Pumpkin Project

Over here in Taiwan it's been hot (summer hot), we have had high 80 to mid 90's on a consistent basis.  I have been waiting for the weather to cool and also missing the fall season.  The leaves changing, the pumpkins to pick, apple picking and just the smells of Autumn.  Sunday we were hit with cooler weather...a typhoon was coming through and giving us the rain.  Monday, the little boys and I, put on long pants. Little N was super excited that he got to wear pants and Little M tugged at his pants trying to make them back into the shorts that he has worn for the last 6 months.  It was slightly amusing to watch the different reactions.  This is just a VERY random side note that I wanted to share so I would be able to remember it later on.

I don't home school my children -- I'm still not sure what we will do with the kids as they get older.  Next year I'm pretty sure that Little N will start Chinese Kindergarten (a little anxious about that -- the school we are looking at has really long school hours.) and I'm still not sure what I'm gonna do with Little M.  But we are working on responsibility -- they have a chore chart that they have to do and I am slowly working on being consistent on making sure we do everything on the list.
One of the things that I'm really bad at is making sure that Little N does a "school" page and Little M does a coloring page.  Things that I have gotten a lot better at is making sure that we read our bible story every night, say our prayers and our memory verse.  With the boys being in the toddler Sunday School class at VEF, every month we are working on a new memory verse.  This being our first month, we are working on Genesis 1:1 (next week we start a new memory verse).  I have been pleasantly surprised at how well BOTH boys are doing with memorizing.  Little N can say the verse without prompting for us and Little M tries his best to say the verse when he knows the words -- he can say "In the beginning" and then it gets slightly muffled because he gets so proud of himself.
Today, I decided to be domestic -- do the laundry, make "pumpkin" puree and because I made extra copies by mistake of a pumpkin (that I converted into apples so I could make apple name decorations for the Sunday School class) so I decided to do a learning project with the boys.
The boys watched me cut and cube the pumpkin (squash) and then we put it in the pot to boil.  Because they watched me cut the pumpkin they saw that there were seeds in the pumpkin so we decided that we would cook them and then see how they tasted.  I also decided I would let Little N and M do a fun project (Little N had more responsibility and Little M had less) I cut the paper pumpkin for Little M and then let him color with markers (boy was he excited about that!).  Then I let Little N play with my BIG scissors (both of us decided that he needed to get little scissors that he could use) and cut out the pumpkin all by himself.  Halfway through cutting by himself he asked for help on how to cut with the big scissors....so I "helped" him.  After that he colored the pumpkin (his was definitely his own creation).  By then the pumpkin seeds had cooled enough that I could separate them let the boys use them for gluing on their pumpkin and also to try and taste. 
Little M loved the taste of pumpkin seeds and had fun placing the seeds on his pumpkin (he didn't get as many pictures because he needed a little bit more supervision -- otherwise he would have eaten the glued on pumpkin seeds).  Little N, I had to convince him to even try to eat the pumpkin seeds (I am working VERY hard on having the kids at least try one bite of things before they decide that they don't like something!) and he didn't like it at all but had a blast using the glue and putting the pumpkin seeds on his pumpkin. 
I was thankful for a fun fall activity that the kids could do and that we were fulfill some of the kids chore charts.
 Little M trying out the pumpkin seeds.
 Little M's final project
 Scissors -- this part honestly terrified me.
 Coloring
 Gluing
 Decorating
Little N's final project.

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