A Halloween Dilemma

It had all the makings of a disaster.

I have an 11 year old son who likes to trick or treat. I also have an 18 year old high school senior who plays football. A section semifinal game was scheduled for 7pm, October 31st.

Like I said. The makings of a disaster.

First off, who schedules a game on Halloween for goodness sake! And then, who schedules it for 7 pm on Halloween night?

Apparently the Minnesota High School League does. And as a parent, how was I to handle this? I really didn't want to miss the game (it is his last year, after all). I also wanted my 11 year old to be able to trick or treat and have fun.

Thank goodness for friends! We've known this family for years. It's not easy to find a family who have almost the same spread of ages that we do! It's come in handy since the older boys have played baseball and football together since 6th grade. They were in the same boat. They live very near the high school, and invited AH to trick or treat in their neighborhood so if there was trouble, we could be there quickly. We outfitted the younger boys with cell phones, and sent them off trick or treating with instructions to go home right after they were done.

They two boys had a blast alone! They had quite a load of candy after canvassing the neighborhood and they got to play video games after they were done. I called at half-time asking if they wanted me to pick them up so they could watch the rest of the game. "No Thanks, Mom! We're having fun!"

I was having fun watching my oldest son catch 5 passes for 128 yards and one touchdown! AD was definitely having a great time out on that field and I was there to see it all. The team went on to win and are scheduled to play next weekend in the section final.

All the makings of a disaster. But a great night was had by all!

That's my oldest son, AD, in red running in for a touchdown

This 'n' That

My what a week!

My older son's (AD) football team ended their season undefeated! The last game was Tuesday night and we've been resting ever since. They have a couple of weeks until their first playoff game which is nice. Congratulations to the Pony Football Players and Coaches...You Rock!

Click here to view these pictures larger

AH has been a busy bee. Last Thursday and Friday AH took a kids cooking class and had an absolute ball! He learned to make all sorts of Mexican food as well as scrumptious chocolate offerings! Saturday night was dinner by AH when he made us Quesadillas...Yummy! On Sunday, our oldest, AN, came over to dinner to celebrate her 24th birthday with us. For a birthday present to his big sis, AH made her lava cakes for dessert. They were exquisite. Big sis loved them! We also baked some bars for the football team.

On the homeschool front:
- We've been reading Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques. He just loves this series of books!
- AH was able to figure out how to fix his electric car so that it will race down the hallway! What a great day!
- We've been studying The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker as an intro into the world of chemistry! We love it!
- We are plugging along in math.

- Obscurity is the name of a game we have newly discovered. It's a sort of word search game with hardly any rules!!! We don't compete, we play each card together. I think it's helped him with vocabulary and spelling, but don't tell AH that!

- He's been plugging away at Brainology, a program I signed him up for and he is not too happy about. But I believe it'll help him learn exactly what his brain needs to do to learn things.

- He pulled out our box of magnets and accesories for his little cousins this week. It was fun to watch him show them what a magnet can do!

- AH discovered an unopened Bionicle toy that he got last Christmas and started building it.

- Halloween costume design goes under arts and crafts in the homeschool, right? AH is designing his own Willy Wonka costume and is doing a great job. I'll post pictures as soon as Canon sends me a new software disc!

- Tonight our youngest is off at a sleepover at his best friends house.

Animal School

This brought tears to my eyes because I am privileged to live with a Bee:

A Spark!

Sometimes you just know you are on to something when you look into your child's eyes.

Earlier this fall, we asked AH what he wanted to be involved in outside of homeschool. Scouts? No. Football? No. We went through a list a mile long. Nothing seemed to interest him. He is a homebody, as I've said before, and it is important to us that he have some regular interaction with other people! AH asked me about an electric car "club" that I had mentioned earlier in the week. I was pretty sure it had filled up, but emailed the organizer. It was full, but she put AH on the wait list. I was sure we were out of luck, but a few days later we were in! It is called BEST. Each week we meet to work on small electric cars that the kids design and build. We will do this until after Christmas when the kids start designing and building a larger electric vehicle to compete against other teams.

We had missed a couple of weeks by joining late and I was feeling overwhelmed and lost (I know nothing of electricity or cars!!) during one of our meetings. We were trying to figure out how the motor would turn the axle. Where should we mount it, what would we use? I looked around the room at the group of kids each working with their respective parents. They seemed to know what they were doing. I was thinking that I couldn't help AH with this, and how I was a failure as a homeschool mom, when he turned to me in the middle of this problem, his eyes bright and shining and said to me, "This is so fun!" It didn't matter to him that we were stuck. In retrospect, I was probably the only one who thought that. Thank goodness I'm learning to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself. He eventually worked out a solution for himself with a little push in the right direction from our experts.

We worked on his car today in anticipation of our meeting tomorrow. He figured out how to attach the battery to the switch and motor. His eyes lit up again today! He's got a game plan and a list of things to buy for his car. Tomorrow will be a great day!

(I'm having computer trouble and need to install some software onto our 2nd computer in order to upload pictures to my blog. My apologies. I would do it now, but it's after midnight and I should rest. I'll upload tomorrow night. ~Barbara)

Celebrate Banned Books Week!

Celebrate our freedom of speech! This week is Banned Books Week. Pick one up and read it with your child! AH and I have read quite a few found on the list, why not one more?! We started A Wrinkle in Time. What are you reading?

Some books that have been challenged or banned:

The Holy Bible, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, The Koran, Tom Sawyer, Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, Canterbury Tales, Harry Potter, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Leaves of Grass, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Les Miserables, Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, Book of Common Prayer, Grapes of Wrath, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Origin of Species, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Farewell to Arms, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Jungle, Gone with the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sun Also Rises, Doctor Zhivago, East of Eden, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings,The Talmud, James and the Giant Peach, Little House on the Prairie, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Chocolate War, Hatchet, The Catcher in the Rye, Flowers for Algernon, A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, Harriet the Spy, Blubber, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings, The Pigman, Lord of the Flies, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Forever, Bridge to Terabithia, Sounder, The Indian in the Cupboard, Julie of the Wolves, A Wrinkle in Time, The Giving Tree, The First Captain Underpants, The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book One), and the list goes on and on and on!

Not Back To School Camp: Day 3

Castle Mania Day!

AH told me he wanted to do a diorama of a castle. Since our original plans for day 3 fell through, I thought we could easily do a mini study of castles for the day. Our day started bright and early with AH speeding through his breakfast to start on his castle diorama.

He has an idea in his mind of what he wants to build and he started right in! His goal is to finish by Thanksgiving. After an hour or so he needed a break, so he headed outside for some movement time. When he came in we sat in the living room and read several books about castles, including David Macaulay's Castle, Mrs. Frizzle's Adventures: A medieval castle, and several others.

At lunch we ate sandwiches and watched a PBS video based on the David Macaulay book above. It was a pretty good video, a little slow by today's standards, but AH seemed to enjoy it, too.

I'll keep you updated on the progress of his castle.

It's Finished

AH's self portrait in the style of Austrian artist Hundertwasser.