after her first day with the white-board. Most of the letters are recognizable because I immediately erased gross mistakes with a quick swipe of the tissue. The letters are in random order because I use flashcards to decide which letter to do next. There are two "u"s because there is a second "u" after the letter "q."

Line 1: i k r v n m a qu
Line 2: s f u y z b t o l g h
Line 3: d p j c x e w

After school, Glitter dug up a little blank booklet and started writing a poem that she's memorized. I think she was trying to write " 'Tis a lesson you .... try try again."

Sparkle does grammar

I am so proud of Sparkle. A year ago, even 9 months ago, she had no formal understanding of English grammar. She could speak correctly, but couldn't tell a noun from a verb from an adjective.

Now, here she is doing her daily sentence analysis all by herself, upside-down on the sofa.


I do a modified version of four level analysis that we learned from our English textbook (Grammar Island). I add in labeling objects of prepositions, and drawing arrows from modifiers, and drawing arrows from conjunctions. Then I have her compose a sentence using the same pattern (based on a different textbook I plan on using later).

Last week's pictures ... science museum and art club

At the science museum last Thursday a great docent found our group and gave us some background on the dinosaur and mummy exhibits. Glitter even got to hold some real fossilized dinosaur poop. He also gave us a behind the scenes peek at the construction of their new building. They are digging out the basement where the new classrooms will be.



Here's where Sparkle and Glitter will attend class in a few years:

Friday was our homeschool group's nature and art clubs. Since I help lead one of the stations at art club, I never get any pictures. However, I did snap this picture of the group doing an old-fashioned dance. Sparkle is in the yellow dress in the foreground. There are always more girls than boys when we do these dances, and Sparkle and Glitter hate it when asked to pretend to be a boy. However, when they get to dance as girls, they have a ton of fun. (The girls and boys do almost the exact same things, but it's still a big deal to them.)

Sparkle finished her RightStart Math book, so we're doing a bit of Miquon now.

Calendar time

The girls have a special calendar with extra large numbers that I designed just for them. I also write in events that are important to the kids, so they can see what's coming up, without resorting to my cluttered calendar.

We start each school day with Glitter pulling up a kitchen chair to the calendar and telling us the date. It's a quick activity that teaches her about the passage of time and how to read numbers.

"Today is 12. The day of the week is Tuesday. The month is October. And the year is still 2010. And here is Halloween." Glitter hasn't figured out that we say dates as month-day-year. She's also doesn't quite believe that the year will ever change, even though I've pointed out the sequence of months and when the year changes on the adjoining timeline.

Glitter ends each day with crossing off the date just before heading up to bed.

"Bye-bye October 12."

When Sparkle was younger I did the same with her until she could read a calendar reliably.

camping in the back yard

Wander likes camping. The girls like camping. However, the schedule has been too busy to actually go camping. So, Wander decided to invite the girls to camp out in the back yard. Unfortunately our full size tent doesn't fit in the back yard. Wander figured that wasn't a problem. We'd just sleep under the stars. He set up a tarp with all the sleeping bags and pads and pillows. We snuggled in, but the only one of us who could get to sleep was Glitter. Invisible bugs kept Sparkle and me too busy slapping and scratching. At first Wander didn't believe us because *he* didn't get any bites. After a few hours we gave up and trooped back into the house to sleep with walls and a roof between us and the bugs.

Over a day later the bug bites were even more pronounced.

Here is Sparkle's face. Her right eye was swollen shut and her left ear ballooned to twice its normal size.


Glitter somehow managed to fall asleep despite all these bites. The other side of her face was just as bad.

labeled

Glitter has been running up to me every few minutes showing me her latest creation. I nod and smile as she keeps bringing back bits of paper with more scribbles and color each time, sometimes with extra bits of paper taped on. I have no idea what she is drawing, but she is clearly very proud of it.

I reach down and feel something stuck to me. What's this? A bit of scribbled paper taped to my dress. How'd that get there? I pluck it off and head to the garbage.

Then I do the double take. It's not just random scribbles. It's letters. And it's not just any letters. And it didn't end up on my skirt by accident. Glitter labeled me!



Good thing Glitter is still figuring out letter formation, is a lousy speller, and my name isn't phonetic, or Wander wouldn't want me to post this cute picture.

PE again

We had PE again. Funny how I manage to get pictures only at events when I'm not in charge of anything. Once again, Glitter and Sparkle are the kids in dresses.


Even though the weather was much cooler than last time, Sparkle still spent a lot of time in the tree.

lap

Glitter still looks small on Wander's lap.



Glitter fits on my lap, but she takes up the entire lap, and I can't see over her head. I have to look to the side.



Sparkle doesn't fit on my lap anymore. She still *sits* on my lap, but is a huge sprawling creature spilling over on all sides.

(BTW, it took Glitter a half dozen tries before she was able to get this picture of Sparkle and me. She was *thrilled* to get to use Mommy's camera.)

National Night Out

Here are some photos from National Night Out. The neighborhood elementary school hosts the event in its parking lot. There was a fire-truck, jump houses, a DJ, free food, and lots of kids.

Sparkle found one of her friends and took off. Wander spend most of the night in line waiting for cotton candy. Glitter clung to me in fear every time the grocery store mascot came by.

Sno-cone!


Cotton Candy!