Evie's 7th Birthday

Evie's special day was pretty great if I say so myself.  I let her hang out in her jammies as long as she wanted.

She helped me make two birthday cakes.

Both were banana (whole wheat), one had browned buttercream frosting, the other had chocolate frosting.

Both had massive sprinkles.

Fiona sneaked some rainbow sprinkles on the chocolate cake without Evie's permission.

 Evie, the perfectionist, picked them off.

She was surprised with a new bike!  After riding IJ's five year old hand-me-down bike, she totally deserved a new one in her two favorite colors.  Plus the glittery, sparkly tassels on the handle bars are a girls dream come true!  I am so glad Mark bought this bike and hid it in the shed before last week.  I'm sure the stores would have been sold out after Black Friday!  The last week of November is a dangerous time to have a birthday.

***For the record, Mark is calling JACK the dummy NOT Evie***

We enjoyed our night time (it was 4:45 PM) bike ride...and I'm sure Jack learned a thing or two about getting out of the way (he can be a bit slow-Mark hit him with the car once-he wasn't hurt and Mark didn't even know he hit the dog).

Cake and ice cream was enjoyed by all!  Fiona showed a lack of self control when she tried to blow out Evie's candle.  I have video footage of it, but until I figure out where the image extract button is on my new software, you won't get to see the moment of transgression.  The great thing about making whole wheat banana cake is that it is actually whole wheat banana bread with frosting.  That means we can eat birthday cake for breakfast.

We spent the rest of the day playing Monopoly.  We started with five players: IJ, Shane, Evie, Fiona, and I.  I haven't played since I was a kid and I have never completed a game.  This was a great way to do math!  Fiona practiced counting and reading numbers on the money, Evie had to read cards and count money, the boys learned about mortgages, interest, and investments.  And I killed them.  My friend called it "Parental Pwnage."  Pwnage is just ownage misspelled and has turned into a gaming term.  I'm hip, I'm with it!  After I bought hotels for the red strip, I got all their money, all their property- IJ's Get Out of Jail Free card- and then I sent them to bed!!!!  *crazy laughter*  One might think it was my birthday!    

In the middle of the game, IJ and Shane had to leave for a Cub Scout meeting.  During that time, the girls watched Angelina Ballerina (or Bina Bina Bina Bina if you are Daniel) and painted their fingernails.  We had so much fun!

Missing Camera Woes

The last time I saw my camera, I was making Mark watch a video I made of Shane making Lula laugh.  Neither one of us remembers where he set it down.  Sigh...

I would have taken a picture of his face when he came to bed last night and found his wife and four youngest children, arranged by age, sound asleep in our bed.  That was precious.  Daniel won't sleep without Lula next to him.  Fiona crawled in waiting for Daddy to finish working so he could tuck her in.  Evie got lonely and snuggled up to Fiona and told everyone a story until we all were asleep.  He hated to move the girls to their own beds, but you really can't fit four kids and two adults in a king size and get a good night's sleep.

Another picture I wanted to take was when Jack the Pirate went missing.  We thought he wandered onto the neighbor's property (they have a dog and goat he likes to visit).  But we found him downstairs,  snoring under a blanket by the fire.  All that was showing was his tail!

A picture I would NOT take is the state of my school room.  I started moving some shelving around, so we need to go through the mountain of drawings to choose the keepers.  This task may be complete by Christmas.  My kids are SO creative (I think they are responsible for the death of a small forest just this year).  All they need is access to art supplies and they just create and craft and weave stories about the worlds and creatures they invent.  I especially love when they use concepts and/or vocabulary from science to create creatures and habitats.  IJ has this world that has an abandoned zoo.  He has drawn different zoo displays in various states of ruin where his creatures live camouflaged.  I don't need an art curriculum for our homeschool-just a very high tolerance for mess.

I hope I find my camera today.  It's Evie's 7th birthday!  The two of us are going to bake a cake together and we have a surprise present for her.  I can't wait!

Video Gaming: Live

The video games were cut off, so the kids had to find some other way to entertain themselves.  Like playing The Incredible Hulky Toddler vs. Shane the Big Mean Boss Brother.  If you can stand 1 1/2 minutes of Shane beating Daniel at their game, you may laugh as hard as I did at the end of this video clip:

I have another video clip where IJ is holding Shane down so Daniel can beat on him.  It is almost three minutes long, and most of it isn't that funny.  At the very end, Daniel picks up the popper and goes to smack Shane over the head with it.  The movie ends with me shouting, "No! No! No! Don't hit him with THAT!"  If I could loop that ten seconds, my kids would never stop laughing.

