This was our first Halloween in the new house, which meant big business! Unlike the last two houses we lived in, where we never had a trick-or-treater, our new house is located one block from the epicenter of all things Halloween in our area. And we were THRILLED about this. The previous owners of the house told us we could put lights up and expect kids, or turn them out and have no commitment. That's all they said. Never did they mention that if we DID choose to put lights up, we should also have a bathtub full of candy ready to go because 1,000 trick-or-treaters is the rule-of-thumb in this neighborhood. No, there was no mention of that.
So we naively decorated as BIG as we could, invited a few friends over for pizza, and hoped and prayed we'd get some cute kids in costume walking up our driveway. Thankfully, our incredibly talented photographer friend had his new camera handy and captured all these great images.
The grandmas in charge of passing out candy at the door. At 5pm exactly, before we'd even put our own dinner in the oven, we got our first trick-or-treaters. And from then on, it was total mayhem until 6pm, by which time we'd already run out of candy, raided our pantry for snack packets, thrown in a handful of gifty glow bracelets to the bucket, and run to the corner liquor store for three boxes of lollipops. At 6:01, we threw in the towel, turned all the lights off and hit the street with our own kids. I wish I had pictures of some of our neighbors houses. Some of them went to such incredible lengths to entertain everyone with the *eye candy*. When we got home friends, we all sat around brainstorming our plan for next year. Knowing what we know now, we absolutely can not wait to make the most of our favorite holiday!
6yo: working on learning to reading, Mom and Dad reading him Magic Tree House books.
MONDAY
9:00 - 10:30 8yo has private art lesson with M. This morning is a still life.
9:30 – 3:00 Homeschool in the Forest for 6yo + 11yo. When I drop them off, they are discussing what causes fog to lay low like it is on the lake that morning.
11:00 - 2:00 8yo and I work on math, language arts, and memorizing her CC timeline, following the lessons online. Each time I work with her, we drill down a little deeper and research the subject on one of the cards. Today we did Gandhi, and I pulled up this great song,Ah Ahimsa,by The Deedle Deedle Dees. It was perfect for her and she danced and couldn't stop singing it. To help her memorize the words, and to also work on penmanship, I printed the lyrics out on a custom cursive worksheet and had her copy them.
6yo Group Report: "Hello Dirt Time parents, We had another beautiful day of dirt time yesterday, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to be out exploring on the land with your children. Because it is Halloween week as well as full moon, we planned an extra sneaky day and were receiving strange clues as to poncho's whereabouts through a walkie talkie. We found conch and Dane hidden together beneath the spillway! Our opening game helped us review hazards (naming a hazardous plant or animal was the only thing defense against being eaten by hungry humans), and then, in opening circle, we had a brief discussion about changes that are happening this season as well as a challenge to notice one thing we'd never seen before in this often visited morning circle spot as well as to report back with a new sound we're hearing now that we weren't hearing a month ago. Maybe you will notice some this week! / Some of our group were hungry right after morning circle so we snacked at the picnic tables, sharing riddles and mysteries, and then headed out on our hike to pumpkin ridge. Once we got to a nice woodland at the top of pumpkin ridge, we saw Mia and the 8 musketeers running by us. We decided to try to sneak up and follow them, following them all the way back down the hill to where they were sitting pretending to have lunch and story. At the end of the day we learned, to our great amusement, that they had been sneakily following us all morning up to that point, and gave them kudos on their great stealth! We headed back up the ridge to where our backpacks were and where I had set up a blindfolded string walk. The children got to follow a string through the woods using all of their senses besides sight and trusting themselves, their intuition (and trusting that I had laid out a safe course) to the courses end. Everyone accomplished it without peeking and were also great at remaining quiet so other kids could enjoy the sounds of the forest. / We had lunch and heard a Native American story about birds migrating south and a turtle that convinced them to take him along only to fall from the stick he was clamping in his mouth and end up spending the winter beneath the mud in the lake. We wondered what the turtles that live at Lake Lagunitas will do for the winter. We'll have to watch and see! / We next played a game of coyote trackers in which one half of the group stayed with Dane and the other half came with me to hide as a pack of coyotes. Once we were hidden, we made a call and the trackers had to find us just using sound. Once found we switched roles and found the new group of coyotes. / Many of the children were tired from all of the up-hill hiking and were ready for some down-time and free play. We found a wonderful oak tree with many low branches that somehow fit our whole group, and they organized themselves into an imaginary world of animal friends. It was quite lovely (and funny) to watch how they played, and I was so happy with how well everyone was playing together and including each other. It feels like our group is really beginning to get and become harmonious! / We hiked back with enough time for the children to lead Dane and I in a blindfolded string walk, which they loved, and to have a few more minutes of unstructured play before closing circle."
