Hungry Monster People Toss

Here is one last easy Halloween game to play with kids.

Perhaps you have done a bean bag toss at a Halloween party before.  Well, since it is Halloween, we decided to do a people toss instead.

I made a monster face on a piece of cardboard, taped it to a basket, and leaned it against a wall. Jason looked at it and said "It's not your best artwork, huh?"  Thanks for the support hon.  (As a side note, I like to do these on flat pieces of poster board or cardboard and tape on a box or basket because then they are easier to store and reuse.)

We gathered up playmobil people, fisher price little people and imaginext people as our victims.  The kids lined up and took turns tossing 5 people into the hungry monster's mouth.  Each time they made one in, instead of cheering, we decided to scream like the people getting eaten.  I know, that's a bit gruesome, but it was also a bit funny.  We did several rounds and the kids had fun.

Happy Halloween!

Lair of the Spider Queen

This afternoon when my kids came downstairs from quiet time they found that our hallway had been invaded by spiders.  They had to use some super adventurer skills to get through safely.

Similar to the laser beam challenge from Maren's spy party last year, I taped white streamers around the hallway and poked spider rings through the streamers, making a fun obstacle course for the kids.

The kids decided it was the lair of the spider queen, and if you knocked down a string of web (streamer) it meant you had been caught and eaten.  When Joshua knocked one down he insisted the spider had only eaten his leg, so he could keep going.

Then the kids thought we should make the entrance to her cave a bit spookier, so we hung some streamers and Maren made a sign.  The kids had a great time playing adventurers for a long while.

This would be a fun halloween party game, or a fun game for a rainy fall day.

Homeschool Blog Awards

It is time for the 7th annual homeschool blog awards!  Yay!  Well, okay, I hadn't actually ever heard of them before, but I think it sounds like a great way to get to know other homeschooling blogs out there in the community, AND if anyone wanted to nominate this little blog for anything, well, that would be pretty cool too.

Jumpstart.com giveaway winner!

The lucky number was comment #14, Renee (and Eric), who said  "So I saw the coolest chicken related thing ever last night when Lydia wouldn't go back to bed and was playing at my feet with an icy soother while I goofed around on the computer. How about saving your chicken bones for a scientific dig. In sand. Totally going to do it with Dylan. It doesn't get any more awesome than chickens. Or their bones."  

Renee, if you could just send me the email address you want used for the account, I will pass it on to jumpstart and they'll will email you your password info and such.

Thanks everyone for leaving comments and sharing chicken wisdom!

Easy and Fun Monster Meals

Occasionally when Jason is not going to be home for dinner, I like to do a "fancy restaurant" with the kids to help pass the time.  Usually I just type up a menu of whatever leftovers and easy things we have to eat in the fridge, put a tablecloth on the table, and use my fancy waiter voice.  But, since it is October, I decided to do a Monster Meal Menu, just to make things more fun.

Originally I had grand plans to make some of the really cute foods I had been seeing around pinterest for Halloween, like the jello worms or edible spider webs, but I just didn't have time to make them before dinner.  So, I just used what I had and gave things spooky names to make it fun.

I told the kids they had to pretend they were monsters going out to dinner.  I used my fancy monster restaurant voice, and took their orders.  I refused to tell them what each item was, even though last Christmas I had broken down and told them when we did something similar.  This time I just wasn't going to do it.  They had to just guess.  Here is what I had on the menu, with what they are in parentheses.

Main Dish (all meals served with Witch's Brew and Fingers)(colored ginger ale and breadsticks)

Dragon’s eyeballs, tongue, and crackers (mini babybel cheese, ham, crackers)

Mummy (english muffin pizza)

Rat tails with ketchup (thinly sliced hot dogs)

Fruit and Veggies (choose 2 or 3)

Rat Droppings (raisins)

Ghost (banana)

Witch Warts (grapes)

Blood Blisters (grape tomatoes)

Chunks of Zombie Hearts (chunks of watermelon)

Dessert

Witch hat (hershey kiss on a cookie)

ghost poop (mini marshmallows)

to make the "finger", I shaped pillsbury breadstick dough and added
a candy corn fingernail after they had cooled

I used frosting leftover from a batch of mint brownies to secure
the kiss on the cookie.  

