Instead of being dinosaurs for the umpteenth time, this year the boys were struck by an 11th hour inspiration: Willy Wonka and Charlie, from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one of our themes this fall. It was Gareth’s idea to be Wonka; he’s quite the imaginative 6-year-old, and has the drama experience and personality to pull the roll off. Don’t you think?

Here’s how the magic unfolded, after a trip to Don’s Hobby Shop (hat, carnation, bowtie, cane) and a lucky trip to Goodwill (gold pin-striped black velour jacket—what a find!). Jim helped Gareth get into his outfit for a Halloween party we attended:

And here he is seeing himself in the mirror for the first time:

And with “Charlie”, who looks concerned about where Wonka is pointing that cane!

At the Halloween party with his friend “Jack Sparrow”. Wonka and Sparrow have been friends since birth. Even with the blur, I love this picture of their friendship:

The following day we carved our jack-o-lantern. Well, the boys and Jim did. Pumpkin is one of the few smells I absolutely cannot stand—gagville!—and pumpkin guts?  Aaaaaaggghhhh! The texture!

Gareth was just fine getting right into the guts, while Daegan separated out the seeds for roasting. He ate most of them too, once they were ready.

Jim was teaching the boys about how to cut safely as he worked.

And the finished product (sorry the pic is blurry):

Halloween night. It took a moment, but lots of adults broke into a big smile when they sorted out who the boys were dressed up as. I love that they came up with something unusual, and very tied to their interests right now:

The weirdest thing that happened on this outing—and which unfortunately happened so fast I didn’t get a pic—is I had a muskrat run under my feet! I was sitting on a bench by the Bow River, watching the kids throw rocks and such, and there’s a path connecting where I was to the Jeffries Pond. Out waddles this muskrat—I thought it was a squirrel at first out of the corner of my eye, and then once I saw the long tail I thought, “Eek! Rat!" both of which prevented me from grabbing my camera in time. Before I knew it he’d scooted past me, and dove into the river. I caught the ripple of the splash on my camera…sigh. Too late!

Anyhow, here’s the pictorial highlights of our Thanksgiving (hover your mouse over the pics for details):

After our walk I cooked up our Thanksgiving dinner. It was decadent and delish! We had BBQ chick’n cutlets, twice-baked potatoes, stuffing, ‘shredded brussels sprouts’ (OMG! I finally, after 40-odd years, have found a way to like brussels sprouts!), and chocolate-coconut pie for dessert. Not quite your traditional turkey and pumpkin thing, but we all loved it!

Wishing all my Canadian readers a Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you got to spend time with your friends and family this weekend, doing something that you love.

I really liked how he got the kids making the birdhouses themselves. Over the course of the next hour or so, the boys used a hammer, a saw, a file (to smooth the rough edges) and even a power drill!

Gareth found it easiest when Jim would get the nails started:

The Birdman had boards sawn about halfway for the lids. It was the kids’ jobs—with parental help—to finish the sawing. I think this is the first time either of my kids has used a real saw. They did great; all fingers and toes still accounted for!

Here’s the finished product:

And the boys labelled and decorated it afterwards. Gareth even drew a cardinal:

While there were enough supplies to build one birdhouse per kid, Daegan and Gareth decided out family should just build one joint house—and it’s not like we’re lacking for birding gear in our backyard. This also gave Jim a chance to help two other young boys who were there sans parents; he actually helped build 3 birdhouses that afternoon. “What a guy!” (said in best Red Dwarf voice).

All in all, a wonderful way for our family to participate in Arts Days. Many thanks to Birdman Andrew Stiles, as well as the Calgary Public Library.

Anyways, back to Roald Dahl. We’ve also recently enjoyed the audio book of The BFG in the car, and the boys were absolutely tickled pink to find Roald Dahl, who was born on September 13th, as the subject of today’s Brain Pop movie. (It’s a free app which I wrote about here).

The boys are now reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator with Jim as their bedtime book, and are curious about James and the Giant Peach as well. And I did some reading of my own when I found out that Roald Dahl was a staunch vaccine supporter, a view I can understand after reading about the death of his daughter Olivia at age 7 from measles encephalitis.

Any other Roald Dahl we should read? What’s your favourite, either from your own childhood or as a read-aloud with your kids?