11yo Group Report:"Greetings everyone, Today was a sneaky day of sorts, drawing upon the energy of Halloween and the full moon, and samhain (festival of the dead, that marks the shift from the autumn equinox towards the winter solstice - more on that next week). We managed to review hazards for the "hungry humans" during a game this morning, and then headed off into the forest. A short stroll to Bon Tempe for snack got us going in the direction of our stealthy plan to hide from Mia's group. There also began the adventure/mystery of the blow dart gun (more details momentarily)... let's just say our crafting for Water Dragon Credits (our new alternative currency for multi-person trades) is expanding beyond Dirt Time to home. There was much excitement to try blowing the darts, before continuing on our journey. A quick game at "Dragon Beach" before it was time to hide from Mia's group. A delay gave us time to eat lunch and plan, until we heard them coming through the walkie talkie. Covered in mud or leaves or branches, we disappeared into the forest. It was only our bird songs that clued them in after a good 5-10 minutes, and we slowly got found one by one (except Finn who jumped out screaming - covered in mud, don't forget - to scare them…it worked). / Up stream, we found our way up to a rocky outcropping for a sit spot/chill spot. After 10 minutes of solo silence we came back together to share observations and feelings - what we heard and how it felt in our place. By then it was time to make our way back, somehow finding a previously unknown forest of Buckeye - perfect for our fire kits… so we carried a couple dead branches back to work with in the near future."
3:30 - 4:30 8yo has dance class while her brothers finish up their math homework in the car (and on the sidewalk).
We eat dinner out and on our walk home we notice that our local library is open until 8pm!!! :) We stop in and stock-up on all sorts of goodness. While we were planning on reading The Watsons Go to Burmingham, 1963 for our next tween boys book club, I find Half Brother and am instantly hooked by page two. 11yo grabs it from me and won't give it back. A book about a 13yo boy who's family raises a chimp - so perfect for his mindset. After reaching out to the other moms of like-minded boys in our book club, we make a switch. Half Brother it is!
TUESDAY
9:00 - 11:30 Kids meet one on one with their amazing math tutor - a true kid whisperer. While each on is in the other room with her, I work with them individually on things like phonics, writing a letter to a grandparent/cousin, chores, etc. When I have the two youngest together, we work on our CC timeline song and back up the memorization with short history lessons on YouTube. Because when you have to sing about Mesopotamia and Sumer, it's best to know what the heck it is you are actually singing about! From here I will solidify their learning by quizzing them - "Who invented the wheel?" "The Sumerians!" "Who contributed the arch to architecture?" "The Sumerians!" "Who first spun pottery?" "The Sumerians!"
1:30 - 3:30 Drop in art class for the 6 and 8yo.
2:00 - 3:00 Music lesson for the 11yo
WEDNESDAY
9:00 - 2:00 All three kids rotate in and out of Math Club/ Art Appreciation / Maker Science, based on their age.
3:00 - 4:00 Parkour / Gymnastics
THURSDAY
9:15 - 12:00 Classical Conversations for 6 and 8yo
9:30 - 3:00 All boys nature camp for the 11yo. The report:
"We drove up to Azalea Hill, which seems like a little knoll of Bolinas-Fairfax Road. Once up top, where we walked for snack, the view over the lakes towards Mt. Tam and epic vistas sweeping east to north were amazing. As everyone ate, I oriented them to our previous trips - from the Labyrinth on Loma Alta to Hawk Hill to Tennessee Valley Ridge to Muir Beach to Rock Springs - wrapping back to the north side of Mt. Tam. I led them in imagining how a huge water droplet from our van last week would have come all the way down the Rock Springs trail and then down to Alpine & Kent Lakes all the way to Tomales Bay - as compared to the much smaller watershed of Redwood Creek to Muir Beach. / We split in two groups to explore the "Oak-Chaparral" as one of them put it. While my group descended into the forest edge overlooking Alpine & Bon Tempe to talk about and play a game enacting Sudden Oak Death and some of the ideas around causes (all inspired by a question about moss and lichen on trees), the younger crew stayed high on the hill for a bit, checking out the oaks and even a little swing… / We played in the trees (and tried our best to avoid poison oak) for a while before coming out to an overlook for lunch. Leaving our packs there, we descended the trail all the way down to Alpine Lake to explore the LOW water levels. There, frogs were chased and a turtle was caught - good one Nikos. Exploring the water's edge we came up with the question: How can one tell the difference between river otter scat and raccoon scat, if they've both been eating crawdads? Still a mystery, but I'll bring some books to help that riddle get solved. / With shoes, or shoe-less, we explored the banks of lake and spent a little time chillin with that turtle until it's head came out and we could see that it was a Red-Eared Slider, a non-native invasive turtle who is encroaching upon our native Western Pond Turtle. What to do? / Meanwhile, the younger crew had practiced stealth skills and then snuck up on us while we were deep in our game. Embracing their wild, they went unnoticed (except by a couple of us). As they circled back around the knoll, they found lots of manzanita bushes and gathered up some berries. They also took on the task of processing some of the acorns my crew found last week - teamwork. They cracked and pounded them in a mortar & pestle - I've since leached and dried them, so we'll make some sort of tasty treat together someday soon. / We reconvened at the top of the hill under the oaks to share story about our day and our highlights. Back in the van, we shared more specific stories and sightings for animals and animal sign we saw throughout the day."
FRIDAY
We hosted a weird science party at our house today! I purchased a Steve Spangler Halloween Science Party kit, and invited some of our favorite people over for some creepy experiments. My favorite were the vampire veins, but all of the activities were a huge hit!
11yo read: The Outsiders (for tween boy book club), The Fort, and into The Titanic. All three books were selected by me, so I'm thrilled he took to all of them.
Meet three of my all-time favorite people: Mr. Noodle, Miss Frijoles and The 8 year old.
