as a witch!!!! OMG he looks so good!! The costume is black and purple and he has long hair and purple makeup and even purple fishnets, girl shoes (size 13w!) and hoozits!!! I can’t wait to share a picture!! I made him wear a girdle and bra!! 😀
I guess today he is my dear honey! If it wasn’t for the darkened chin you’d NEVER KNOW. 😉
We also just finished making 200 sandwiches- ham and 3 cheese on bakery bread! I am so tired!! The cool thing about them is I made the sandwich spread! It’s a huge 60 oz jug of miracle whip plus a small bottle of italian dressing and a cup of ground up dehydrated tomatoes and peppers from our garden. It’s delicious!!! YUM!!!

This is great if you have free long distance!
http://dialastory.highachievement.org/

For reading I am sticking with Hooked on Phonics and any little print & put together books I see online for now. It’s working for us. I’ll look into other stuff once we finish it but I have through “2nd grade” so it’ll be a couple or more years.
Literature- I do library books that I find recommended or try to find books on the current holiday or select several of the same theme (right now it is maps and Halloween). I think I’ll let science and history be the books we read and activities I find for now too.
I don’t think I’ll start any real math beyond counting things, patterns and writing the numbers for now. Maybe 6 months, maybe next fall. Who knows. When the HoP isn’t such a challenge. Then I am thinking maybe Saxon math or Math-U-See… up in the air but I will do a premade curriculum for that. I’ll have to review them.
Spelling is definitely in HoP and I incorporate handwriting in it too. What’s left?? I want to put him in Karate and join in a HSing park day… crafts and cooking things… songs when I find them….
I also have 2 workbooks- “Preschool Curriculum of Basic Skills” and Parents’ “Ready for School”. I really like them both. He does pages from them regularly. They have great pictures and things to do like tracing, opposites, words of position/direction, shapes, colors, patterns and stuff. I’ll have to start some cutting activities soon. He’s never used scissors.

Bren colored a pumpkin puzzle today. I cut it out and he practiced putting it together. Then he glued the backs and I put them on the paper. I wrote his words down in the letter as he said them and he signed his name. I love the little tails on his r and n!

Brendan is doing great with the Hooked on Phonics and his Bob books. He has pretty much aced _at words, is at half-mast on _an words and we are working on _ap words too. He can read “Fat Cat, Fat Rat” very well and loves that he can do it! We worked yesterday on reading and writing CAT, CAN & CAP and MAT, MAN & MAP. I’ll mix one set up and he’ll read them and then I’ll write one word at a time on his dry erase board (which he LOVES) and he’ll read it and write his own. He is so cute how he writes his letters! His “m” is a zigzag and his “a” is an o with a tail- it often looks more like a Q. 😉
*****
Here are some Halloween themed activities I have run across:
Song: “Five Little Pumpkins”
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,
The first one said, Oh, my it’s getting late!
The second one said, There are witches in the air! (or owls)
The third one said, But we don’t care!
The fourth one said, Let’s run and run and run!
The fifth one said, Isn’t Halloween fun!
Then Wooooooo went the wind
And out (clap hard) went the lights
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!
(beautifully done on this page and in this printable mini book. The wordings are slightly different.) Color then cut the five different pumpkins out glue them to popsicle sticks and use to enact the song. Here’s Bren’s:

A 6 piece pumpkin puzzle:
http://www.kinderprintables.com/halloween/bwpumpkinpuzzle.pdf
Pumpkin vine pasting & ABCs activity:
http://www.bry-backmanor.org/actpag263.html

He’s an ounce shy of 23 lbs (37 %ile)
He is 32 3/4 inches tall (95 %ile)
His head circ is 19 1/4 inches (93 %ile)
I can’t believe I have a tall & skinny kid! Haha. The pedi recommended the flu shot but I declined due to money issues (he had the MMR-Varicella and the Pneumo. Conj. done last week). We had no problems or questions (which surprised him!). He didn’t ask a single developmental question. I guess he figured I knew what I was doing and he could see him walking around right there. He did ask about his sleeping habits (which he has been going down and sleeping through the night for a week now! Wheeee!) and his eating/drinking. All fine. He was pronounced perfect. 😀
He showed us the weight, height and head graphs at the end and commented on how we definitely stimulate him enough. I gave him a “you’re teasing me” look and he said he was serious- the head charts of neglected orphans almost always run along the very bottom of the growth curve. Huh. Who knew??
He knew better than to think we were going to come back for the 15 month well appt in only 4 weeks so he said “Come back… whenever you need to.” LOL. His next shots are due at 18 months.

Andy just ate the tip off of a marker. Sigh.

This is how breastfeeding should still be portrayed- as completely normal!

They both have new winter shoes. For the 2 weeks of cold we have when they can’t wear sandals. I like how they match. 🙂

Make one- they’re fun!
My cousin’s baby Alayna…