Trick-or-treating take one

We spent the morning waddling through downtown Dexter collecting candy from the participating businesses along the main drag (read: the one street in town), and the afternoon waddling around the rec room at our homeschoolers group Halloween party.

Waddling is what penguins do.

A doughnut for lunch?

Cookie decorating (and eating) for snack...

spooky searches...

making salt dough ghosts and pumpkins and gluey and sparkly crafts plus a plethora of homemade munchies warm fall drinks...Halloween party homeschooler style.

And when we got home Calvin dove right into his candy, but not to eat it. We pay him ten cents per piece that he turns in to us, so the candy sparked an hour of learning about money and counting up his earnings. He opted to keep only one piece to snack on (tomorrow, since we'd had enough sweets today), and earned $3.50 for the rest. After all that excitement we were too tired to carve pumpkins after dinner tonight, so that has been postponed, but still, the Halloween weekend has begun.

It's beginning to look a lot like Hallowe'en

Halloween is cropping up all over our house. It has long been one of my favorite holidays so our halls are decked with pumpkin and bat lights that have journeyed with me since college, the front window is stuck with spooky clings, the bushes are decked in faux webs, the wreath is up, the box of costumes is out, the pumpkin cookies have been baked, the candy has been bought. Ahhh.

Tomorrow night will be pumpkin carving, after a day of partying in town and with our homeschooling group. We celebrate Hallowe'en via its historical and cultural roots, going all the way back to Celtic traditions and the festival of Samhain, so tomorrow night we'll read Halloween (for only the third time this week) and have Irish boiled dinner before we carve the pumpkins. This weekend we'll attend the annual Halloween Concert on campus (in costume, of course) and read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (for only the fourth time this week). Calvin has been cuddling stuffed pumpkins and ghosts and designing jack-o-lanterns like crazy. He's in love with anything bat right now, and any spooky story we can come up with (amazing what old folk tales will do for you). Yes, this is definitely a favorite holiday.

Some silly Halloween stuff (a portion of which is interesting):
Halloween printable activities
Coloring sheets
Activity suggestions (mostly arts and crafts)