Some November Chalkboards.

November Roses

Another reason to love Coffeeland.

I remember being quite shocked my first trip out to Coffeeland. I had left 3 feet of snow and 20 degree weather and saw my first December rose.
Well its still a few days until December but now I have my very own winter roses.

Diaper Math...

With our new baby due on St Val's we decide to go through our boxes and see what we had and what needed to be replaced.
We had just given all out our infant sized diapers away and we had to replace a bunch more. (Celiac kiddos are hard on diapers!)

Iddy Biddy got to unpacking one of the deliveries while I was on the phone and when I came in she was counting them by 2's.
A skill that she often can not do by rote but does just fine when she need to do it in "real life".
She then spent a half hour arranging and re-arranging them according to color or pattern.

Much more entertaining than a math book and certainly more fun with diapers than I have every had!




Blue Eyes decided to get into the action with a little stacking and knocking down.

Fridge Fun

I found a stash of printable magnet paper and have been putting up activites on the side of the fridge each month.

Here is our November games- a turkey puzzle and a turkey tic-tac-toe.

Both from Shelley Lovett's http://www.childcareland.com/

Puzzling out Australia

Monkey is sometimes called the puzzle master at our house. He can put together things that make my eyes blur.

We acquired a bunch of Montessori type continent and world map puzzles due to a generous Grandparent gift last year.

The shelf spent a lot time facing the wall this year due to Blue Eye's marauding but now has a cloth covering the front keeping them (mostly) out of sight out of mind.

Monkey Man has had a great time finally being able to access them, and was excited to recognize the map of Australia after we had been reading about it.

Raspberries in November

A good reason to love living in Coffeeland- Fresh picked raspberries in November.

November Seasonal Table

Australia Projects...

The dc have been learning about Australia the last few weeks.
Iddy Biddy has enjoyed about how families are the same and different than here in Coffeeland.
Monkey Man has been most interested in the animals- especially the kangaroos and jelly fish.
Blue eyes has just wanted to eat every one's projects.

They quite liked listening to didgeridoo music (thanks Grandpa Pete)
and decided to make their own "instruments"





They also dived into pictures of the Great Barrier Reef.
Watercolor paint over beeswax crayons embellished with stickers.

More Leaf Projects...

The rubbing templates were a big hit. The dc had fun matching them to leaves we had dried.




They also enjoyed painting some wooden leaves with our new glitter paint.


They later added pictures and ribbons to make Godparent gifts.

Squirrel Math.

Iddy Biddy has been asking for more math stories. Math on paper is still odd and puzzling to her so we have been sticking to our approach of using math in real life and reading/telling lots of math stories.

She is continuing to be able to apply math concepts as she needs them in life and we couldn't ask for more.

She has especially enjoyed our new fall math stories -we have been using the squirrel math we have gleaned from the 1st and 2nd year books by Christopherus Homeschool Resources.






More than once I have stumbled on our squirrels having a trading session with our Serendipity Gnomes.
Who knew nuts cost more than gems?

Big Big World...

Iddy Biddy has been enjoying the continent boxes so much she has started making a notebook to go along.
Coloring and writing for display are not her favorite activities so she has been asking me to type on the computer for her and has been picking up quite a few stickers on our monthly craft store trip. (Thanks again Lisa for the gift certificate.!)

Saints and Souls...

Trick or Treating is out because of the celiacs disease- It is so much easier to skip it than try to research every candy manufacturer online. But we still have a lot of nice traditions. I found g.f. carmels for the first time this year and had to spend an hour washing carmel apple goo out of Blue Eyes hair.

Iddy Biddy found this pillar candle holder on the sale shelf at the craft store and it has been popping up a lot on our Liturgical and Nature shelves.



It was lovely with some of our Wee Saints and some holy cards.
I did set out some gluten free candy corn for the kids along with a new video for our Sunday collection.
Monkey worked extra hard on Sunday to remain calm during Holy Mass and ended up watching it twice.


On All Souls day we filled the stand with little skeleton chocolates and the dc added names of those we know that have died.
They added a foil star to the skeleton scrapbook paper everytime they said a prayer for the souls in Purgatory this November.
The chocolates mysteriously disappeared- then I noticed all the tinfoil bits at Blue Eyes next few diaper changes- eww!

Best Fall ever...

We have not had such a gorgeous fall in ten years!
Coffeeland does not usually get enough daytime sun for great fall color and it usual rains to hard to keep the leaves on the trees.
This year we had less than one inch in our rain gauge on Hallows' eve.
But we had a wonderful warm October with tons of leaves for all the projects we could think of.
Our favorite project was the leaf suncatchers.
ar

What I didn't know about blackberries...

With the usual apologies to the grandparents...we have been too busy living life to put up pictures about it:)
I found these pics of Monkey Man and Iddy Biddy picking blackberries for Michaelmas.

When your eyebrows go up -yes Monkey Man is wearing long sleeves and pants-It took one whole week of pep talk and 2 hours of dressing and undressing to get our Sensory Defensive buddy ready to go into the woods.



We made a lovely blackberry cheese cake to serve for Michaelmas but unfortunately our cake flooded when cut.

No one told me fresh blackberries will denature cheesecake. :(
So we had hot blackberry pudding instead!