***And lest you think anyone was damaged in the making of these movies, rest assured that these boys do this for hours and hours and hours, sometimes adding the dog or a little sister or two.  These are the times I wish I was okay with them playing video games with no limits because then my house would always be clean and my children would always be quiet.

Weekend Projects

Mark had three weekend projects:

1. Wi-Fi: He made it possible for our portable devices to access the internet wherever we are in the house.  This wasn't easy!  Now I can download books to my Kindle anywhere (that's the only portable device we own).

A good big brother teaches...

2. Washing machine: it started malfunctioning again.  We ordered the new part, but the machine started working again after we took the auto load sensor off and put it back on.  So whatever.  We'll have the auto load sensor as a back up until the the first one fails again.  I also mixed up a 10 gallon batch of laundry detergent-now that's satisfying and cheap!  I can't even calculated the per load cost!

...how to be a good big brother!

3. Weight Watcher Roosters: you burn more calories butchering these than you get from consuming them.  Our rooster flock is four less (good bye Lunch Meat, Biter 1, Biter 2, and Furno).  Fiona and Daniel crack me up; they have no idea that giblet eating could be gross (it is).  They each ate an entire heart (cooked), right off the cutting board.  Chomp, chomp!  They followed it with liver and gizzard.  Grandad would be so proud!

Guess which one named the roosters?

4. Winterizing: we cleaned the gardens up a bit and set the chickens loose to eat the rest of the greens.  We're already dreaming about what we are going to plant next spring.  Mark is also mowing around his baby trees and dreaming about which trees to plant!

Sunny Sundays are the best!

Thanksgiving Traditions

We didn't take many pictures of Thanksgiving yesterday.  I thought about pulling out the camera and taking pictures of everything, but I just wanted to be there in the moment (so you'll have to look at pictures of other things instead).  Plus, I was a little busy making the entire meal all by myself!  For the last 11 years, Mark has done everything from cooking the turkey to mashing the potatoes.  He doesn't really trust me to make a turkey.  So, how did I end up making the Thanksgiving meal myself? 

A few weeks ago, I decided I was tired of looking at half of a tom we raised two springs ago.  I pulled him out and defrosted him.  I didn't really think about Thanksgiving and how close it was.  If I had been thinking, I would have waited!  But there I was, ready to make a turkey half two weeks before Thanksgiving.  We ate the leg over two or three meals, I made stock from the leg bones twice (once for human consumption and once for the dogs), and the wing meat ended up in a pot pie (and more dog stock).  We got a lot of turkey meals out of that turkey so far and we still had a breast to get through... So I just wrapped it up and froze it.  Mark was relieved that he wouldn't have to cook a big turkey after a long work week!

New crochet projects!

All that was left was stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, yams, cranberry sauce, rolls, and green beans.  And pie.  And those are all easy!  We collaborated on the yams (roasted in coconut oil) and the gravy needed some professional tweaking (a splash of vinegar to offset salt-I swear I didn't add that much. My new Himalayan pink salt is tricky!).  The kids helped make the cranberry sauce two days ago and Evie help me with the pumpkin pies.  Everything except the stuffing was made from scratch!  And a lot of the meal was grown/raised right here! Hooray for farms and gardens!  I'm super inspired to expand the garden next year...

Lula's new Bumbo, "video game", and funny face.

The second best tradition in our family is eating pumpkin pie for breakfast while Mark eats the leftovers from the kids' plates.  The first best tradition is...

What's for dinner?

...taking pictures of the current baby in the salad bowl!  Here is a link to earlier babies. And here is the baby that didn't get posted:

Daniel 2010

Why we didn't take more than one picture, I'll never know.  Maybe the camera battery died.  But that is the best I could come up with for Daniel!

Now on to the rest of Thanksgiving weekend...Mark woke me up at 7:30 to say, "You're not even out of bed and I've already made my first Black Friday purchase! A complete set of National Geographic on DVD-ROM for only $25! I couldn't resist!"  How much more we will purchase today, we do not know.  But on our list this year (possibly) is replacing the TV with one we old folks can actually see and a new video game system for the kids.  MAYBE.

Rainy Day Music

The ebbs and flows of a homeschooling year has become very predictable.  We are motivated, stay on topic, and get things done until about the middle of November.  Then we start to slack off, sleep in, put things off,...re-prioritize... I think it has something to do with the weather.  I don't think it even got light yesterday-at least it didn't feel like it!  According to the National Weather Service, we had over 2 inches of rain yesterday!

