Unfortunately, this year--our entire family has been down with the flu for the past week. Nonetheless, we managed to muster the energy to do a few activities to get us into the spirit of things.  For example, yesterday afternoon we carved pumpkins and baked the pumpkin seeds.  We also made absolutely delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip bars from a recipe we found online. 

And today, we went to our homeschool group's Halloween party.  Mikaela went dressed up as a ghost with a mustache (??? I have absolutely no idea how she came up with that idea, but that's what she wanted to be) and Connor went dressed as a mummy.

The party was well organized with all sorts of games and contests for the kids.  

There was a costume contest and the headless horseman won first prize for the older kids,

while Lady Liberty won first place for the younger kids.

This little girl won the prize for the most original costume--she came dressed as a piece of bubblegum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

We had patriots

and pirates, and

witches join us.

In fact, we even had Sherlock Holmes pay us a visit.

All in all, it was another great party. 

If all goes well and we're feeling better, tomorrow evening we will do a bit of trick or treating with some friends and afterwards, we'll come home and sit around a campfire and tell some spooky ghost stories.

Life is ghoud!

Today our homeschool group took a field trip to Morefield Mine in Amelia County, Virginia. This is our third time visiting the mine--and possibly our last, since the owners are in the process of trying to sell the business (and if they're unsuccessful, I believe they plan to shut it down.)

It's a shame, because the place is literally (and figuratively) a "gem."

(photo from website)

In fact, Morefield Mine is a real gem mine which is over 300 feet deep and 2,000 feet long.  So far, they have discovered more than 70 minerals in the mine with quartz, purple amethyst, feldspar, beryl, topaz, mica, garnet and amazonite being the most prevalent. 

Each day, the mine operators go into the mine, do some blasting and then bring out tons of rock and scatter it over several fields.

 (photo from website)

The kids are then given free reign to dig through the piles of rock and sand to look for "treasures," 

and invariably, they find all sorts of them.

Once they're done filling their buckets, they go over to the sluice and clean and sift--hoping to find smaller gemstones.

What I've discovered is that if you take lots of rocks, mud, sand and water...

and throw in the potential to find real treasure... 

and then combine that with a picnic lunch, good friends and a pefect fall day...

(click thumbnails to enlarge)

well, life just doesn't get much better than that for a kid!

This year, I am continuing to lead our homeschool group's monthly "younger" boys book club, but I've made a few changes.  First of all, we have three new members so our group now consists of 8 boys--all of whom are either 8 or 9 years old.  The group is pretty diverse in terms of reading abilities--we have several very advanced readers and several struggling readers, but surprisingly, all of them really get into talking about about the books selected.  Last year, I chose the majority of the books, but this year I assigned each boy a month and let them pick the book the group would read.  They could choose either one of their favorites or a book they'd always wanted to read.  They were also tasked to come up with three discussion questions to ask the group about their book.

The other change I've made is totally unrelated to books.  Last year, it seemed like I had their attention for about 30 minutes and during that time, we were able to have some good, solid discussions about the books.  However, after a half an hour or so, the boys' interest and focus definitely began to wane and I felt like I was working too hard and forcing the discussion to go on.  So this year, what I decided to do was to have the book discussion last for 30-35 minutes and then have the boys work on problem solving challenges.  For example, this past meeting we discussed Frindle for 35 minutes and then I divided the boys into 2 teams of four.  Each group was given 20 straws, 20 paper clips and 20 pipe cleaners and they had 15 minutes to build the tallest, free-standing structure they could.  One of the groups worked really well together--they did lots of brainstorming and helped each other out.  On the other hand, in the other group each boy sort of did his own thing.  Not surprisingly, the group that worked better together had a much higher structure at the end of the 15 minutes, so I think there were some definite lessons learned.  I found this challenge on the internet, but in the future I plan to use some of the challenges that are on the Think! website.

And as for what books they chose, this is what we'll be reading this year:

In September we read Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean (a sequel to Peter Pan).  This was actually Connor's choice and to be honest, I wasn't all that crazy about it.  I think the reading level was too high for most of the boys due in large part to the very British style and vocabulary (plus at times, the book was just plain weird).  Nonetheless, 6 out of the 8 boys enjoyed the book.  (FWIW--I personally preferred Peter and the Starcatchers)

In October, we read Frindle by Andrew Clements.  I enjoyed this book (as did Connor and Mikaela--since we read it aloud) and felt it was a more appropriate book for this age group.  Five of the boys really enjoyed the book and three were rather ambivalent.

As for the rest of the year, in November we are reading:

December:

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

And we will finish the year with a "wilderness survival" story.  I hope to have another camp-out on our property where boys will once again get to set up a tent, build a fire and cook their own meals.  They'll also get to do some fishing, archery and riflery and maybe this time, even learn how to properly use a hatchet.