Cute little Craft or Teaching Two Little Boys to Sew

The kiddos in my class are fortunate enough to get to know Ms. Jeanne. Ms. Jeanne is an art therapist who comes to my room every Tuesday and Thursday and does awesome, wonderful, great things with my kids. She spreads their wings to have them try new things and this year for Thanksgiving the boys were sewing. Ms. Jeanne taught them how to sew an adorable little pumpkin to sit on their families Thanksgiving table. The were so proud of their work and were concentrating so hard on what they were doing. One of my little buddies who wears glasses had his glasses pushed down on the end of his nose librarian style to be able to see the eye of the needle to thread his needle and was concentrating so hard. When I noticed him trying and trying and missing multiple times I said "Hey buddy you want me to help you?" His response was "I got this Ms. B!" How cute is that determination!

This year I am thankful for Ms. Jeanne and all the wonderfullness (is that a word?) she brings to my students lives!

Our Pumpkin Patch

Mitch and I have never carved pumpkins together before so this was the year to make it happen. Mitch's cousins Austin and Callie grew some pumpkins at their house and gave us two and we found an awesome pumpkin patch that sold any pumpkin for a buck so we went crazy and bought 10. We laid out a bunch of newspaper and went to town.

I am not a huge fan of the process of cleaning out pumpkins and get my hands all full of guts so I resorted to just decorating the pumpkins rather than carving them.


Each of our carving styles matches our personalities...can you guess who carved the Vikings pumpkin?


Mitch stuck with the classic Jack O'Lantern face here while I attempted to make a skull.


Another funny Halloween moment for me this year was a conversation I had with one of my second graders the week before Halloween.

"Ms. B how do you spell punkin?"

"P-u-m-p-k-i-n"

"Na-uh, there is no MMMM sound in punkin."

"Ya there is you say the word Pummmmpkin not punkin"

"No my Mom told me, its a punkin"

"Buddy I'm not lying to you there really is an MMMM sound in pumpkin"

"I think your confused. Let's ask Mrs. Melby she will help you understand she is pretty good at letter sounds. Mrs. Melby you aren't going to believe this Ms. Bowman thinks there is an MMMM in punkin. Can you explain that to her?"

I love love love teaching and having these funny conversations with kids who are just in the stages of learning how words and letters work. My little buddy was a firm believer that the word punkin could not possilby have an "M" in it and he was ready to teach me how to spell.

Ghouls, Goblins, and Ghosts...Oh My!

It was our first Halloween in our new home and I was unable to contain my excitement. All I wanted to do was stay home, pass out candy and meet a few more of our neighbors. As the first kids stop by I opened up the door and they greeted me with a big "HI NEW NEIGHBOR" It was great I was feeling like we were becoming a part of the neighborhood! We had 40 adorable little monsters stop by to get their candy and I couldn't resist handing them each a whole handful! Since our landscaping projects aren't on the top of our to do list (right now the top of our list is get a bathroom up and running) I had to artificially create a sidewalk for the trick-or-treaters to find their way to the front door. I raked a path up the yard and then created a path with some glass jars that I painted and turned into Halloween luminaries. They turned out pretty cute but I need about twice as many to light up our big front yard!