A warm November, Halloween, and a brief homeschooling update!

We have been enjoying beautiful weather this fall! Today it is in the 70s (what? November?!) and we have been able to take advantage of it by taking lots of nature walks. We even got to do our STEM class outside today, woohoo! Here we are building and testing them out:

 

My kids had so much fun trick or treating this year. Here they are all dressed up:

This is the third year my eldest has been Darth Vader. Halloween costumes to be my kids' only low maintenance area! ^_^  My youngest made a Minecraft skeleton head and then he and I mad a bow and arrows together. We found some really cool glow in the dark tape to make the bones. Unfortunately I forgot to take a shot after it got dark out.

We continue to progress slowly through our studies though I am not feeling ambitious about homeschooling these days. I am reading a book aloud the kids seem to be enjoying, though I'm not sure they quite get the middle school flirting references quite yet at 9 and 7, they are finding the other parts quite humorous;

I have noticed that as we are focusing more on reading and writing at the moment, some math skills are slipping, so I'm thinking about getting 180 days of math for both my kids as review. There never seems to be enough time in the days to get through all of the things I want to do with the kids. Playing (imaginative, games, outdoor play) and our other activities (soccer, street hockey, swimming, music) eat a lot of our time. I know this is a common occurrence with homeschoolers, and that we are also attempting to tackle all kinds of subjects (like computer programming, engineering, and chess) that I never learned about as a kid. We have also been spending a lot of time outdoors and at museums, which I am okay with. This homeschooling journey can be tough, finding the balance of what needs to be done and what is okay to let go of in favor of other, more engaging, activities. Crossing my fingers these kids turn out okay in the end!