October 2012 – Patties Classroom

Spider Art and Spider Acrostic Poems

We had a SPIDER DAY! We read about spiders, wrote spider poems, made spider art and sang spider songs!

Here is one of our cute SPIDER ART PROJECTS.

Here is a cute video to play while making spiders.

Some cute Spider stationery I found at Activity Village will be fun for the kids to do spider poetry with.
A spider acrostic is fun to do. HERE at Joglab is a link to help with brainstorming words that begin with each letter of SPIDER. The kids come up some some good ones too.

I start by writing their ideas on the whiteboard using the letters of SPIDER. They were really good this year at coming up with great brainstorming words!

Then for our SPIDER ACROSTICS we chose the best word we liked and wrote out a sentence.

Here are our cute SPIDERS ART PROJECT. We called them “SPIDERS ON A STICK!”

Then I edited all 22 kids’ spider acrostic poems and then the students rewrote them on this cute spider paper.

They turned out really great! I loved their Spider Poems!

And they really loved their spiders on a stick!

DIRECTIONS FOR SPIDERS ON A STICK
1. Cut out 2 circles that are 4 – 5 inches.
2. Cut out one circle that is a half inch less and fold it in half and glue it.
3. Cut 1/2 inch strips that are about 8 inches long (8 for each student).
4. Copy the wiggly eyes and get some dot stickers from Walmart and some wooden skewers from the Dollar Store.
5. Fold the legs 2 at a time accordian style and glue the ends down to one of the circles 4 on each side as the picture shows.
6. Glue down the head piece (smaller circle) that has been folded in half. It is sandwiched in between 2 larger circles and glue it close to the edge of the circle. Then glue wiggly eyes to the top of it.
7. Glue the wooden skewer down at the bottom of the spider in the middle and then glue the last circle on top of the skewer and the legs.
8. Add colored dots to the spider. Optional….add fangs with some leftover black paper and glue to underside of the head.

We read lots of science books on Spiders and several Weekly Readers to give us information on Spiders. And we had a big spider discussion to be sure everybody knew what they eat, where they live, how many legs and eyes they have and when they breed and how they make an egg sac.

Spiders
These are some of my favorite books I’ve purchased over the last few years. I get a lot of books from Scholastic and I especially look for science books in my book orders. Lots of times you can get some cool sets of books on a topic. Those are the ones I go for most.

Kids in my class really seem to love science and non-fiction books.

Here are a few of them showing off their Spider Art Project.

I am very proud of their Spider Acrostic Poetry.

I copied off this cute compound word matching game and had the kids color it when they got done. Then we cut them all out and laminated them for a center game.

Another fun and free math game called SPIDER WEB SPILL can be found HERE at Teachers Pay Teachers.

A Spider sight word game can be found at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Cute Spider on a Stick art project. It is one of my favorites.

A spider fact crossword puzzle can be found HERE at DLTK Kids.

A fun Spider writing activity from Amy Lemons is super cute and the eyeballs on her spiders are so clever! I had to have some! She has a free download on her cute blog!
Spider Craft and Poem

Afterwards, we sang some spider songs and we did a spider crossword. It was a fun day!

SKELETON FUN

This week we will be making and studying skeletons! Since our district is having a short week with only 2 1/2 days we are going to be reading Halloween fun books and doing spiders, skeletons and fun pumpkin math and activities.

The Skeleton Dance

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Doin’ the skeleton dance.

The foot bone’s connected to the leg bone.
The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone’s connected to the neck bone.
Doin’ the skeleton dance.

The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone.
The hip bone’s connected to the backbone.
The backbone’s connected to the neck bone.
Doin’ the skeleton dance.

Shake your hands to the left.
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.
Put your hands out of sight!

Shake your hands to the left.
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle,
wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle… wiggle your knees.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,

Doin’ the Skeleton Dance!

Lyrics from Super Simple Songs -Thank YOU!

The directions for this cool skeleton art project are HERE. They take 8 pieces of 1 x 18 white and 1 x 18 black strips. Then the head and hands and feet are copied on art paper. The folding is the hard part for kids. Glue 2 strips together same color end to end. Then glue a black and a white together at a 90 degree angle like this.

Weaving a skeleton body for art.