The boys put the model together this morning, and while it was fiddly in places, as these sorts of items tend to be, Daegan totally enjoyed himself. And thank goodness he was there; the instructions would say things like “insert the femur here” and I’m looking at the jumble of bone pieces going, “which one is the femur?” Here’s some pics of the process:

First, we headed off to buy some Pokemon cards, which Gareth decided would be his gift to Daegan. Gareth got a pack for himself too—paying for both with some allowance money he’d saved up. This is my boys’ first foray into the world of collector cards, and they were pretty excited:

Here’s Daegs showing off his favourite card he got, Aerodactyl:

Then they moved on to a Dino Dig. I draw your attention to the dirty sock and carpet vacuum head in the lower right. Don’t ya feel better knowing at least one homeschool family out there lives in a ‘clean enough’ house, not picture-perfect Little House on the Prairie? :

Here’s Daegan looking through the guide after finding all the bones. He has such patience for this sort of thing (me—I’d smash it or dump it in water to dissolve the plaster). Palaeontologist in training.

For dinner we made the Greek feast Daegan requested, with souvlaki skewers, rice, and Greek salad—and perhaps the most non-photogenic family ever.

Then came the “birthday pie” (again, Daegs’ request). Here he is getting ready to blow out the candles on the wish-a-saurus:

All that remained was cutting up the chocolate-coconut pie, and digging in.  (And yes, that’s a cluttered counter in the background; too busy living life to worry about ‘posed pictures’. C’mon other bloggers, let’s show the world how families really live. There’s a whole lotta space between Little House on the Prairie and Hoarders. )

After that Daegan opened a few gifts (having a birthday in the middle of a postal strike stinks!), and we told him our surprise gift to him (details in a future blogpost). All in all, he was a pretty content kid. Happy birthday, Daegan! You are indeed our bright, sunny day! (what the name ‘Daegan’ means)

I made two types: apple-cinnamon (on left) and cranberry-almond (on right). Both were pretty good, though we all though the apple-cinnamon could have been even more apple-cinnamony (and I doubled those ingredients from the original recipe!):

When you have waffles for dinner, there are no complaints, just sticky children.

Other than that I had a pretty quiet day on the HS front. Did some errands, got out for a long walk in the glorious sunshine with my friend Anna, had her kids over for a playdate after school, and watched the second of a 3-episode series about Charles Darwin (hosted by Richard Dawkins) with Daegan. What did you do for St. Patrick’s Day?

The boys and I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter  (Canada) (US), which is about area and perimeter, and briefly mentions pi. I had put The Dragon of Pi from the same series on hold, but it hasn’t come in yet.

And for dinner tonight we made our own pizza pies (using premade crusts—I’m not that much of a domestic goddess! ). Which reminds me of an amusing math cartoon Jim shared with me a while back, from this site:

The boys loaded their pizzas up with what we call “wheatballs” (faux meatballs), with Daegan adding sauteed mushrooms as well, over a simple olive oil sauce. Jim and I opted for more traditional pizzas with tomato sauce, and toppings like caramelized onions, sundried tomato, mushrooms, red pepper, olives (Jim), feta (me), and Jim tried Daiya brand mozza which melted really well.

And chilling in the fridge right now we have our homemade (again, save the premade graham cracker crust) chocolate coconut pie. Mmmm…. It’s no doubt a good thing for all our waistlines that 3/14 comes only once a year. Unless we choose to celebrate Approximate Pi Day (July 22, or 22/7).

We also made some cards of our own to send to relatives. I got the idea from one of the many “Math Art” books I have been perusing lately—I thought we’d make negative image Valentine cards, like so:

I had blank cards on cardstock (bought from Michaels eons ago), so the hardest part was cutting the red or pink construction paper to exactly fit one side of the card. We then folded in half, drew half a heart, and carefully cut it out, leaving both a heart and the negative image with the while heart space for writing our Valentine’s message. Gareth got to one of the cards before I realized what he was doing, and filled the space with random words he could spell (cat, rat, etc.). Hope my Aunt Wendy enjoys seeing how Gareth’s printing is coming along!

The finished products looked like this:

We set up a ‘card factory’ as Gareth called it, where Daegan wrote “To…….” on the front, Gareth decorated with stickers and sometimes drawings, and I addressed envelopes. And then I got the ‘brilliant’ ideas of taking a picture of the boys on our new loveseat to send to the relatives in the card. I did end up with a decent picture eventually, but the boys were in ‘high spirits’ so many, many pictures looked like this:

Or this:

Sigh. Happy Valentine’s Day!