I pulled off strips of string cheese and sliced olives to make the mummy.  I toast my
english muffin first, then add the sauce and toppings and broil until melted.

The kids ordered and then ran outside to play while I got their plates ready.  I used Betty Crocker food coloring pens to turn the cheese into an eyeball (although it didn't soak in very well, so I would recommend dabbing it with a paper towel to avoid messy hands) and to put a face on the ghost banana.  The kids had fun eating like monsters and asking for more "warts" and "zombie hearts".  For the Witch's Brew, I put a few drops of food coloring at the bottom of each glass, then covered it with ice. I kept the glasses on the counter by me so they couldn't look too closely.  I told the kids they could have water or ginger ale (Christopher won't drink anything but water) and they were surprised when I filled up the glasses.  I think that may have been their favorite part of the meal, actually.  They wanted to try the trick on daddy when he got home later.

This was a good reminder to me that my kids like simple things just fine.  I had wanted to do a lot more with decorating the table spooky or having candles, but just didn't have the energy or time for it, and had considered not doing anything since I couldn't do everything I had imagined, but the kids didn't miss it. They enjoyed it and thought it was fun even without all the extras.  That's good for me to remember.

More Favorite Halloween Books

Here are some more Halloween Books that I like to read with my kids that you might want to check out of the library or add to your collection (everyone collects books, right?)  Maybe I should also do a post about Halloween Books I don't like to read and that you should avoid buying at all costs.  hmmmm.

Five Little Pumpkins illustrated by Dan Yaccarrino

My kids love singing this one and looking at the pictures, plus it goes fast so it's great when I'm in a hurry.

The Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Berenstain
I've loved this book since I was a little kid, and I love reading it to my kids.












Spooky Riddles by Marc Brown
Another one I remember reading when I was little.  The kids get a kick out of it.  

The Widow's Broom by Chris Van Allsburg
My older kids love this story about a widow who finds a witch's broom.









Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex
Older children who remember Goodnight Moon will appreciate this parody.












Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex
This book is full of monster nonsense.  It's great for older kids to read to themselves.  It's a bit long as a read aloud for me.






(last year's halloween book list)

Glitter Sticker Alphabet Cards

I had looked into buying some montessori sandpaper alphabet cards as a tactile way to help teach Christopher to write the alphabet but didn't want to spend a lot of money on them.  When I was at Joann's the other day, I found a sheet of large glitter alphabet stickers on clearance for $1.50 and I thought they would make a good substitute.  I used blue cardstock for the consonants and red for the vowels. Christopher helped me put the stickers on.  Christopher likes tracing over them with his fingers and hopefully this will help him later write them with a pencil. They might not last as long as the store bought sandpaper ones, but they work for us.

Candy Corn Math - place values

Joshua's math workbook has been focusing on place value recently, which really isn't all that exciting to do on paper, so I thought I'd help make things a bit fun.

We set up 3 pumpkins to represent ones, tens, and hundreds (the hundreds were the furthest away).  Then I gave him 10 pieces of candy corn.  He stood on the mat and threw the candy corn into the buckets and then we wrote down how many he had in each bucket.  

The first time he got 2 hundreds, 1 ten and 1 one.  Then I had a turn tossing and he wrote down my score and we saw who had the larger number.  

We did this a few times and then decided to make it a bit trickier.  We each did 3 rounds in a row, and then he added up how hundreds, tens and ones he had combined and added up mine as well to see who the winner was.  

winner!

Whoever won got to eat the tossing candy corn.  And yeah, I let him win, because who really wants to eat candy corn that's been handled that much and on the ground that much.  Only kids.  Of course, Maren and Christopher had to also have a turn tossing the candy.  Christopher didn't really get the whole place value thing, but he did a good job counting how many were in each bucket, and that's about all you need for a preschooler.  For Maren I probably should have made each bucket be something like a x4 or x5 so she could practice her multiplication and then have her add all the numbers together, but I didn't.  Maybe next time.  