Then comes the fun part. Cross the white over the black in front, then the black over the white turning it a little as you go. It will always look like an L. Some kids crossed it behind and some kids crossed it in front. It doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent. It was pretty easy for them, they got into a rythm.

Skeleton art project

When they got to the end of the strips they glued the last 2 bits together. Each of these make an arm or a leg. The middle is done same way just use 3 inch x 18 inch paper to weave back and forth. Glue 2 legs to the middle and 2 arms to the top of middle section. A cute skeleton head and feet can be found at Family Education’s site.

HALLOWEEN CENTER GAMES
I made up some GHOST BINGO cards at DLTK HERE. They will be fun for a centers game. I had half Halloween words, half Halloween pictures.

TRICK OR TREAT

BATMAN SIGNAL

DRAGON

3 GHOSTIES

SKELETON CANDLE

CARAMEL APPLES

GHOULS

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

3 CANDLES

BLACK CAT

I have a dozen skeleton heads and a sheet of skeleton heads for math. I will use it for a math game for the kids to choose a number between 8 and 12 and figure out all the addends they can make as number sentences with that number as the sum. We could also do skeleton shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. Here is an example of a cube’s skeleton shape.

The skeleton of a cube made with marshmallows and toothpicks or clay and straws The
idea is from N Rich Maths.

I have a giant skeleton on the front board with “parts of the skeleton” write on wipe off sheet to go with it that I made. It is a fun center for the students to figure out the names of all the bone body parts. I put in the first letter of each, or the first 2 letters on hard ones like W-R____ ____ ____ for wrist bone.

Print a “label the skeleton” here.

Activity Village has a fun downloadable game of how to make a skeleton rolling the dice and putting a part together. It also looks fun. It should be a fun day.

OWL Activities and Art

Who doesn’t love OWLS? We were reading about little desert owls that live inside of a giant Saguaro cactus in our Reading Streets literature story A Walk in the Desert. I thought we could do some little owl reports as our first study in our animal matrix; birds, mammals, reptiles, ocean animals, insects, and amphibians. We will cover all of these by year’s end.

First we did a KWL CHART about the things we already KNOW about owls, the things we WANT TO KNOW about owls. And we are adding things we LEARN little by little. This is a great strategy to develop background knowledge.

I think the important part is the THINGS WE LEARNED section. So I usually put that down in a separate place on a poster shaped like the topic and add to it all unit long. The kids help me!

Here are some of the books and resources I used for this owl unit of study. The kids loved hearing about Owlbert, and Gayle Gibbons book about Owls.

Owls by Gail Gibbons is a great book to start your unit with. It’s only $3.99 at Amazon.

Books:
Owlbert by Nicholas Harris
Owls by Gayle Gibbons
Desert Giant (Saguaro Cactus) by Barbara Bash (This is a good Reading Rainbow video now too)
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton

The Barn Owl (Animal Lives) by Sally Tagholm and Bert Kitchen

The Barn Owlis only $3.95 at Amazon. It is a totally cute book.

ARKive – Little owl video – Athene noctua – 00 Really cute Video and some still pictures
of owls in their habitat. And we read a Weekly Reader on Owls.

I also checked 2 desert animals and owl books out of our school library. After I read the books I put them all at a center with pictures from calendars of birds, stuffed and plastic bird models and anything I pick up that kids would be interested in and put it at the science center.

Owl Reports and Owl Art from Scrapbook papers.

After reading all about owls during read aloud, the kids helped me make a giant owl poster with all of the facts they thought were interesting. Then they decorated the cover of their owl research reports (informational text) which is what we will call them. The kids call them Owl Facts, but I had them each give their work a title. We are talking about MAIN IDEA and I find that if I make them think up a title to their work, they start to understand what a main idea is (what the main thing you are writing about, NOT the details).

Cute Quotation from THE BARN OWLS book.

Here is the Owl Printable that we used for our book cover with the title. Then we READ a shared reading of a Scholastic News I have about OWLS. After that, and the books, and a poster I made, and the Scholastic News reading, we started writing our “SLOPPY COPIES”. I told them to try and use 3 resources to put their non-fiction facts report together. More fun downloadables can be found at Wise Owl Factory.

Fun Owl cookies from graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate chips, candy corn and vanilla wafers! OWL S’MORES! So cute!

