More Halloween

Sunday, lazy day, carving pumpkins day. We were too tired Friday, and away for too much of yesterday, so pumpkin carving fell to this morning. Goopy pumpkin guts, slippery seeds, serrated safety knives. Calvin and I stopped by a local farmer's this year and came home with no fewer than five pumpkins that we fell in love with, so there was plenty of carving to do.

This is the first year we've carved pumpkins early in the day, so it's the first time we've finished carving while it was still light out and had to wait until later to see them lit up. But we had plenty to do in the meanwhile because it was practically Halloween on campus today, with events at the Natural History Museum and the School of Music's annual Halloween Concert.

The Natural History Museum was all decked out. Spider webs and pumpkins were everywhere, and what I can only assume were overworked grad students were handing out candy and running craft tables where kids could make spiders, color masks, and do a myriad of other projects.

Calvin would stop by the tables and start coloring a picture and gaze hungrily at the museum exhibits nearby. So finally I suggested that he pick up the craft projects to do at home and spend his time looking at the fossils and murals. That hit the spot.

Until we found the live animal fun room. That was enticing enough all on its own. Ball pythons, a water monitor, skinks, and newts.

Then the cherry on top—the School of Music's annual Halloween Concert. A full orchestra in costume is fun by itself, but the music of course is the real draw—lots of great classical music with dissonant sounds and strong, eerie beats. This was Calvin's first symphony orchestra concert and we had a great time. He sat on my lap and counted the bananas in the cello section, the elves in the percussion section. At one time I heard him quietly keeping time under his breath—1-2-3, 1-2-3—and then he turned to me and whispered in my ear "This is a waltz. See, 1-2-3, 1-2-3." He kept time on my arm through the whole concert, and I loved watching him take the whole thing in. The concert is a local tradition, one that I'm pretty sure we'll make our own from now on.

And finally, after dinner and a History Channel special, The Haunted History of Halloween, we lit our pumpkins and enjoyed them, in the dark, before bed.

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)

Happy fiction

Calvin spent the afternoon watching Happy Feet with my parents while I took care of some errands, went for a run, and agonized over finishing his Halloween costume (which has been pushing my sewing skills to their limit). This was a great arrangement because I'm not big on kid movies while I think my mom enjoys an excuse to see them. For the past few months my little boy has been in love with penguins, and he had a great time watching the video.

The minute he arrived home, in fact, he was tap dancing and summarizing the movie with gusto. I haven't seen it, and I didn't catch my parents' opinions on it, but it was clear that Calvin loved it, even though, as he and Gram said, "it was a little scary in parts." Apparently a leopard seal and an Orca, both hunters of penguins, are to blame for that description. My first reaction was that certainly Calvin wouldn't have been bothered by this—over the past few months we've watched countless videos about all those animals, about the balance of their lives in the ecosystem, and the importance of each one in the food web. In learning about evolution we've read books and watched videos about predators and prey, and have fallen in love with each in its turn. Calvin, after all, is the one who was rooting for the troll in the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

But actually he was bothered by the predator threat. In fact, my parents said he was continually on edge about the little penguin's safety. That thoroughly surprised me, but When I think about it, what does a kid's movie do better than to clearly define good and evil and pit them against each other? In fact, the story of good and evil is the driving force behind a lot of fiction, be it literature, stage, or cinema, and it is identification with these extremes that allows an audience to unite behind a common belief, or a suspension of thereof. Who doesn't recognize the dark and dissonant sounds as bad, bad, bad? If the leopard seal appears accompanied only by dark lighting and music, then of course he is to be feared.

This isn't a condemnation by any means, just an observation. It seems like one of the separations of fiction from reality is the suspension of not only belief, but also judgement. While the movie (or other media) is judging for you, your brain gets a moment of rest and can just enjoy the entertainment . We could probably watch a hundred documentaries about predators and prey and not flinch at a single one, yet still we would be drawn to root for the little penguin at the threat of the leopard seal, even if the seal were to be at risk of starvation. There will be time enough later, during our next non-fiction viewing, to root for the leopard seal and hope that he gets enough to eat.

So Calvin had a great time watching the movie today and now I get to have a great time watching him tap dance all over the house. I seem to remember a time from my past when, after my parents took me to see Aristocats in the theater, I spent the next few days crawling around on all fours pretending to be a cat. I think I like the tap dancing better.

A birthday for the zoo, and Oma, too

Oh my goodness, the weather over the weekend was glorious to say the least. I love a pretty summer days, but they're nothing compared to a pretty day in fall. Saturday was all outside and we did the same yesterday, too, starting with the zoo first thing in the morning because they were celebrating their 100th birthday with treats for the animals and crafts for the kids. The animals are so much happier in the cooler weather.

We were outside in the afternoon, too, shuffling through leaves, and I fit in a long outdoor run, perhaps the last for he season, before Jon's parents came over to celebrate their birthdays with a walk at our favorite metro park and pizza. We went to sleep to the sounds of a thunderstorm.

Today we weren't quite so lucky, "stuck" inside sorting books and working on that Halloween costume while the winds raged around us, but inside days are fun, too, with books, and chores, and cuddling, and we did a lot of all of that. Calvin's dino diorama is coming along nicely, and Halloween is starting to pop up all over the house, as with the five pumpkins on the porch, and the spooky books he's suddenly reading. Whatever plans I'd had to study American and U.S. history before Thanksgiving have definitely come and gone, but I don't think any of us could be happier with the new plans, or lack thereof, that have taken their place.