This morning J copied and read aloud An October Wind by Zaro Weil and Rags by Judith Thurman. In the bridge book she did a section on simple and compound sentences, and a page on the western US states (location, capitals, and other major cities). Math was number patterns, area of a rectangle, and averages. It's a 7-8th grade math workbook, but it seems the beginning part is all review. She likes it because she can speed through a section in minutes.

W chose to do copywork out of a Ready Reader. He did 2 sentences from a page of one of the stories. It had lots of different punctuation marks in it, too. Then he did a couple of pages from his Sight Words book, and matching opposite words, and reading Yes and No questions in his bridge workbook. Later on we went through a whole semester of 1st grade spelling words on this website I found. And together we played a Widgets thinking game from iknowthat.com. He loves these.

Both kids got creative going through the Halloween costume box trying to come up with a new look for old costumes. They were cutting and smearing black makeup on things making them somewhat of a "dead" version of what they used to be. We used to always buy costumes but at almost $40 each and getting to wear them only 2-3 times, it's not worth it. So we've been making them the last few years. I'll splurge a little on accessories only now. They protested at first, but now they like this better. They put more thought into and appreciate their costumes more now.

K has started taking the bus to school. B went with her the whole way this morning, but tomorrow he'll just wait with her til the first bus comes, then head off to work. It's public transportation and she has a free Metrocard. She does have to make one transfer, though, and that's the part that worried me a little. But after actually doing it, she says it's great and has absolutely no problem with it. Tomorrow she does her 2.5 hours of volunteering at the educational center. She enjoyed it so much last week, that she also decided to volunteer as a teacher's aide at CCD (their 1 hr. Sunday religion class). She started this past Sunday and was happy to be placed in W's class! This year is already starting off great.