Then I edited them one by one while they were doing their art and writing. It does get a little crazy if I have more than 3 in a line, so I usually tell the 4th and 5th kids to go finish their art and then bring me their writing. So there isn’t a waste of time.

I used the owl printable below as a cover for our Owl Fact books. Each child colored theirs and we typed out their titles and we added them to the covers.

Color Me Good has this great downloadable coloring page.

This was another cute one from Pinterest

Then we rewrite the reports after I red-pen edit them. This is very important. I found 6 kids using “there” instead of “their” and so I have my next mini lesson. I also saw very little capitalization at sentence beginning.

Owl Puppet Printable Free Here. I like to glue a poem on the back of all of our puppets we make…. Here is a cute one.
A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

So you know it helps me give kids one on one spelling and grammar help too. (Remember friend is fri like Friday and then end like the end of the story). Nothing I do as a teacher is more important than my individual conferences with kids.

Lovely Owl Goes Viral (VIDEO) This is a great video to show the kids too. It is only 2 minutes.

Then after the 2nd writing is done on pretty stationery (an important motivational step) I usually hook final draft writing to a fun art or craft project. These students are gifted so they are motivated toward task completion. And I can compact my curriculum to include more art because of it. So we do 3 completed writing projects a week and several arts or an art and a craft.

Lucy Learns has this cute wordsearch to download.

Owl Art project using scrapbook and construction paper.

Here is our Owl art. I used cut out “feathers” from scrapbook paper, fabric, peel and stick corderoy, construction paper etc. The kids dotted some of the white and gray feathers with black markers. We used white round stickers for eyes and colored them with yellow markers and added wiggly eyes and a twig for their talons to sit on. The kids designed their own talons and beaks. It was fun to do and pretty easy. They glued finished owls onto blue paper.

Owl Art Project and Writing

Owl Brainstorm Graphic Organizer. I do this a lot for whole class writing; make the shape of the thing you are writing about and write the facts kids come up with on it in different colors.

My inspiration was from That Artist Woman where I get a lot of my art inspiration. She has a great tutorial that I used a portion of. My kids just taped on the twigs. And we used “masks” (banana shapes) for eyes instead of the 3D egg cartons. I used cardstock for the owl body so the paper feathers could be attached and not wrinkle up with glue. A few other worksheets on owls are here at Boggles World.

The owls turned out cool looking, didn’t they?

Insect Activities

We made some cute insect models of ants out of egg cartons.

This week we finished our insect reports.We used insects after reading our Reading Streets Play on Ants. I had each student get an insect book out of the library, we wrote down facts in cooperative groups. Then we added those facts to our own “sloppy copies”. Everybody shared facts. Then I edited the reports.

Then we rewrote them on this nice insect stationery. I had 2 styles to choose from.

Then we illustrated them. I loved this dragonfly and all the beautiful background too…

Fabulous art here! I think Jack did this one. I gave them simple clip art insects to use as models.

Ant and Caterpillar poems in the pocket chart center….The kids had 5 poems to choose from.

There’s a ladybug poem and a cricket and one other.

We used egg cartons cut into 3 sections for the 3 body parts of the insects. They chose their own pip cleaners, wiggly eyes and made a tongue and antennaes. Some are very colorful!

We made our ant models out of egg cartons cut into 3 body parts and painted.

We painted the egg cartons red or brown or black then when they were dried we added the pipe cleaners and wigglyeyes. We sang the song THE ANTS GO MARCHING 1 BY 1
HURRAH too. Kididdles has the words
and click for the music too.

We made “ants” after reading our Reading Streets Literature play on the Ants and several other cute stories about the hard life of an ant. .

After we wrote our reports I had the kids draw pictures of their insects and color them.

Insect cards with facts on the back I got from the Dollar Store at the science center..

Insect Books at the Science Center

I like this one…its got character!

Gotta love a ladybug, right?

Dragonflies were very popular reports…..

Ladybug art….so beautiful! I have some really talented kiddos

Last year we made grasshopper life cycles. They were too easy. This year we did Insect reports.
The wheel printable can be found at Lapbook Lessons. for a fun extension.

Some did praying mantises and others did crickets or grasshoppers.

Did you know there were 300,000 kinds of beetles in the world? Yeah, me neither!

Henry had a walkingstick and a buddy on his back!

I think we only had a few ladybugs in the bunch!

