How we Homeschool: Fall Fun Day

Last Friday we had our very own fall fun day at home.  My kids had mentioned several times that one of the school activities they missed the most from public school was their "Harvest Day," where they had a fall carnival, played games, and had fall snacks.  So, this mama wanted to reward recent good behavior during school hours with a fall fun day.  It was lots of work, exhausting, exhilarating, and totally worth the smiles and giggle from my kiddos and my little babysitting charge. :) 

We started the day before the 3 year old got there with pumpkin patch math.  They had to pick a pumpkin from the patch, solve the problem, and then find the answer in the patch.  Then they glued their problems on the pages.  Sometimes they got to solve their "own" pumpkins, and sometimes I made them switch so that one or the other didn't always pick the "easiest" problem.  Not that my kids would EVER be lazy like that...hahahaha.

We finished picking from the patch and then played "Spooky math."  

Each of the halloween pictures had a number on the back, 1 - 12.  Each kid turned a card over and they had to race to add, subtract, or multiply them.  Occasionally they would each turn over two and race to do their own problems.  Sometimes they would each turn one over and I'd yell out add, subtract, or multiply, and they'd have to answer.  A correct answer meant that kid kept the cards.  Whoever had the most when the cards ran out won that round.  My daughter beat my son soundly in multiplication, but he slaughtered her in addition.  Every time I told them "last round," they begged for more.  It was basically just flashcards, but I guess the halloween pictures made it more fun?

When our 3 year old guest arrived, we had breakfast...pumpkin spice pancakes and pumpkin spice homemade whipped cream.  YUM!

Our first outdoor activity was "Boo Bombs."   Basically, you crack an egg with a butter knife so that only the top part of the egg breaks and you pour the egg out through the opening.  We saved the shells for about a week, washed them, and then filled them with baby powder.  We topped them off with glued-on streamers to hold the powder in, and we drew ghost faces on the shells.  At the count of 3, we would launch an egg in the air, watch the powder stream out of the "ghost," and then cheer as it smashed into the gravel and exploded.  All 3 of the kids laughed long and loud and hard at this one!  I originally got the idea here at Growing a Jeweled Rose   This was messy and we had to be careful to throw so that the powder didn't blow in our mouths/noses, but we all had a blast!

Back inside for "body bingo."  In an attempt to review from our previous unit on the human body, my kiddos had to write the "technical" names of bones on their bingo cards.  The little one got a skeleton picture instead, and I called out the "normal" names.  My kids had to match to their "technical" names, and the little one had to find it on the pictures.   We played about 4 rounds before they decided they just wanted to eat the usually-banned colored candies. :)

Next up was "Ghost Mud," originally found here, again at Growing a Jeweled Rose (as well as multiple other sites!!).   Following this, we played "Ghost Tag" and plopped the soap mixture all over each other.   :)  If you know me personally and want to see more pics of the soapy tag mess, feel free to ask.

Our final event before lunch was "pumpkin playdough spelling."  We made pumpkin pie playdough and used cake lettering imprints to spell our weekly spelling words.  

Later in the evening we did some other Halloween worksheets and played "eyeball bounce" with glow-in-the-dark green ping pong balls and a pumpkin candy container, but this summed up most of it.  Near the end of the day, my son said, "Mommy, this is even BETTER than Harvest Day!"  I felt a warm glow...briefly...at which point he clarified.  "Not 'cause your games are cooler.  Just 'cause I didn't have to go somewhere to play them."  Bubble burst.   But a fun day anyway!