I also start thinking about baking sweets...there is nothing like home made sweet treats when it is pouring down rain outside and there is a roaring fire inside.  I really have to distract myself from the sweets, so I took Lula for a walk down to the pond yesterday.  She doesn't remember trees, so she leaned way, way back in my arms for a good look!

The other problem with this time of year, the rain, the slacking, is not being able to send the kids outside to play.  I guess I could.  I just asked IJ if he wanted to go out and swim in the giant puddle forming in the pasture!  And weekends can be very long with six kids trapped inside.  So they've returned to video games...blech!  The one video game they can play during school time is Piano Wizard.  It counts as music education, but it feels like a video game. I wrote about it here, but now I've received Piano Wizard Academy from the school district!  The academy level includes teaching DVDs and the sheet music for the songs on the game. 

So now that the kids are familiar with the songs and keyboard, they are ready to learn some theory.  This morning I started with note names: I drew a whole note and a half note and named them.  Then I drew a quarter note and asked if anyone could guess its name.  Then the eighth note...and because they are jokers and math enthusiasts, they asked if there was a sixteenth note....and a thirty-second note...all the way to 128th!  Following the "Active Learning" method of education, I asked, "What does it all mean?  What's the big deal with the fractions? What are they fractions of?"  Why, they are a fraction of a measurement of time-and that is how they learned about measures.  I asked how many 128th notes would be in one measure and how fast they would have to play them.  Their faces were so funny when they thought of that!  Then I asked how long a measure was, which lead into time signatures.  Weeks and weeks of theory condensed into one short lesson that they understood right away.  Music is supposed to help people learn math, but I think today that math helped my kids learn music!  I tried teaching them theory when they were younger, but we experienced information overload and had to stop.

I would not be able to have a candid discussion about music theory with my kids if it hadn't been for my years of piano music lessons and the years and years I spent in choir.  I am very thankful I had the opportunities I had (but I'm still glad I quit piano lessons when I was ten years old). Mark and I really want our kids to not only understand the mechanics of playing music (something I'm good at), but also understand and love music (the way Mark does).

***And on a funny note (pun intended), Ian and Shane looked at the cover of the sheet music book, saw a picture of a little girl playing one of the video game songs, and was able to identify the song.  "Look, she's playing Beethoven!" Ian said.  "How do you know?" I asked.  "I read the screen-it says it right here..." I quickly cover the label and ask, "Okay, which song?"  Shane took one look at the arrangement of the flying objects and proclaimed, "Fur Elise."  Can you say Rain Man?

Vegetarian Turkey

This is a yam that I bought at the grocery store today.  Seriously.  A yam.  In the shape of a chicken.  It was the only one and I got it!

Night Hike

Last night, Mark, IJ, and Shane went on a 10 mile hike-and they started at 10:00 PM!  Why on earth would anyone want to hike at night...in the rain???  Because it's fun! This hike was organized for Boy Scouts, but Webelos 2's were invited to go along so they could satisfy one of their Arrow of Light requirements. Shane got special permission to go because Mark believed that he could walk 10 miles in the middle of the night.

One of the Ten Essentials: Flashlight

The boys had to have a backpack inspection at a Boy Scout meeting.  Before the meeting, we had to make sure they had their Ten Essentials and their extra clothes packed in plastic.  There is no point in packing extra clothes if they are just going to get wet in your pack!  We received gentle reminders that extra batteries are good in case yours die...but Mark says an extra flashlight is even better-especially a headlamp!

Building a Bridge

The camp had several activities along the ten miles, so the boys did more than just hike.  They had to build a fire that was hot enough to pop a water balloon, tie a mystery knot following verbal directions, ring a bell with a BB gun, and many others! Mark really enjoyed leading the boys (even though it wasn't his den) and he even ran them through his own version of Mile Post Math ("If I walk three miles an hour, how long will it take me to walk one mile?  How long will it take us to walk ten miles?  If we left at 10:00, what time will we get back?")

Wet, cold, and ready for hot chocolate! And bed!