This insect was so nicely done, I was quite impressed by Kiera’s art talent!

We did a few worksheets too; a crossword puzzle and a cut and paste about insect vocabulary. The link for some great worksheets and crosswords is at Boggle Worlds.

Then we wrote reports on insects. They got into cooperative groups and had individual school library books on their insect of choice. Everybody shared facts with everybody else. They are very proud of their research reports.

I found some cute stationery in a Scholastic book Check it out HERE.

Insect reports – the kids did whatever insect they chose.

Here is a close up of the ants and the reports

We are all proud of our little ant creations….

Here are some of the Cooperative Group’s posters….everybody added facts to the posters of Ants, Grasshoppers,, Dragonflies and Fireflies, Beetles and Ladybugs, and Honeybees/Wasps/Yellowjackets.

Insect posters….we kept adding to all 5 of them the whole unit long….

Science Center microscope with metamorphosis of a caterpillar slides….

Insects hanging out at the Science Center of our classroom….

My SCIENCE CENTER has insect books, write and wipe off activities and these insects with viewers. It also includes the microscope with slides of insects morphing. It is a popular center.

Great job everybody. I loved teaching you all about INSECTS!

Christopher Columbus Activities

Monday was Columbus Day in America. We are working on learning about exploration in our Reading Streets literature books. So we will be doing some Columbus Day activities, art and writing to honor this great explorer.

Books on Christopher Columbus to use as read alouds. I think we read 4 books in all.

From Europe to the Americas
Bananas	Barley	Cabbages	Carnations
Chickens	Coffee	Cows	Crabgrass
Daffodils	Daisies	Dandelions	Horses
Lemons	Lettuce	Lilacs	Olives
Oranges	Peaches	Pears	Pigs
Rice	Sheep	Sugarcane	Tulips
Turnips	Wheat

This cool chart was from the Scholastic Website telling what kinds of things the explorers shared between Europe and America from their travels back and forth.

From the Americas to Europe
Avocados	Beans (kidney, navy, lima)	Bell peppers	Black-eyed Susans
Cacao (for chocolate)	Chili peppers	Corn	Cotton
Marigolds	Papayas	Peanuts	Petunias
Pineapples	Poinsettias	Potatoes	Pumpkins
Quinine	Rubber	Squashes	Sunflowers
Sweet potatoes	Tobacco	Tomatoes	Turkeys
Vanilla beans	Zinnias

READING

First of all we are using our Scholastic News/Weekly Reader on Columbus. It has a fun interactive website which shows an animated basic story of what happened.The link is HERE at Scholastic. I don’t think you need a code. Another resource I found was a mini book with pictures and questions afterwards. The link for the printable story and worksheet is HERE at Teachervision. I would also do a few read alouds. I have about 5 books on Columbus.

Scholastic News had a lot of neat resources even after reading . Another good resource for lots of activities on Columbus is HERE from Palm Beach Schools.

ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
After reading the Scholastic News/Weekly Reader and showing them some Pictures of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand I found online, and pictures of one of the types of boats they used (The Nina, The Pinta and the Santa Maria) we had some good discussions on how hard it would be to have the job of sailor on one of Columbus’ 3 ships. They had to sleep on mats and eat kind of old food. The kids decide which 5 things they would be able to take with them on the 2 month trip to America. It is hard to narrow it down to just 5 things! And no computers, phones, T.V.s or ipads were invented then!!

A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus (Picture Book Biographies) (Picture Book Biography)

Good read aloud book on Christopher Columbus.

VOCABULARY & ABC ORDER
I will introduce our 7 VOCABULARY words on Columbus for the week. Then we will do an alphabetical order worksheet. The link is Apples 4 the teacher. A wordsearch I’ll put on the back with vocabulary words Find it HERE or a challenging one HERE. It works great because we are studying alphabetical order this week! WOO HOO!

WRITING PROJECT
We then wrote little biography reports on Christopher Columbus and how he sailed to the New World and met the Indians there. Everybody had a different bunch of facts they thought were interesting. All of the kids could take facts from any of the books, Weekly Readers and facts they learned from our read alouds or the video. We went through the writing process, I edited their work, and they rewrote on some cute Columbus paper I found in a Scholastic Book.

