Harvest Festival 10/9/10

Three years ago we started heading down to Rockford for a weekend of their Harvest Festival. We usually go down there the day they do trick-or-treating around down town. It just so happens that that weekend also coordinates with the day that some of the local preschools put on a Young Fun morning. The preschools that want too pay to have a "booth" can bring a craft or activity for the kids to do. This year there 10 stations. They were: 1) making a paper plate shaker instrument, 2) making a paper bag pumpkin, 3) a bean bag toss game, 4) apple painting (we didn't do, didn't want to get Cinderella dirty), 5) making a noodle/straw necklace, 6) making a book, 7) playing play-doh (didn't do, too many people waiting and since we have it at home, we skipped it), 8) making a noodle sculpture, 9) playing bucket bonanza game, and 10) making a mirror image leaf painting. I would say we spent a little over an hour there. It was a fun, free hour! :-)After we left Young Fun we headed to get some lunch. After we got done eating we had a little time to kill before it was time to trick-or treat. The Rockford school district mascot is the ram. Many of the local schools, students, and businesses decorated a ram and there were a couple dozen of them on display on the dam. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of the kids with the Meijer ram. :-)
We had a little more time before trick-or-treating so we went and checked out the police car.....the kids were excited to sit in the back seat! We told them that this is the only time we had better ever see them in one! ;-) The kids also got to "drive" the fire truck (pictures on our pictures website and Facebook).
The weather today was untraditionally warm. The normal average high temperature for this weekend is about the about 65ish (give or take a few degrees). Today's high was 76 degrees! The costume Marc has this year is a thick, furry Sulley costume. We thought it would be great at keeping him warm while trick-or-treating on Halloween. Since it was so warm today, we waited until right before trick-or-treating started to get him in his costume. Marc was Sulley and Samantha was Cinderella. :-)
My cute kiddos walking around the block trick-or-treating to the local businesses. It is so nice, the block makes a square and there are probably 30 businesses in that square. Not all participate, but a lot do. So everyone just makes a big line and walks around the block collecting goodies. :-) Samantha did great. She said "trick or treat" before they gave her her "candy corn", and thank you after they gave it to her. Great practice for Halloween! :-)
After we trick-or-treated, we took a hay ride around downtown. It cost us $12, but it was a fun, fall thing to do. :-) Another family was nice enough to take our family picture on the hay ride, and it actually turned out cute! :-)
The parking lot we parked in was right next to the local ice cream shop. We figured they would be closed for the season but it was a convenient place to park. To our happy surprise, it was still open! So after a very warm afternoon in the sun, we stopped for some yummy ice cream before we got back in the car.
A friend of mine (who also happens to be a kindergarten teacher) gave me the idea to have the kids guess how many pieces of candy they thought they would get. I decided to try that this year. Samantha guessed 1 piece and Marc guessed 50 pieces between them both. After we got home, he counted how many they actually got. They got 65 pieces all together. Not bad guessing for an almost 7 year old! :-)
The kids got some really yummy candy! Here's to hoping they share with Mommy. ;-)
It was a very beautiful weekend with great weather, great activities, and great fun with a great family! :-)

Mapping Project 10/2010

Marc spent a couple of weeks learning all about mapping. He learned about north, south, east, and west as well as what a legend is and what a compass rose is. He was given a homework assignment to create a map of his bedroom. He was given complete freedom to do what he wanted as long as he included a compass rose and a legend.

He knew right away that he wanted it to be put in a box. The idea I suggest to him was to take pictures of his actual room things and glue them to look like his room. He liked that idea, so off we went to make his room.

I cut yellow construction paper to fit along the inside of the box (the walls) since his walls in his room are painted yellow. We also cut tan paper for his carpet. The only box we had that was about the correct size was a diaper box. He said he didn't want to be picked on by the kids for using a diaper box, so we covered the outside with blue paper.
So, after we got all the papering done, it was time for gluing the pictures in to make the box look like his room. The final product was very cute and Marc was very proud of it!
The day he turned it in was a day that I took him to school, so I walked in with him. When he gave it to his teacher, his teacher looked very impressed. :-) Here's to hoping for a good grade to reward his hard work! :-)