Mark's group got back to headquarters at 2:45 AM and they got home around 4:30 this morning!  With less than four hours of sleep, they turned right around and went to the last flag football game of the season.  We may or may not have laced IJ and Shane's hot cocoa with espresso shots; I'll never tell!  Up until this morning, the Cobras were undefeated.  They were creamed this morning, but that's okay.  My boys were the only players that were up all night hiking in the rain, but other boys were off their game as well.  They enjoyed an after-game party at the pizza parlor and came home with trophies for their Wall of Mediocrity (did you know the boys weren't allowed to show happiness if they scored a touchdown? That's poor sportsmanship!).

Everyone's a Winner! Yay for People!

Now seriously, the real reason night hikes are organized, rain or shine (of the moon variety), is so the boys experience night hiking conditions before they are lost in the woods.  Someday, when these Cub Scouts are Boy Scouts and are on their first 50 mile hike, they will need to know that hiking is hard, tiresome work.  They will need to be ready for the discomfort of hiking wet or pushing themselves the last few miles before they reach camp. 

The added bonus for my boys this morning was the "second day."  The first day of a 50 mile hike, the boys are hiking fast and furious and leaving the parents in the dust.  The second day, the boys wake up tired and grumpy when they realize they have to do the same thing again...and again the third day...and they better keep it up because hiking back is the only way to get home!

Lula Sleeps

There is just something strange about this kid.  I put her down on her play blanket so she can play with her feet.  I walk away, leaving an older sibling to guard her.  I come back a few minutes later and she is all alone and sound asleep.

 On the floor!

I asked Fiona why Lula was alone asleep on the floor.  She said, "Lula cried a little bit so I gave her a binky.  Then she fell asleep.  So I went to play."  There is just something weird about leaving a baby on the floor to sleep with five active siblings and two large dogs constantly galloping around the house.

Daniel plays, Lula sleeps

This morning, Lula fell asleep on my lap.  I slowly and carefully put her in the crib so she wouldn't wake up.  At that very second, Daniel flipped the light on and settled down to play trains in the dollhouse, chattering away.  I started to shush him, but really, if she was able to fall asleep with the sound around her, why couldn't she stay asleep with the same sounds?  And she did!

I'm glad we didn't stop having kids after Daniel.  I never would have been able to experience the "easy" baby I thought only existed in parenting books!  You know the one they write about-put the baby down sleepy, but awake, and she will learn to sleep through the night at three months of age.  I always though it was a myth!

Beautiful Math

Mark and I are pretty solid in our beliefs on how and why to teach math.  We don't really fall into a prescribed philosophy-we're not "unschoolers" or rigid textbook users...but we try to find the middle ground between making sure they have the basics memorized by rote and letting them explore and follow their natural curiosities with numbers.  I guess we could call it Neo-Classical style!  I've read a lot of pieces about "unschooling" math and "living math" and most seem to be written by people who had bad experiences with how math was taught in public school.  They don't want to create the same negative feelings in their children, so they find a warm, fuzzy alternative.  Not me.  We start each school day with math because like breakfast, math is the most important part of your day.  I have them start at 8:30 and work until 10:00 or until they are done, whichever comes first.  This schedule helps us get a solid start and also gives us a framework to jump back into when we go off course.

This view of my table this morning shows that they were busy playing and creating and no one bothered to clean up after school yesterday!  Money, Webelos projects, old snail habitats, and coloring!

I thought this year was going to be way harder than it has been.  I think this may be because I've pulled way back on how much we do in each subject.  There were days in other years where I couldn't even get myself started because I had so much to accomplish.  When IJ and Shane were doing 2nd grade math, we used Saxon and had a long scripted lesson with hands-on activities, a worksheet, and a timed test every day.  Plus, I had other math games that I tried (unsuccessfully) to add to our day.  This year, Evie and I quickly review past topics, do some mental math, and quickly learn a new topic with a game for practice; it takes us about 20 minutes to get through a lesson.  Yesterday we played Money War with the money cards you can see in the picture below:

The game is easy: each player flips over two money cards, adds up how much they have, and whoever has the most money gets all four cards.  The winner is the one with the most cards...but I changed it to whoever has the most money is the winner!   Evie is so quick that I don't feel like she is missing out on anything by not doing extensive worksheets everyday.  Sitting at the table filling in worksheets is good for those who need to develop disciplined work habits (Shane!), but Evie was born able to sit and finish a worksheet quietly and correctly.

After Shane was done with his textbook, he and Evie played a few rounds of Money War.  In the picture above, Shane is teaching Evie how to figure out how much more money he had with double digit subtraction.  He is feeling superior because 1) He won 2) He knows more math and 3) He can teach math to his little sister.

