Our First Thanksgiving In Our Own Home

Well, we went to GA to visit family for a week and decided to go ahead and celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas while we were there.  Addi had been enjoying her lessons so much that while we were gone she would ask each day, "Mommy can we do lessons today." I thought this was just the sweetest thing.  In fact, one morning she told me, "But mommy I NEEEEEED lessons."  I couldn't help but just to laugh at her adorable pouty little face.

So, when we got back in town I had not prepared my letter of the week curriculum for that week, but I knew there would be plenty of Thanksgiving ideas avail be online through different blogs I follow or even by researching Pinterest.  This was the first year that we were going to be in our own home for Thanksgiving.  We decided to decorate and make the house look super special for this occasion, especially since we had invited several other families to join us for dinner in our home on Thanksgiving Day.  Our first project was to make turkey napkin holders for all the kids who were going to be eating with us.  We used paper towel rolls, construction paper, pom poms, felt and googly eyes.

For the adults we made Pilgrams and Indians.  I think the adults ended up liking theirs more than the kids liked their turkeys.  Funny how that worked out, hun?

     

   

On Thanksgiving Day we set the Pilgrams and Indians on the table along with the finger print turkey place cards and the other art work we had done.

Just for fun we made Pilgrams out of plastic spoons.

My favorite Thanksgiving Decoration was our "Give Thanks" sign we made from acorns, twigs, and leaves we collected on our nature walk with Daddy.  He had gotten off work early one day and it was such a sweet time for us during such a busy season just to get out and go for a walk as a family.

We had a great lesson all about the Pilgrams, Indians, and the first Thanksgiving feast.  I tried to repeat it over and over again all week long.  We did sequencing cards (which I actually never took pictures of) and a few other activities and by Thanksgiving Day I think she actually understood a small portion of what was actually going on.  Here was our attempt at making an Indian teepee from a sugar cone, icing, and M&Ms.

This is also our construction paper cornucopia with fresh vegetables.  Pretty sad looking cornucopia if you ask me.  Ha ha.

But not any more sad than our melon and fruit turkey we made as an appetizer.  This guy looked pitiful, but we had fun making it either way.

I wish I had taken a picture of all the food we made.  We had everything from turkey and gravy, corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, crockpot macaroni and cheese, rolls, sweet potato casserole, corn stuffing, glazed carrots, sausage cheese balls, deviled eggs, pumpkin dip and crackers, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, oreo layer dessert, better than sex cake, a jello dessert, and more the I can't even remember.  IT WAS WONDERFUL!!!  Here is a picture just of the desserts!

Read more »

Learning about Harvest

I'm so thankful for resources which help me teach my kids especially about things that are hard to describe with just words.  Here is a sequencing activity from planting seeds to selling fruits and vegetable sin the grocery.

 

I also used "How a Pumpkin Grows" sequence cards from this website.

I thought this week would be a good time to teach Addi how to shuck corn.  She is so funny about touching certain textures and was actually not much of a fan of the sticky strings.

Once we got it all clean she had a blast painting with the corn.  We eventually make indian corn cut outs as Thanksgiving decorations, but I don't think I ever got a picture of it.  Oh well.

During snack time we played a counting game with popcorn.  This might have been her favorite activity all day.

We painted paper plates, stuffed them with plastic bags, added a piece of construction paper and made a pumpkin.

Addilyn has gotten really good at sorting small, medium, and large.  Maybe soon we can add a few intermediate sizes to the mix.

I found these pumpkin dollies (50 in a pack) at the Dollar Store.  I laminated a few and used a crayon to write numbers on them.  Then I let Addi put the correct number of pumpkin seeds on each dollie.

This is the first time I've tried cookie cutter tracing.  It worked really well as long as I held the cookie cutter.  Addi was so proud of herself because of how well the pumpkin shapes turned out.

I tried a"threading" activity with fall leaves (paint samples) onto a small ring.  Each of the kiddos who tried it really had fun making patterns with the colors and it was a great hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills activity!

This video has a great segment teaching all about Harvest, perfect for this week!

We made a paper bag scarecrow.  Addi had seen one at a harvest festival we went to a few weeks back and has been obsessed with "tear-toes" ever since.

Very interesting harvest books from the library. ;)

Read more »

Homemade Pumpkin Puree

This fall I had lot of recipes I wanted to try out and many of them included pumpkin puree.  At $1.50 a can for 15 oz. I was thinking some of these recipes might have to wait until next year because I could not afford it, and then...it happened... I went into Kroger and they had pumpkins on sale for $0.25.  Yep, that's right; A QUARTER!!!  I bought one large pumpkin (and found out later that the medium size pumpkins are actually better for homemade puree).

 I cut up the pumpkin into slices and baked it for 25 minutes on 300 degrees.  Then I peeled the skin off it and chopped it into smaller pieces.

I plopped the pieces into my food processor and let it puree away.  I made 7 zip lock bags with 16oz in each one.  Not bad for a quarter!  I figured it out. I saved approximately $10.25. It tasted great to me (even if it was a large pumpkin) and while making a Thanksgiving dessert I used my last bag.

Read more »

Fall Fairs and Festivals

Don't you just love when things work out so perfectly that you could not have planned it any better?  Well, that's what I thought about when I looked at our schedule for the week.  When planning for Letter F week, I knew we would be studying Fall but I had no clue we would be so fortunate for the NC State Fair, the YMCA Fall Festival, and a local church's Fall Festival all to land within the same time frame.  We have had so much fun this week!  

Here are some of the books we read about Fairs.

It had been a few years since we went to the North Carolina State Fair.  I will say, it is a completely different experience when you are taking your one and two year olds.  We had such a blast though!  We rode a few of the rides.  We checked out all the animals and of course...we ate some Funnel Cake!

 We love the local YMCA and were very thankful they hosted a wonderful FREE fall festival.  They had tons of games, inflatable, face painting, arts and crafts and food!

A local church in the area also has an annual fall festival.  Each year we look forward to the games and food but the most exciting attraction is the Hay Mountain that they kiddos (and some of us adults) like to jump off of.

Read more »