And while we're on the subject of candy corn, I just feel I should mention that the only kind of candy corn that is any good to eat is Brach's candy corn, and if you've never had it and you are basing your poor judgement of candy corn on inferior brands, you shouldn't.  That's all.  

JumpStart.com review and GIVEAWAY!

You've heard of Jumpstart, right? We've used their educational workbooks for years.  Now they also have a website where kids can play and learn.

At jumpstart.com, kids age 3 - 10 create their avatar, or "jumpeez".  They can travel around the site, unlocking games and exploring.  Included in the account is access to mathblaster.com, for kids from 6 to 12.  You can put up to 6 children on each account!  They also have a blog for parents so you can stay up to date on the latest additions to the games.  There are opportunities to interact with other players online, but I chose to disable those for my kids.  There was plenty to do without the chatting option.

My kids have LOVED exploring the online worlds.  It's been a great motivator for them to finish their school work and get chores done.  They want to hurry and finish so they can play.  They even like watching each other play.  


Both Maren and Joshua agree that they're favorite parts of JumpStart are the Enchanted Sanctuary and Windy Hollows.  At the Enchanted Sanctuary, they get to raise their own Mythie (dragon, pegasus or hornhowlie) and train them.  Windy Hollows is a place of magic where players can make potions and play wizard games.  

flying with your Mythie

Windy Hollows

They've also enjoyed raising their own Monster Mutts at Mathblaster.  This site is full of math games, and the space theme is especially appealing to Joshua.  He loves to get on the site and wait in the center of the space station for a "red alert" which means they're under attack and they have to run through a special door and protect the space station.  He loves that part.  

defeat the bad guy with Math Power!

Red Alert!  Red Alert!

As a parent, I wouldn't say the sites are extremely educational.  There are lots of educational games, but there is also a lot for the kids to do and explore in between the games. At first I thought the games were a bit hard to find, but then realized each player has a dashboard type thing where you can quickly get to the games you like. In our family computer time is limited to 30 minutes a day (for the kids anyway, heehee), and I've noticed that the kids spend most of their time exploring and training their creatures rather than playing the educational games.  So it's not like you're giving the kids a wonderful healthy salad, but it's not like giving them a candy bar either.  It's more of an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  It's still a treat, but it's got some good stuff in it too, so you don't feel bad eating it for breakfast. 


Part of the site is free to anyone, but there is a lot more available to members, including my children's favorite part, the training of mythical animals.  There are also 4 downloadable games available to members, but we couldn't play them as they currently only work on PCs and we are an Apple family.  You can join the site 3 different ways.  You can try it for a month, for $7.99, buy a year of play for $74.99, or buy a lifetime membership for $149.99.  This might be a nice things for parents or grandparents to give those children who already seem to own every toy on the planet as a gift for birthdays or Christmas.

I am very excited to announce that Jumpstart is giving away a 3 month membership to one of my blog readers.  That makes me excited because it makes my blog feel a bit more grown up.  Plus, they said I can run the giveaway however I like, which also makes me smile.  So here goes.  


You can enter the giveaway up to 3 times.  The first way is just to leave a comment saying something like "Yeah, I'd like to win that for my kids.  That sounds fun!"  The second way to enter is to follow my blog and post a comment saying you now follow, or if you already follow, leave a comment and tell me "I follow your blog with google reader" or something like that.  The third way, and this is the part that makes me giggle, is to leave some kind of chicken related comment.  It can be a chicken joke, a chicken poem, the title of a favorite chicken book, a chicken recipe. . . you get the idea.  Anything chicken related.  I know.  I'm kind of a goofball.  So you can leave 3 comments if you do all 3 things, thus increasing your chances of winning.  See?  We'll let people leave comments for a week and then I'll do one of those random comment number things and announce the winner next Tuesday morning.  Sound good?

happy chicken

Disclosure:  I was provided with a JumpStart membership at no cost by Knowledge Adventure in order to test the products' abilities and give my own personal opinions on it.  The opinions I have given are mine and may differ from others but were not influenced by the company or the free product provided.