On the other end of the table we find IJ doing his Saxon math.  He reads a lesson, does the practice problems, and then does either the even or the odd problems.  Every five lessons he takes a test.  He is one of those kids that is good at sticking to a routine-he gets up at the same time, he starts math at the same time, he does his school work in the same order.  And he is also good at finishing his math on time while fooling around.  Shane follows the same daily pattern, but he is easier to distract and sometimes has to finish his math for "homework."  Today's distraction was Tic-Tac-Toe:

Only they were using a 4x4 grid.  I said, "How many squares are on your grid?"  Shane started to count, but IJ stopped him saying that counting is cheating, naughty, naughty you need to multiply! in a very funny voice.  They like mental math games, so when we drive places they ask me to make up math problems for them.  My most recent game I call Mile Post Math.  Shane figures out how many miles we have gone and how many miles until we get to our destination and how quickly we will get places at different speeds.

Weekend Project

Another weekend, another work-in-progress! Or two....or three...

First, Mark purchased and installed a new computer for me.  This is my first blog post on my new computer.  It is fast, fast, fast!  My digital pictures downloaded so quickly!  I'm taking awhile to figure out where all the buttons and files are; I must be getting old.

Mark also spent most of the weekend burning this stump.  In the rain.  He is a very dedicated stump burner.  When I woke up on Sunday morning and trudged off to the kitchen to make my coffee, he cheerily waved to me through the window, wearing his raincoat and a big smile!

The painting is mostly done.  The shelves have gone back to their original places in the garage and we are going to have to retrain the chicken who thought they would make a nice roosting spot.

Next project: Well, I think we might be caught up.  Knock on wood!

Peek-a-boo Porridge

 Once upon a time, during the depression of the 1930's, there was a little boy about Fiona's age who would not eat his porridge.  To encourage him to eat his porridge, his grandmother buried a spoonful of jam at the bottom of the bowl.  This was to entice him to eat to the bottom of the bowl for the sweet reward.  She called it Peek-a-boo porridge and who knows? Maybe it worked on her when she was a little girl!  That little boy was smart (he was, after all, Grandad), so he just dug straight down, ate the jam, and left the porridge.  Grandad didn't change much.  He knew that if he came out to the kitchen during breakfast, I would force a nice, healthy bowl of hot porridge into his hands (instead of the sweet muffin he desired).  He would pick at it while he told us the story of the peek-a-boo porridge his grandmother made him. 

I haven't made Peek-a-boo Porridge since he passed away.  This morning was a perfect morning for it-the oatmeal was overcooked and needed something special.  The smile on IJ's face when he realized it was Peek-a-boo was priceless.  And Daniel? He quickly followed in his grandad's footsteps and dug straight to the bottom of his bowl.

S is for Snail (and slug)

Fiona's letter for this week is S.  Go figure.  We're also learning about gastropods in science!  We covered slugs quite extensively last spring.  We had only one day to cover this phyla before moving on to bivalves, so we needed to move quickly!

The kids went outside, found pet snails, and set up an experiment.  We asked, "What do snails prefer, lettuce or spinach?"  The answer is lettuce!

The snails are now living comfortably next to our worm farm, right in the middle of our school table.  This is the way I love to homeschool.

Post Halloween, Anniversary, and Lula

I'm guilty of not updating in a timely manner.  For those new to my blog, I started writing and posting pictures of our daily life back in 2007 for my Nana.  She lives far, far away from us and neither one of us is a good traveler.  This blog was created so she could watch her great-grandchildren grow without having to come and visit! *big smile*  Mark pointed out last night it had been five whole days since I posted and something in our lives has to be more interesting than poached eggs!

Yes, we've had enough candy!

Our 11th anniversary came and went in the fashion of which we are most comfortable: we did what we do every day.  At this season in our life, it just isn't practical to have someone watch our six kids, two dogs, and crazy household while we pay to have someone else cook for us.  When the kids are grown and gone, which happens all too quickly (as we already know), we will have plenty of time and resources to do that.

Dum Dum (the brand of sucker he is eating) is D's word for "bottom"

Our anniversary is not the best time of year.  We got married when we did because of the bulltrout season-it was when Mark could take time off-and we picked a Friday so we could spend a weekend away and be back for school (the girls and I) and work (Mark).  How was I supposed to know that an early November anniversary is a terrible anniversary? The weather usually stinks and it is always election time.  Twice now, election night has fallen on our anniversary.  Oh well.  God has taught me plenty about patience and delayed gratification.  And it pays off!  Mark ordered a new computer for me!

