Costume Bonanza

  

 Halloween is my favorite time of the year. It is over and I am a little depressed, but I can look back at all the awesome photos I took and feel a little bit better. Pretty much the only time I use my sewing machine is to make Halloween costumes. This year Charlie wanted to be a mummy and Jack wanted to be a ninja. I was hyped up to make both. I know I could have bought them both, but I love the challenge of creating something from nothing. The ninja costume I sewed out of a shiny black material, added a patterned black band for a belt, and a red sash. A black set of long under-ware went under his costume. I found a simple way to make a ninja mask out of a black t-shirt. My husband helped Jack make throwing stars which we attached with hot glue. The ninja swords he broke after the first time wearing his costume...they were cheap plastic. His crotch ripped out of his pants the first time he jumped into a ninja crouch, but I was ok with that, since I have no formal training in sewing, and my sewing machine decided to stop working. I hot glued them back together.

For the Mummy I took tips from a cool website. I tore the gauze material into strips, dyed them with tea, dried them in the dryer (BAD idea. Next time lay them out to dry), and hand stiched most of them to his white long under-ware. I learned that you can NOT actually wrap the strips around the long under-ware or it will not come back off your child. So instead I draped and pinned each one and stitched it into place. Charlie was pretty patient for a 5 year old boy! He had to try the costume on about 4 times. We ended up hot gluing on the final strips and the spider on. The headpiece was pretty fun to make. My grandma recommended making a paper mache base. I measured Charlie's head, blew up a balloon to that same size, then used loads of modge podge to glue on cheesecloth. Once it dried I popped the balloon and sewed the gauze strips onto it. It turned out comfortable and awesome. Charlie got a lot of compliments at school on his awesome mummy costume, as did I!

 The kids had a blast at school, at the Water Street Spooky Fiesta, where they saw the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile and ran around like spooks! Then of course there was trick or treating. There are a few houses that go ALL OUT for Halloween, decorating their entire yards and front porches. I want to be one of those people someday.

I also saw lots of great adult costumes at my work,all Halloween weekend. Below are some of the best costumes I have seen. Many are my friends. Great costumes guys! My husband and I are in there as hobo clowns. I found most of the pieces for our costumes at Goodwill. I also attached lots of patches and altered my dress to be puffier. I was pretty proud of our makeup too, especially my husband's. He won the costume contest at Rhythm Kitchen Music Cafe for his awesome costume!

Until next year, HAPPY HAUNTING!

ABC, as easy as 123.

ABCs are so important for kids to learn and understand. Of course they learn at school, but at home is where you can really help them get the concepts that eventually lead to reading.

Letters have been a main focus for our 4 year old for the past year or so. He is going into kindergarten next year, as a freshly turned 5 year old, one of the young ones. 2 years of preschool have taught him a lot about how to act in a classroom setting, sharing, picking up, and of course the pledge of allegiance. He loves his friends and his teachers, who are the sweetest ladies in the world.

I had been getting a little nervous as he nears kindergarten, and has shown ZERO interest in letters, numbers, writing, or drawing. Our oldest always loved to draw, and write, where Charlie would rather set up all of his action figures into a neighborhood and then play with them,. He is a really imaginative player. He also loves to make up stories and tall tales. They are just so different, which means they become interested in things in different ways. The things that grabbed Jack's interests may not grab Charlie's. So we had to get a little creative when it came to letters and writing.

We have been reading Baby Einstein's, ABCs of Art, about 4X a week for over a year now. We did this with Jack,when he was in preschool, and he picked them up pretty quick. We read each letter and look at the picture on the page to represent it. In the last 6 months,Charlie has been remembering some of the letters, but then he would forget them and remember others. We reached a milestone last week when he read EVERY LETTER in the book. But reading that book was definitely not the only tool we used. There are so many helpful resources out there, fun and imaginative things that make learning fun.



