Halloween Books & Eats

These are the books we have been reading for the last week and into Halloween!
Read-Alouds

Stellaluna Activities we will be doing, as well as a bat craft

Books C read to us

FREE Halloween (and other) EBOOKS for kids HERE, if you register (also FREE) they will give a book to a child in need for every book you read online!!

Halloween themed mini pizzas 

I used the whole grain round flat sandwich bread, some homemade marinara sauce and topped with with provolone cheese.  More toppings could be easily added to make it even more fun!
I cut the shapes out using Halloween cookie cutters, I think I may try some even more intricate Halloween designs with  my cricut cake some time!
I tried writing on the cheese with edible markers, but it didn’t work so well…lol

Bake at 350degrees until cheese is melted!

I use this recipe for the marinara sauce as a general guideline, and just add all the ingredients to my vitamix blender!  I also add about 2T of sugar, use stock or water instead of wine usually (sometimes I use cooking wine), and usually use dried herbs/garlic/onions instead of fresh (if I do not have any on hand).

I find it is much more cost effective to do it this way…I just stock up on stewed tomatoes and tomato paste from Costco, I can even get Organic and it’s still cheaper in the long run!  Plus the tomatoes and paste can be used for other things as well, so much  more versatile. 

Spooky Chili
Served up our normal chili with a cut out slice of cheddar cheese!  BOO!

My food ideas were adapted from things I found on pinterest

Linking up with:

The Giggler Treatment and Zero Grandparents (Book Reviews)

So there are the latest two read aloud books we have read.  I have to be honest and say they are not my favorite.  The Giggler Treatment jumped around with the plot a lot, so much that I don't think C was able to keep up, aside from that the story line, though funny for a child, and it did catch a few laughs from C, was a bit ridiculous in that I said the word 'poo' at least a hundred times while reading it.  The Giggler's are this little elf like creatures that punish adults when they are mean to kids by putting dog poo in their path for them to step on.  So it was definitely a kids sense of humor, but with the plot jumping around from present to past quite frequently, I think for a child C's age (4.5) it was too hard to follow and, the subject matter was not that enjoyable to read about either.  (though I will say at some points it was funny, even for me).   Another thing about the book is that it has a lot of British words, which C didn't get either (even though they explain them for the most part, and the book contains a dictionary in the back).  I think the book would be better as a silent read for an older child...maybe 3rd grade..depending on their reading level.  It was a fairly quick read, we read it in two days (about 20min a day).

Zero Grandparents was the next book we read.  This was a cute story, would be good for kids whose grandparents are deceased.  For C it just raised a lot of questions about death, and how he doesn't want his grandma to die. The girl in the book is having Grandparents Day at school, she is not happy about it b/c she has no living grandparents, but she ends up coming up with an alternate plan...which actually for me was a bit of a tear jerker...but I am still a bit postpartum hormonal. This was a very easy read, we read it in one sitting, many parts were a bit over C's head. So maybe more appropriate for a slightly older aged child.

I got both of these books off of a 'must read kindergarten' list that I found online, but I am finding that I much prefer the Sonlight Reading list and will most likely just stick to it in the future, with a few exceptions.

On another note I am excited to have been given the Sonlight K core guide, which has the reading schedule and discussion questions for the read aloud books in it! I am so lucky to have found someone who was just giving it away, the core guide costs $60 new, and since I only wanted a portion of it, I did not want to pay that much money! School starts for us a little over one week! Hard to believe.

And one last thing...C gave his bird presentation today at Science Class, I was told he did well...I didn't stay, I wanted to, but thought he would actually do better with out me there. If only we could be invisible at times.

Easy Readers and Read Aloud Books

So, trying to decide what books to read and share with my children can be difficult. Of course, I have a few of my favorites, but there are so many books out there, and many of them I have NOT read (or even heard of). So I have decided to use the Sonlight Lists for Reading books and Read Alouds. You can of course get them from your local library, but I have also found that you can by them used for decent prices on ebay.com or from Wonder Book and Video(I like purchasing from here if buying more than one book b/c they have flat rate shipping of $3.99). I have also found some on paperbackswap.com (as previously mentioned). Amazon is also a good choice.
I have also purchased some phonic readers and early reading books from starfall.com, if you are not familiar with starfall.com, it's a great site to early reading skills, letter and sound recognition, etc. Cole loves these books b/c they are familiar characters to him from the website. I will be using the webiste this year with my 2 year old, as for the most part Cole has 'outgrown' it. Though there are older kid features as well.


Here is our read aloud list from Sonlight (not all are pictured), and we plan to add others according to our unit studies.
The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition)

The Story of Doctor Dolittle

The Story about Ping (Reading Railroad Books)

The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose: A Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes

The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems

Richard Scarry's Please and Thank You Book (Pictureback(R))

Johnny Appleseed (First Biographies)

Capyboppy
My Father's Dragon: The Bestselling Children Story

Dolphin Adventure:: A True Story
The Light at Tern Rock (Puffin Newbery Library)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Books of Wonder)

The Apple and the Arrow

A Grain of Rice

The Hundred Dresses

Twenty and Ten (Puffin Story Books)

The Boxcar Children (The Boxcar Children, No. 1) (Boxcar Children Mysteries)

In Grandma's Attic (Grandma's Attic Series)

Five True Dog Stories

The Family under the Bridge

James Herriot's Treasury for Children: Warm and Joyful Tales by the Author of All Creatures Great and Small

Dolphin Treasure (Harper Trophy Books)

Mary On Horseback: Three Mountain Stories
AND MORE!!

Starfall Learn to Read Phonics Book Set: Zac the Rat and Other Tales!

AND MORE!!

Cole started his Science Classes yesterday. I stayed for the first class just to see how it went, but will be dropping him of next week and finding something to do with the other 2 for an hour. He seemed to enjoy it. He is the youngest in the class as it's for K-2 and the school year is wrapping up, so the K's are almost done with their school year. He got his first 'homework' assignment and has a project he needs to work on researching a bird of his choice (they are studying birds and mammals this month). He has chosen to do his project on Puffins. More to come on that later!