Halloween Fun

We love to have lots of family fun during the fall and one thing that we enjoy to do is celebrate Halloween.  Our children learn the history of Halloween and it's connection with All Saints Day.  They love dressing up as their favorite Saints and celebrating with their friends.  This year we read Father Phillip Tells a Ghost Story and also the new book Jackie's Special Halloween to learn more about the meaning behind Halloween.  We also enjoy carving pumpkins, reading fun books and trick or treating on Halloween! 

 

 

 

In the past years we have painted our pumpkins and done a lot of different things based on our children's skill levels and ages but this year our big kids wanted to carve them all by themselves.  We had fun carving while listening to Halloween songs like the Monster Mash, etc!

 

Then we went Trick or Treating for a while and then came home to pass out candy to others.  I love that our kids love handing out candy to others more than getting it themselves!  It was a fun Halloween and I definitely felt pretty safe being out with all of my little heroes!

 

 

Happy Halloween!

Wynken, Blynken and Nod

This past week our Memoria Press Enrichment book was Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Eugene Field's.  We had surprisingly never read this poem with our children so it was really great to read it and talk about all of the metaphors in the poetry.  We also used this week to talk about all things "Night time".  We talked about sleep, and our health in relationship to sleep with the Cat In The Hat Learning Library "Oh The Things You Can Do That Are Good For You!"  We learned about nocturnal animals and read the fun book "Where Are the Night Animals". 

 

We also studied the painting Starry Night Over Rhone by Vincent van Gogh.  We found the Big Dipper in the painting and talked about the constellations that we see in the night sky.  We also studied the song Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven.  I started playing the song through our Spotify playlist and immediately our 3 year old proudly exclaimed "It's BEETHOVEN"!  Moonlight Sonata is one of my husbands favorite songs to play on the piano so it is a family song to our children and it was fun for them to learn about the background of the song a little more. 

 

We also had lots of fun this week pretending that we were napping, getting healthy at the gym rock climbing, and playing "doctor's clinic"!

 

Here's some extra's from when we have studied the Human Body before and also all about Sleeping!

 

Our Sleeping Schedule with Little Ones 

All Saints Day Party

We celebrate All Saints Day on November 1st, but our homeschool group helps sponsor a great All Saints Day party a little earlier in the year.  It is a great way for the kids to get together with friends to celebrate great Saints and have lots of fun! 

 

St. Jerome

 

 

St Nicholas

 

 

 St. Patrick

 

St. Peter

 

Our Crew of Saints

 

I love that the first thing that our children wanted to do when we arrived to the party was go to the chapel to visit Jesus!  It was such a beautiful day, so we had a lot of fun playing the Saint themed games, going on a hayrack ride, singing songs, playing outside and having a bonfire!

Check out our All Saints Day celebrations in the past, (2014, 2015) and also the review of the book for All Saints Day - Jackie's Special Halloween

Celebrating St. John Paul II

 

We celebrate the feast day of St. John Paul II on October 22nd.  We started our day reading all about him with one of our favorite books A Boy Who Became a Pope!  After doing a few other things we decided to do one of St. John Paul II's favorite things, which is explore nature and take a hike!  We went to a local forest and had a blast enjoying the beautiful weather and being together.

 

 

After our walk we went to the nature playground to play, explore and create!  It was such a lovely day to be outside and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air!

 

It was so much fun to take even small moments to play in the leaves, explore the rings of a tree stump, make music and explore individually with my little ones!  Thank you God for this beautiful world and all of your beautiful creations!  Happy Feast Day, St John Paul II!

 

Happy Feast of St Luke

We celebrate the feast of St Luke, "the beloved physician" (from Colossians 4:14) on October 18th.  This is a big feast day in our home because not only is he the name sake for our son Luke, but he is also the confirmation saint for my husband (and also the patron saint for physicians).  We have the above St. Luke wall hanging statue hanging outside of my husband's office at home as a special reminder and prayer over all that my husband does as a physician!

Our Luke

 

St. Luke has also been thought to have been a painter so it was kind of fun to give our Luke a gift of the Wee Artist Color and Hug Jesus!  It is doing simple little things for each child on their name feast day that makes the day very special for them and also teaches them a little bit more about different Saints!

 

Also, we try to use the feast of St. Luke to thank physicians in our lives, including my husband!  He has made a lot of sacrifices and works very hard for our family to have all of the blessings that we do.  Beyond that, he truly has been called to his vocation as a physician and has blessed so many people within our community.  All of our boys look up to him so much and all that he does to "help the people"!

 

Here's a flash back to the past (to before I started blogging) to when we celebrated St. Luke's feast day in 2014!  That year we gave our little 1 year old Luke the fantastic board book called The Saints Are Watching Over Me and the Tiny Saints St. Luke!  It is still one of our family favorites for religious books for little ones!

 

 

St. Luke, pray for us!