Fall Fire

After arriving home from the pumpkin patch, we went to work at planting an ornamental grass garden by our garage. My brother is on a hunting trip, so I called my sister-in-law and told her to bring the boys over to "help" us dig and she could go for a run. When she arrived back the sun was setting quickly and the boys got the idea in their heads to have a fire in the trail.

Aaron, once again, told one of his fireside tales. This one was about the boys being washed ashore a deserted island after a shipwreck to find no food in sight other than a lone apple high in a tree. In this tall tale the children also found nourishment in centipedes, worms, and beetles creating belly laughs from all the kids.

I must say, Aaron is the best storyteller. I don't know how he comes up with the settings for his stories, and he really grips the attention of the boys. For example, he told a story once that went on and on and pretty much was about a stairwell and Ethan kept going down and down and down to a door and then down and down and down to another door. That was the bulk of the story. I can't remember the ending, but Ethan listened intently to the end. What a great dad!

M&M Soup and Nature Shakers

Today we made M&M soup. I didn't have any dried beans like the Van Klan so we had to make our "soup" from M&Ms. I made recipe cards, too, for each of the kids with hot glued M&Ms of each color and a number beside. I also made notecards with a lower case and upper case letter M for them to place their M&Ms on to make their letters. I taught them that m says "mmmmmm" just like we say when we eat M&Ms. Then, we had some milk to drink to wash down the chocolate. I wish I could show a picture, but my camera is still not working :(.

When we went outside we found another frog or was it a toad? Ethan wants to keep it until daddy comes home. He carried it around very gently for a long time. I am getting better at hiding my true feelings about creatures and critters.

Then, we went out the the Adventure Trails and the kids helped me find some nature items to make some new sound matching shakers like we did earlier this month. We have sand and rocks, twigs, pine needles, water, pine cones, and one more thing that escapes me at the moment. They loved this activity. Even little Zach get excited when he sees the shakers come out. He knows what he is supposed to do and is learning he needs to wait his turn.