Some friends gave us, They might be Giants, Here come the ABC's, video/cd, for one of the kids' birthdays. There are songs about different letters that are catchy, fun, and hilarious. Alphabet lost and found makes you want to dance. This was really helpful because i could remind Charlie, BIG FAT......(and he would think of that song)....W! It was probably this video that sparked his recent interest in letters and writing.

I have been sitting down a few times a week and practicing writing letters of the alphabet with charlie. This was frustrating at first, but I tried to make it fun. He could draw something that started with the letter A after writing it. This encouraged him to think creatively about letters and connect a letter with a picture. We only did a few letters at a time and then tried to repeat them the next day.

ABC cookies with Hunter & Charlie, originally uploaded by cocomama1.

Back in December I dug out my alphabet cookie cutters, surprisingly they were all there. Charlie had a playdate with his friend Hunter and we made the entire alphabet in cookies! They got to roll out the dough, pick out the letters in alphabetical order and cut them out. We never got to decorating them with frosting, but they tasted good anyway!

Now Charlie can spell and write his own name. He sees letters he recognizes everywhere, and we often play the which letter is this game (Charlie writes a letter in the air and asks me which one it is).

Jack on the other hand is reading chapter books! Reading is the next hurdle after learning letters and it is another slow going process. Repetition and patience are the things to remember when helping your child read. Every night before bed we read to the boys, then it switched to us helping Jack read an easy reader, then he read it himself with a little guidance and now he is a fairly confident reader. I remember being encouraged to SOUND it OUT, but at Jack's school they recommend not doing that. They want the kids to recognize the words and look at the pictures in the books and figure it out that way. I have to admit, I have been known to help him sound the words out, but I try to stick to the same thing they teach at school in order to be consistent. It is crazy to look back to Jack's reading level a year ago and compare it to today, he has improved so much!



Flat Stanley was the first chapter book he read. There are some big words in it, but with our help he got through it. Now he is on his fourth Flat Stanley book! We always discuss what happens in each chapter because I want him to really understand what he is reading and not just zip through the words.


It has been a long road learning ABCs and now reading, but it has been fun and interesting. Each child learns differently and it is important to find what interests them and to go in that direction.

Hopper Picture Person Project

Ground Swell, by Edward Hopper was the latest work of art I discussed with my 1st grader's class. The kids liked it because of the boat and the ocean, and in the middle of a harsh Illinois winter it seems almost like paradise. Hopper is a famous American realist painter, most known for his painting, Nighthawks.


Anyway, Hopper is known for painting everyday realistic themes that evoke feelings of loneliness and sadness. His use of color is an important factor in his work and for the kids' project we used color to create an emotion. We talked about Hopper's life and how his work was different than most artists at the time. He painted things to look realistic in a time when abstract art was all the rage. He loved to paint boats and the ocean and other everyday scenes.

I found the project in this AWESOME book. It is a great project that even Charlie (who is 4) loved. The finished project is totally frame worthy.

First off I mounted drawing paper (not sketch) on a board. My makeshift "boards" were made
from free USPS shipping boxes cut in half. I used thick blue artist tape to tape the edges of the paper to the board, covering about an even strip around the edge to create a border when removed. I brought a ton of black permanent markers and told the kids to draw something emotional, something that would create a feeling. I had them name some feelings and then we asked them to tell us what they could draw.
We practiced it at home, like we always do, to test the time and mess factors that will be involved in the project.

Jack drew a dog and Charlie a happy face. Once they drew their main subject, we put the permanent markers away. I then had the kids color with some washable markers, letting them know that those colors would fade and spread out. Some kids colored with crayons too.


As the kids finished up I took them back to a table where I had watered down about 5 different colors of acrylic paint. I had them pick a color to represent the emotion they were showing in their picture.



Most kids chose 2-3 colors, but it was ok since they were really watered down. If they got too much water on the paper we used paper towels to dab up some. They liked the effects the wash had on the marker areas.


The end results were so awesome. My husband actually thought that the dog Jack did was the print we were discussing!! I let the pictures dry in the hallway for a few hours and then removed the tape (carefully). There were so many cool different pieces.







My kids pictures are hanging up in our house!