Halloween Week

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I'm not a fan of being scared or horror movies or zombies, but I enjoy the process of celebrating the melding of the spiritual world into the physical world, dressing up and trick-or-treating at night, and just having fun with pumpkins and all the imagery of the holiday (except for zombies). I am also divorced from my older children's father and this is a holiday that I do not have to ever share. That's a big part of it, too. So, we celebrate the heck out of this holiday.

The outline for the week is on the dry erase board

Monday was the day of decorations! We cut out pumpkins, bats, and tombstones. Reo decorated them to his pleasing. The first craft of a bat and jack-o-lantern mobile:

I found a great print-out of several different jack-o-lantern faces, and we cut out each pumpkin. We found another print-out with bat shapes and cut those out, as well. Using yarn, we dangled the pumpkins and bats from a frame we made from construction paper. The end result is simple but a fun indoor decoration.

The next craft were colored in pumpkins that Reo decided to adhere to our front window as a decoration. We found a great full-page print-out shape of a pumpkin and Reo went to work designing different pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns.

We also designed bookmarks using orange foam bookmark bases that I already had in the craft box, yarn, markers, and the left-over jack-o-lantern cut-outs from the mobile project. If we'd had the materials for 50 or more bookmarks, we could have added them to the trick-or-treat bags for Thursday.

The last project we did were tombstones. I had intended to have these cardboard tombstones, cut from a basic shipping box, stay as an indoor decoration but Reo had other plans. He enthusiastically planted them on our front lawn so everyone could see his funny and Dr. Who themed epitaphs.

Today, Tuesday, we learned the history of Halloween. To serve this, I wrote a brief book that gave each version of Halloween, from Samhain to its secular version today, its own page and description. I wrote at his reading level but sought to keep it interesting so I kept it short and to the point. Then he answered five questions I'd provided at the end.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we get to prepare Halloween-themed food, which I plan to include a great fairy cake which is an old recipe that folk lore says will attract fairies and deter them from being mischievous in your home.

Adventure Class

Ever since his sister gave him her old point and shoot digital camera, Reo has been an active photographer. I decided to harness that creativity and curiosity so he could see how easy it is to produce something great using only his creativity and curiosity. We started a Photo Journal as part of Art class. Photos are printed out and installed on the blank pages of a notebook. He then dates the photos, names them, and proceeds to add whatever pleases him that's relevant to the photograph.

I started by giving him themes.

Weather was the first theme.

He could take as many photos as he desired that he felt would be relevant to the theme and then choose one to place in the Photo Journal. He did well with this but I noticed that he was taking a lot of photos that he wasn't able to use. While this is often the way that it goes for professional photographers who agonize for endless hours over selecting images for pieces and then selecting pieces for shows, I really could not justify a reason to limit his photo journal to those rules. For the little collage I made for this blog post, it was difficult to select only four weather shots from his folder.

When he started taking photos of his sister's soccer games this season and truly delighted in the opportunities to capture images of motion and experiment with composition, I decided there was no need to dictate weekly themes. The Photo Journal officially left Art class and became its own off-textbook experience, Adventure Class.

In Adventure Class, his photography depicts his adventures, as he sees the world around him, and his Photo Journal is the book that tells the story.