H is for Halloween

I don't have much to share this week.  We slogged through the phonics week but things still aren't clicking so I am sticking with my decision to step back a little and take the next several weeks as review on the reading front.  I'll talk more about that later.  First I'd like to show some of our art for the week!

Jack's favorite holiday is Halloween and he was really counting the days until October 1st on the calender because that is the day I promised we could finally decorate the house and begin halloween crafts.  We picked up a pumpkin and put a silly face on it with Mr. Potato Head-like pieces, put up window clings, and he chose 1 new decoration to add to our collection (a jack-o'-lantern with a plug in light).

We stamped feet and made them into monsters!  He is still giggling about the little rhyme that goes with it.  I decorated M's feet and he decorated his own.

Little Frankenstein's Monster Feet!

In other art news, our painting this week was Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  I was really impressed with how many elements he picked out of the painting.  Watercolor is exceedingly difficult to work with so in the end, all of his colors melted together but he talked about each color he chose and what piece of the painting he was working on.  When we were finished, he was upset that his painting hadn't "turned out" like he wanted and told me we were switching. Now when people ask, he claims he painted the one on the top.

Again, please excuse my hasty art work.

I don't want him to get frustrated with his work but I think that it is inevitable that as he becomes more aware of artwork the more he is going to compare what he does to what he sees.

We also talked about primary colors and color mixing.  I found this lovely little book by Leo Lionni (author of Frederic) called Little Blue and Little Yellow to use as an introduction to the lesson.  My goodreads review is here.

Anyway, Week 10.

We'll head toward math land and give the phonics a rest.  I've updated the homeschool links page with several resources that have free printables.  I have printed off several dot to dots and other activity pages for the week.  There are several number games to play and we introduced the idea of addition/subtraction at the end of last week so we'll practice that idea some more.  We'll be reviewing consonant sounds by going through magazines and finding pictures that begin with letter sounds we've worked.  We'll cut them out and paste them on the right letter board.  My walls are about to get colorful!

I also have several fine motor skills activities planned.  He'll be using scissors and doing some writing.  We'll be adding to his "Book About Jackson".