Halloween

I decided to have a fun day of school today! We don't normally do much of anything for Halloween.  I've never been totally against it, nor have I been totally for it!  A couple of weeks ago we talked a little bit about Poe and I decided that it might be fun to read some of his works for Halloween.That started my plan in motion!
  We did our math, then we read some fun Halloween stories, did some fun Halloween worksheets, listened to a fun Halloween song and read some Edgar Allan Poe.  Poe was a little difficult for us to understand.  We read "The Raven" and we read part of "The House of Usher".  It was still a good experience for us!  I don't think any of us will claim Poe as a favorite anytime soon!

I remember listening to this song in elementary school, for many years.  I still spell Halloween just as the song says. Does anyone else remember it?

Lastly...for the first time we took our kids trick-or-treating.  Like I said above I'm somewhat indifferent to Halloween. ( Not my favorite holiday!)  I 'm glad that my kids were able to go and have a lot of fun!  In case you can't tell Brie and Titus are pirates, Zeke is a mummy, and Reuben is a scarecrow!  I know they aren't the best costumes, but they were all homemade. We did have to buy  the gauze for the mummy!  (The hat hurt Reubens head, thus the sock hat under it, I know it doesn't look the best!!) (funny though!)

More Pioneer

This post is a little picture heavy, sorry! 
We decided to try our hand at washing clothes just like the pioneers did.  My kids really enjoyed this!  Brie asked if we could do shirts the next day!  Laundry is my nemesis, so maybe I should let the kids start to wash it the old fashioned way!
  We used an old wash board, a water bath canner to wash in and 2 five gallon buckets to rinse with. In our house we use castile soap to wash with, I decided that was close enough to what they would have used.  I know it's not exact, but sometimes you have to use what you have!
We only washed socks.  I thought that would be easiest!  They all thought the socks seemed whiter when they were done, compared to when they're washed by a machine.  

*NOTE*
I didn't do it true to the way the pioneers did. The pioneers would have done it by heating water over a fire.  Once the water was hot they would've added cold to make it OK to touch.    (I got hot water out of the tap and then added cold so it was warm to touch.)   The 2 rinse buckets were cold. 

Brie hard at work!  She did mention it was set up wrong for her to use as she's a lefty!! (oops!)

The boys had fun rinsing the socks out!  (a chance to play in the water always = fun!)

 

Reuben wanted included in all the picture taking!

 Grabbing for the rinsed out sock!

Titus rinsing his sock out! 

Titus giving it a go!

Rubbing soap over the board first, the way the pioneers did! 

Really working hard to try to get those socks white!

Zeke working with a smile!

Pioneer

My parents, brothers family, and my family all own chickens together.  In October they have a craft show they go to, since the chickens are part ours we are lucky enough to take care of them while they are gone!  This year it worked perfectly to accompany our pioneer study!  The kids were able to gather eggs and help feed them, they loved it!  I'm sure we didn't do it exactly like the pioneers did, but it was a good learning experiencing anyway!

Chickens on the move...

Brie taking her turn to gather the eggs!

Zeke feeding them!

Abraham Lincoln

We are currently in the middle of a 9 week study including Abe, Slavery, Civil War, and Pioneers! It's been a fun study so far, difficult to decide what really needs included. I think each of these topics could easily have 9 weeks on their own. We are doing what we can and trying to cover the main topics.

We've read many books about Abraham Lincoln. If you've never heard of the "If you grew up with" series of books I would urge you to check them out. They give a lot of information that is current for the time period.
We learned in that book ("If You Grew Up With Abraham Lincoln") that until Abe's father remarried Sarah Bush Johnston he slept on a mattress of corn husks. I saved my corn husks this year from doing corn so we could see what they were like to sleep on.

To be real and honest let me share how this went down. =) We did our corn in early August. If you've ever done corn or any produce you know how it can attract fruit flies, your corn may have worms in it, so you really don't want to leave the husks in your house. We from time to time have mice in our garage, thankfully we've not had them in our house. (I hope that day doesn't come!!!) So we try to be careful what we put in the garage. We don't want to encourage those little mice to make beds and stay! So I asked my hubby if I should put the husks in the garage to dry out, he said no, because it might bring mice in. So I put them out on the deck in a paper bag. I knew that wasn't the best option, but I didn't know what to do with them.
So fast forward to October when we are studying Abe...I knew the corn husks would be a little less than perfect condition. So we dumped them out by our burn pit and then put paper bags down before we laid on them. Gross, yes. The kids didn't seem to mind it at all. In fact they all said it was a very comfortable bed, they wouldn't have minded sleeping on it!

The husks before we put bags down.

Brie trying it out!

Zeke's turn.


Titus trying it out!

I will be sharing some more things soon!

Geography

We were able to study geography for a few weeks a bit ago. We could easily study it more, and probably will. We worked on learning what all the basics are. They know most all of the state capitals, a lot of the countries, all the continents and oceans. We learned about hemispheres, longitude, and latitude. We read some great books, (some of us read the atlas for fun!!!) and did some fun projects.
The first project they started working on was making their own country. They had to name it, draw its shape, make a flag,and give detail about it. The kids are finishing this up and will be doing a presentation on it. (I'm hoping to be able to share this when it happens!)

You can see below one of the next projects. I thought this was a neat idea. I got it from this blog. You start with your home. Then your street, then state all the way out to our planet! (I scribbled out our address and town. I don't like putting that information out there for everyone to see!) (and yes, I know it's a poor scribble out job!)



This is them happily working on it!


This was another project I thought looked like fun. I found this on Pinterest. It didn't have a link, just a picture so I can't give credit where it is due. Super easy, take a paper plate and have the kids draw the 7 continents. They can label it and of course color it. It can be as accurate as they want to make it!