VIDEO
Here is a cute 6 minute singing video about the Voyage of Christopher Columbus that includes the King and Queen of Spain and some maps of the route. And Columbus sings a cute song too. Perfect for 1st or 2nd graders. WRITING I’m going to let the students retell the story of Columbus in their own words. If you wanted to you could do a Columbus Acrostic Poem. A link for words to use for the letters of COLUMBUS is HERE at joglab.

Christopher Columbus reports

The watercolor ships of Columbus turned out really pretty. They all looked so different!

We read lots of literature and listed facts about Columbus on the whiteboard. Then we wrote about him.

After teacher edit we rewrote our sloppy copies on this cute paper. Christopher Columbus rocks!

Then we did a watercolor art project of some of the ships Columbus sailed on.

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

Weekly Reader about Columbus and his travels.

A Columbus Quiz from the Weekly Reader/Scholastic News.

ART
The art I like to do is a watercolor of the sky and ocean with a Columbus type boat made with brown construction paper and a piece of tissue and a wooden skewer for a sail and mast.. A cute puppet printable is HERE at Scholastic.

MUSIC AND FINGER PUPPETS I found a freebie at Teachers Pay Teachers for a cute song and poem to sing about Columbus. I would sing and recite the poem and song together and then let the kids glue them on the back of their art (reduce to half size so both will fit on 1 page).
The finished watercolors look really great. At Teachers Pay Teachers pay Teachers Lil’ Country Kindergarten had some cute Columbus Day Finger Puppets. This would be a great fast finisher activity for older kids too. Who doesn’t like a finger puppet? Then the whole class can sing the song while doing puppetry. What a fun week we had!

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night Activities

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night

We just started Reading Streets in our school district. It is the new reading program. In 2nd grade I love the fun stories and songs that all link with our science and social studies.

Reading Streets Literature – Our fun Tents and Camping Storytelling…

So after we read the story of HENRY AND MUDGE AND THE STARRY NIGHT and went through the vocabulary lessons and sang the songs we did a few other fun activities. Check out this website which has loads of fun stuff for kids at Visalia K12 School District.

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night…..our catalyst for a week of camping activities and Star charts!

Writing assignment about a Realistic story about a camping experience, fiction or non-fiction.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Camping Story in Realistic Fiction Style
we decided to write a REALISTIC STORY about an experience going camping. It could be a true or made up camping trip. I challenged them to use several of the AMAZING WORDS vocabulary and have a problem and a solution. THE SETTING had to be somewhere out in nature where we might like to camp. I also put out more Henry and Mudge stories for fast finishers to read and enjoy.

The setting of the Camping stories was of course outdoors at some hot camp spot!

We had a problem and a solution in our camping stories….

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night stories….You could do a retell with the same idea….

Camping Stories and artwork turned out great!

We did a giant brainstorm of camping places and things to do. We used THE 5 SENSES as a graphic organizer. I wish I had taken a picture of the board. It was good what kinds of outdoor camping activities the kids came up with to match what we smell, see, feel, and hear and taste (s’mores of course! and other camp foods). It was a good background knowledge activity.

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night innovation idea….

Then we made a list of possible problems you could have camping. They came up with everything from mosquito bites to getting lost in a cave and bears eating your food. Then we did some writing of “sloppy copies”. I ALWAYS EDIT each week. Then they rewrite on cute paper and have some sort of motivational ART PROJECT attached. I have taught from Title 1 kids to Spanish speakers new to the U.S. and Gifted kids. Writing is the best way to push up ALL of their language arts abilities from SPELLING to PHONICS to READING to HANDWRITING and COMPREHENSION. It is reciprocal to all the other LA topics. DO MORE WRITING!!!!! It is KEY.

SCIENCE: Stars and the Sun (Solar Power)

We were finishing our solar systems from Space the previous week so I thought a natural leap is into the stars and the sun. We did some activities learning about stars (star on a stick with a poem on the back) Check it out.

Then we learned about constellations. A great set of videos on the sun and others can be found Here at About.com. There are many others on the Metacafe website.

HERE are directions to paint this cool “SUN” art project. It looks actually like the SUN! they put blogs of orange and yellow and red paint on a circle of white paper, then cover it over with Saran Wrap. Then they mush it up! How fun! Then they place it onto a black piece of construction paper and glue it down. Then they make sun flare-ups using a cotton swab. Fun!

