Homeschooling Friday - Week Two

We had an awesome week! I love fall, I love October, and I love Halloween, (plus my birthday was Wednesday) so there was no way it wouldn't be an awesome week. I have decided that Halloween is going to be a major holiday in this house from now on. I am talking Christmas major. Mini Halloween stockings, advent calenders, exchanging gifts, cookies, crafts, the whole shebang. If Magdalena goes back to public school in the future, I may make her stay home the weekend before to make and bake with me and have a big party after school.
We spent the week on Halloween crafts, and learning about the letter B and the number one.
We made bird masks on Monday:

Butterflies on Tuesday:

On Wednesday, there was no way I was going to adhere to a strict diet on my birthday, so we spent the day baking cookies. Chocolate and vanilla Day of the Dead skull cookies, to be precise:

These, seriously, are a can't miss. The cookie above it the absolute best looking one we got, but keep in mind I had a five year old helper. But taste wise, they're amazing, no matter how they look! Recipe here: http://www.nantucketknitter.com/2013/10/day-of-the-dead-cookies.html! (I originally had the recipe in this post, but it deserves it's own post. Seriously.)
We also made these amazingly fun crafts this week:

It's Halloween, and it starts with B, perfect! (I didn't take any step by step pictures with Boo, might be a good thing as the post is long enough without them!) For Boo we followed part of this inchie idea: http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/10/halloween-inchies-part-1.html

We followed the ideas here for this one, roughly: http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2012/10/halloween-inchies-2012.html. I cut three inch squares for both projects, because I thought two inches would be too hard to work with, with a five and four year old. (Magdalena's friend Mr. T was here for one of the projects.)
We didn't have everything she used on hand, like bubble wrap and googly eyes, but we made do with what we had. They were such fun projects, I will be doing these for every holiday, and I think for gifts as well.
We painted all of the backgrounds of the little squares first, as well as collaged the center one, then let everything dry whilst we went and ran some errands.

I wouldn't use sand on them next time. It was cool because M loved watching the paint being sucked up by the sand, and it left a nifty effect. But it was way too hard to glue anything on afterwards. Although, I don't have any liquid white glue now, so we were working with glue sticks, and M dumped a ton of sand on them, so that may have had something to do with it.
Once everything was dried, we got to work on the details.

Our structured projects don't normally take so long, or require quite so much work; I think that was good for a change to have an all day project. Plus one that requires such attention to detail, for a five year old.

For the background, I cut a piece of poster board big enough to hold all the mini projects, with an inch or so border between each one and all around. Then, I let Magdalena go wild on it with water colors. I think after so many hours of such structure, it was good to let loose!

I think this one is getting its own frame! We are going to be working on a fall theme of this same project next week, then a Thanksgiving one as well! Seriously, fun, fun, fun. The website, that artist woman, has been a major source of inspiration since I came across it. I will be referring back to it through out the year. Go check it out, you won't be disappointed!

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Homeschooling Friday - Week One

It has been an exciting week of homeschooling here! It's the close of our first full week, and our first week following Oak Meadow's curriculum. We learned all about the letter A. (Very picture heavy post!)
I found myself stressing over my lesson plan too much, like on Monday morning, I hadn't planned enough to do. So I took something from Tuesday morning, and we baked bread in the shape of A's and things that start with A:

And I had a minor panic that we then wouldn't have enough to do Tuesday morning. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that; A - lessons are only supposed to be about 45 minutes at a time with lots of creative play, and B - homeschooling is flexible. I can change things last minute, I can improvise things.
This week, we did lots of things.
We wet paper painted:

We made a ton of that bread I mentioned earlier:

We made pine-cone critters and pine-cone bird feeders:

We hung them up right outside the kitchen window, so we can watch for any birds.
Note to self: remember to tie the string on before you let the kids add the peanut butter and bird seed, next time...Otherwise it results in a very long and messy 15 minutes of wrapping string around messy pine-cones...and for some reason, all of your little helpers have miraculously disappeared. Only to reappear again when it's time to hang the bird feeders up.
We painted pumpkins and made this awesome garland, for our nature table:

I love this garland! This fall on Nantucket is really unseasonably hot, and so the leaves haven't been turning at quite their normal rate. Thus, there are almost as many green ones as red and yellow. We added some green to the garland to really show the contrast.
We followed the directions for ironing leaves in wax paper found here: http://crafts.creativebug.com/iron-leaves-wax-paper-1323.html. (I found they didn't come out as clear as I had expected. Not sure what I did wrong.)
I also drew some leaves on construction paper, then had the kids color them and cut them out. Then we strung everything up with some pine cones. (There is no shortage of pine-cones on Nantucket, any time of year - can you tell? Unfortunately I can't find any acorn caps this year, which I love working with also.) I think the nature table is coming together quite well!
I couldn't let a week in which we were leaning about A's pass us by without making some Mini Apple Pies! (Great way to learn about fall too - or maybe that's just my excuse for making them. I cut the apples up into quarters and had the kids slice them smaller, gave them brown sugar and butter dots, and let them create their pies however they wanted.)

We went to music class at the library: (she's imitating a chicken, by the way)

We also got outside plenty. I pick up some kids after school and hang out with them for a while, which is built in playground time:

And we got to help build a labyrinth!

We got to the beach:

Plenty of nature walks happened, too:

We also went on a long walk and looked for all the A's we could find. We took pictures and made a collage out of some of them:

I am really proud of us and our homeschooling adventures this week! We did a lot more than what is included in this post, but it's already long enough! Plus, most of it is things we're going to be doing every week, and I need to leave something for next week.
What did you do with your home-schooler this week? Please feel free to leave links to any other homeschooling/craft type linky parties, or links to any awesome home-school websites.
See you all on Monday!

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