Foot grabbing action!

Lula has a new trick!  She likes to grab her feet!  I can put her down on a blanket (well guarded) and she will just grab her toes and drool.  She is so adored by all her big brothers and sisters.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone who thinks younger children in large families don't get enough attention is full of baloney!

Lula likes to pull Fiona's hair!

Every morning I put her in the playpen with a dangle toy while I finish up my morning routine and every morning she falls asleep!  When she wakes up again, she just plays and coos until someone comes to get her.  She is still so completely sweet.  She slept completely through the night four nights in a row, then spent two nights in a row fussing every hour or so...I think I can now say she is sensitive to chocolate!  Too bad.

Evie like to hold and feed the baby-she's better than a doll!

Evie is just blossoming into a wonderful little girl.  She is so attentive and caring to her younger siblings.  She is detailed and methodical in her work.  I think she has inherited the CDO trait that some of our family members exhibit (CDO is OCD with the letters in the right order, they way they're supposed to be-haha).  She loves to hold Lula and asks to do so several times a day.  I read an article written for men who want their wives to bottle feed so they can sharing in the bonding that happens while feeding.  The article states, "You cannot bond over a bottle.  THAT IS A MYTH!"  I completely disagree!  I see my little girls bonding every day!

Remember this?

Daniel insists that picture is of him.  We have seen a return of kitty faces around here.  Fiona is quite artistic, don't you think?  She was caught decorating herself and her brother under the school table yesterday.  I never cared when IJ and Shane had whiskers because I used Crayola washable markers.  Fiona used CraZart "washable" markers that just don't wash off the same.  She went to park day with a redish-brownish face.

The return of the whiskers!

One would think IJ wouldn't be so obstinate looking, since he was the one that started the whole trend back in 2005. After further questioning, he admits he was unhappy that Fiona colored Daniel's fingernails to match.  We'll just call them claws.

Halloween

Sometimes I'm inspired to have a little fun, *smile* usually when I've remembered to take my Vitamin D!  I've never made poached eggs before.  We have one of those egg poachers, but cleaning each cup never sounded like it was worth the effort.  And boiling water in our non-stick pans ruins the surface (says my professional cook turned biologist husband).  But after my fun weekend that included brunch with my dear friend, I needed poached eggs!  I have the perfect pan in my stash, I don't know why I never thought of it!

Eggs look so spooky when they are being poached, especially when the temperature of the water is too hot or too cold.  This caused my brain to spiral out of control and I had to serve these eggs with a side of Halloween toast on a full moon plate.

Then we had to keep catching up with schoolwork.  We are about two weeks behind in science, thanks to the school district's new policy on ordering things for us (they run behind so materials don't arrive in a timely manner).  Next on our agenda: worm dissection!  A perfect Halloween activity!

This girl is seriously great.  I knew at this moment that my little girl was a natural at science of the ookie sort.  Dissecting at home is not as scary as it sounds.  I put a movie on for Fiona and Daniel and Lula was sleeping, so the three most annoying interruptions were taken care of.

These kits come with everything you need (but could use a few more pins).  I honestly didn't know what to expect with my kids' ability to stay focused or learn anything.  But I've learned that if I let potential problems get in the way of starting, then I'm the problem that gets in the way.  If I just pull out the supplies for a project, the kids usually do a great job and my fears and "what ifs" go away!  This goes for science, art, and well, any project I dream up for the kids.  Does that make sense?

I wasn't sure if the kids were going to be able to cut the worm open without cutting it in half.  But they could!  And they could pin it and look at the dissection diagram and match their worms' organs to the picture's organs!  I didn't make them draw anything or write anything down.  We talked about scientific words (dorsal, ventral, posterior, anterior, etc).  I let them get a closer look at anything under the dissection scope.  And they had fun.  That was the most important thing for me.  The harder stuff can wait for high school.

After that, there really wasn't anything to do but assemble Halloween costumes.

Ian is a mad scientist, Evie is a cat, Shane is a magician, Fiona is a clown, and Daniel is...a tiger-giraffe-clown-cat with spiky hair that almost had a mustache.  Because he is two and wanted everything his brothers and sisters had.  We went to our church's candy carnival and had a great time!  People who go trick-or-treating have to wear waterproof jackets and dress warmly.  People who go to the Candy Carnival better dress light!  We were so hot I made two trips back to the van to shed extra layers.  The church had to turn on the AC!  The kids came home with plenty of candy to eat and share.