I have a solar robot we go out and put out in the sun to watch him walk, and then we huddle over it so we block out the sun and he stops. The kids love it. And they learn about solar cells. I have bead bracelets we make out of solar beads (Get a package at Steve Spangler Science. The $9.00 package lasts me about 3 years.

Steve Spangler Science solar beads for bracelets….a great fun science activity for kids!

Solar bead bracelets and glow in the dark beads together make a fun extension activity. They turn back colorful in the sun and back to white in the classroom. Very cool. Very cheap science activity too. And kids love them.

I buy also some “glow in the dark” beads from Michaels or Hobby Lobby too. Then we make a solar bracelet on a chenille stem. We turn out the lights, and it glows in the dark (be sure you set your beads under a lamp that morning) and then we go outside and the solar beads all change colors. It is super cool!!

Sudekum Planetarium has a great constellation star chart that is printable and it is fantastic looking! Some years we have made sundials too. HERE is an easy one.

Constellation Art picture idea….You could also do it on black paper with pin holes poked in for the stars. or a mix of both ideas.

If there is time, we will do a few constellations by poking pins through black paper making dots, and doing an acrostic poem using S-T-A-R-S as the topic. I wish I had a copy of the above activity. It looks like a perfect one for little kiddos.

ART EXTENSION (A FAST FINISHER MOTIVATION!)

I knew we were doing a camping story so in the summer I ordered camping stickers on sale from Oriental Trading. I made “TENTS” out of a 12 inch “SQUARE” of green cardstock. I had some army green from a Stampin’ Up freebie given to our Utah teachers a few years back.

I folded the top of the square down on the left and right sides to form a tent. Then we added stickers to the front, and a triangle of white paper inside for the illustration. We added “camping stickers” I ordered from Oriental Trading. The Link for camp stickers is here. Each student shared the sheet of stickers with a partner.

Camping Stickers from Oriental Trading we used for our “Tents”

MUSIC EXTENSION:

Well who doesn’t go camping without singing some camping songs? Here is a bunch from Visalia k12 website. Just click on the site and sing along with your class! I Love Oh Suzanna! I would of course add my percussion instruments for the kids to play along. (who doesn’t love to bang a drum?) A cute website with other extension ideas is HERE at Teacher.net. They had “make trailmix” and “sleeping bag races” for P.E. (I would use gunny sacks). What fun ideas! Maybe next year.

Sleeping “bag” races….do them with gunny sacks for P.E.

Gotta Love some trail mix snacks too! Recipe HERE.

Here is our completed writing stories. They are all really fun reads! After reading how one student fought off a mountain lion, I’m wondering how “realistic” these stories are, but what they lack in realism, they make up for in adventure, that’s for sure! It makes me ALMOST want to go camping under the stars. (NOT) :O

My Birthday Party

I had a birthday on Monday and my daughter Tiffany hosted a birthday party for me Monday night. I went to lunch with the hubs so it was fun to not worry about anything food for an entire day!

Halloween decorations on the table were so cute….Tiff put a glass inside of this jar and then surrounded it with the candy corn. She didn’t really buy 100 pounds of candy.

She is a master at these delicious bread bowls. The recipe is at Jamie Cooks it up HERE.

She made these wonderful, homemade bread bowls and some delicious creamy soup. Then she had my all time favorite spinach salad with strawberries and avocados and candied pecans. Can you spell Y-U-M-M-Y?

Gotta love the chairs all decorated like Halloween pumpkins….

Yummy spinach salad is one of my favorites…

My birthday cake was a strawberry cheesecake. It was so pretty and delish! My little granddaughter had cheesecake face. :O

Strawberry cheesecake…..Yes those are 4 CANDLES…..Yeah…I’m only turning 40 now. Woo Hoo!

Yum, I like that cheesecake stuff grandma! Marisa has cheesecake face….

It was so fun to be spoiled. And my son-in-law likes Halloween like I like Halloween.

He’s going to add lots of spiderwebs and scary dudes hanging from ropes and stuff….

Here is the beginnings of his graveyard….the spooks are even coming out of the window wells to a strobe light. He still has to hang a few ghouls from a noose and a few more tombstones.

Marisa and Meg hung the little ghosties in the tree…so cute!

It’s gonna be the neighborhood fun stop for sure. I better go get all my stuff out too!