Halloween!!!

 It's Halloween! I absolutely love that our town celebrates halloween on Saturday when it lands on Sunday. Although, there was two feet of SNOW! That didn't stop my kids, who mostly made their own costumes. Abraham just used the costume he made from last year (the jack-o-lantern ghost.) William was the cat he's was two years ago. 

But Maxwell made a Steve head. Hyrum changed Maxwell's shark onesie into a walrus onesie, and Daniel, DANIEL out did us all! He made a "wither" skeleton with three heads!! I was quite impressed.

And we did some halloweeny things for Social Studies, so let's get on with that:

First, we learned about Jamestown and Pocahontas. The REAL story of Pocahontas which actually seems to deviate from one source to another. But then, for our activity, we made Kachina dolls (which didn't turn out as cute as imagined) while watching the Disney movie, which by then they knew was wildly inaccurate. 

Then we learned about small pox's (and other diseases) effects on the indigenous peoples. Did you know that there are only two documents that say there was intentional spread of small pox to the indigenous people? I'm just saying I thought there was a lot more evidence. 

We made beaded necklaces as our activity. I bought some beads off the internet, and I got A LOT of beads, but they had so many fun beads, that I don't regret it!

Then we learned about the pilgrims and the Wampanoag. I love this story, and we had the boys "plant" candy corn in "dirt" with fishy crackers as our activity. This is always a hit.

But then, sadly, we learned about King Philip's war, which undid all the good from the Pilgrim/Wampanoag story. Such a sad ending to a good story. No activity.

Then we learned about the start of slavery in the Americas. We focused on the shipping of slaves. (I have actually been to the main port where slaves were shipped away from in Benin, Africa, and it was the saddest, evilest thing I have ever felt. I'm so glad I had that tour. It changed me.) We had the boys cram into a container while being chained for our activity. They had smiles, but I think it's hard for kids to understand horrible concepts, and maybe that's okay.

Then we learned about pirates! We learned all about Blackbeard and all the real pirates. I didn't talk about modern pirates, because that scares me since we're planning to go SAILING!! 

By the way, I made a Youtube channel about our sailing adventure, so here is a link to that:

And Daniel did a treasure hunt for us all, and he was super cute about it and hid the treasure box in the snow. 

And then, we learned about WITCHES (can you get more halloweeny?) We learned all about the Salem witch trials and how it was happening around the world too. For our activity, we did a couple Halloweeny activities like blowing spiders across the floor and eating cotton candy with vampire fangs.

See how Halloweeny our school has been? But wait, there's more! We went to the corn maze as a homeschool group. It was a bit colder than last year, but it was still super fun. I love it there.

I sure love our homeschool group. We've had a couple surprise parties lately, and it's just so touching to see how much all these kids love each other. 

And just so you know, our homeschool group is GROWING! It was crazy! One day, there were about 24 littles in my class! I've NEVER had a class that big, and it seemed like so many things went wrong, and I was a bit frazzled. We were learning about pressure, and one of the funnest experiments we did was to walk on eggs. Not one was broken during the littles, but some did with the olders. 

By the time I had the older's class, I had gone home and gotten some supplies I had forgotten, and the olders were just about 13 kids, and they were the steady kids I've known forever, so I calmed right down, and it was a good experience. 

We had an emergency mom's meeting after that, and talked about how to accommodate all these kids. I am now teaching THREE science classes, and for the littles, they are shorter classes (which I'm not sure I love, but I think works.) Cayleen really is the backbone to this whole thing, and I just love how she was wearing a name tag with "William McKay" on it last Monday.

The groups were still pretty big, even though they were split up. Here's a pitcure of some of my crew to give you a bit of an idea of our "smaller classes."

The next week we learned about Newton's three laws of motion. as part of this, we learned about centripetal force, and if you can't tell because it's a blur, Daniel is swinging a cup of water in a circle with out the water spilling out.

And that's it for science, but while we were at the Alternate school, I just happened to look at the town's newspaper and my family was on the front cover! (The backs of my family) it was of the Orange shirt day ceremony.

And in other news, I love Rightstart. Abraham started doing multiplication, and it was so easy for him because of the excellent foundation that they give. Then William started doing percents, and same thing. easy transition to knew learning. LOVE IT!

And lastly, Maxwell and I did our courses for First Aid training! We learned a lot and I read about half of the online stuff with Daniel and Hyrum too, and I plan to complete that with them.