Gorilla, Mr. Peanut and 2 Spidermen....Meet our family

For Halloween this year, the boys dressed as Spider Men. Not that hubby and I had any intentions of dressing up to go to the Fall Fest at a local church, but when he found our ould Gorilla suit (yes, we OWN a gorilla suit) while cleaning out the garage, we just couldn't resist. We have had (or rather my parent's) a Mr. Peanut costume (Planter's Peanuts?) for years and years, so it was time to break it out again.

Our friends, couldn't believe that we of all people would dress up. HEY! We USED to be fun like that before kiddos came along. It is about time that our inner Party Animals came out! (Don't worry, we put those animals to bed at 9 pm)

But what I wanted to say was that Turbo (and Tank too) did AWESOME in a place where they usually would have a meltdown. Tank was way past his bath and bedtime, but did great! When we finally stopped playing games, we sat down on the floor in the Fellowship hall to eat hotdogs and nacho, he grabbed that hotdog and chowed down! Not small bites for me, mama...I'm a big boy now!

But this is where the real joy in both mom and dad's hearts set in: While in the Fellowship Hall to eat, we both looked at each other wondering how this night was to end. It usually ends up in tears and frustration while we battle Turbo to stay seated and eat. But then something popped into my head: BLOCK EVERYTHING OUT! GET HIM DOWN TO A GREEN/BLUE LEVEL! But do whatever it takes!

I quickly scanned the room for something, anything that would block out any visual/auditory stimulation but was appropriate for the situation. AHH HAA! I found a little cubbie hole in the corner of the room that was a perfect hide-away spot for him to sit in and eat. It worked perfectly! He sat in the cubbie hole, while I "blocked" entrance to it with Tank and me and Dad stood behind me. He ate his entire hotdog, drank his lemonade and had his cookie for dessert without any problems! Not once did we have to remind him to sit and eat. Afterwards, we played one more game and left without any incident!

PRAISE JESUS! IT WORKED!!!!!!! Oh I am so excited! We have strategies and they work!!!!

Letter F

To continue in the spirit of not going in order, we have hopped to the letter "Ff". At first, Turbo didn't know who Frankenstein was, (good job mom) so why not introduce him? (not so good mom!) Anyways, explained a bit of who he was, and we made our own Frankenstein. Not that I had the correct colored construction paper, mind you. So we did the next best thing, we improvised. I did have green construction paper, but not black. To get our color black, we practiced our painting skills. Cutting, pasting, and facial space placement was worked on as well.

Next, we moved on to our "Paint-In-A-Bag-Taped-On-The-Sliding-Glass-Door" contraption and worked on writing the letter "Ff".

This was our "MASTERPIECE" when we were all done.



Hmmm, maybe I will sit down and watch the original "Masterpiece" of Frankenstein.

And then maybe follow it up with Young Frankenstein!

Letter W

With fall setting in and Halloween less than a week away, I decided to skip our schedule of letter learning all the way to "Ww". To keep Turbo's interest, we made a Witch and a Web...plus added a spider!



For the witch, I used my artistic ability, to draw her profile and had Turbo cut her out. Then he glued her face and her hat onto another piece of paper. Once that was finished, he added eyes, along with a googlie eye, colored her lips red and added some warts to her nose and chin. For the tactile part, I asked him to make squiggles (ya like that...squiggles) of glue so that he could paste yarn for her hair. He wasn't too into that because that would mean getting his fingers sticky and messy. So, I had to help.



Here, I made dots to help him with writing. To connect the dots helps him to see how a "W" is correctly written.


For the spider web, I asked him to make the same squiggly lines for the web. Now, if I had thought ahead I would have looked for my glitter to find that it was all gone, so I would have planned something else. However, this was not the case for today. While Turbo is make glue squiggles I realize that I don't have glitter, and I have to improvise. With what? Might you ask?

CAKE DECORATING SUGAR SPRINKLES.
That's right, ladies and gentleman, you can lick our spider web for a sweet treat! (but I don't recommend it. Neither does Turbo, or course, this recommendation came after he tried it.)

Then we added a spider with a bunch of googlie eyes, and labeled our art!