Homeschool Kindergarten and Preschool: Week 10Thanksgiving!

One of the easiest and our favorite craft for this time of year was the Give Thanks banner we made from a variety of beans, glue, yarn and construction paper. I wrote out the letters on the construction paper, the boys and I covered the letters with glue and the boys went to town placing the beans on the letters. We will definitely do this again next year.


The boys and I went shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes a few weeks back...and Penny went to. That is going to take some getting use to, I am so accustomed to saying just the "boys" :) The boys picked out some toy trucks, stickers, harmonicas etc as well as some fun toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap etc. We did this last year and Charlie really remembered the meaning behind what we were doing and was excited to pick out the different things to send to his "friend".
We had a lot of fun last week and did a BUNCH of school work and lots of fun activities gearing up for Thanksgiving.

There was also a lot of loving going on. Both boys are still smitten with their little sister :)

Tommy had fun playing playdough.

Charlie concentrated on Math and Phonics again this week. His teacher gave us permission to skip through a lot of the lesson since most of them are review for him at this point. I am carefully going through the lessons to make sure that we aren't overlooking any concepts that he does not know. I am excited to see him be a bit more challenged!

Both boys had fun with our Fall sensory bin. I added plastic gourds, paper leaves, crystal pumpkins, pine cones from Grandma Candace and a few trucks. I gave the boys some measuring cups, spoons and containers and let them go to town. They really enjoy these sensory bins and it really holds their attention.

We had fun making these Turkey hand print cookies. The boys helped with the entire process and had just as much fun eating them as they did decorating them ;)



They also completed some foam Turkeys that I picked up either at the art store or at the dollar store.


I also made a Cornucopia out of dough for our table centerpiece. It turned out ok, but I have bigger and better plans to do it again next year.


We read a few books about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate. I had wanted to make a Mayflower ship with Charlie but we didn't get to it...maybe next year.

We have so much to be thankful for! It was a great week!

Homeschool: Kindergarten & Preschool weeks 8 & 9 Letter I

We have done a little bit of school the last 2 weeks. We started back to our school lessons a week after Penny was born. I have had Charlie concentrating on the basics, Phonics and Math. I also had Charlie do more independent work on the computer for the Study Island portion of his curriculum. This is a testing portion that K12 offers to help practice different concepts that he is learning. He did really good and I think it is a great exercise for him to do on his own. It really is sharpening his ability to follow directions and computer skills.

I have given Tommy a break from his weekly curriculum but realized today that he needs more structure so I am starting to incorporate more of his work back into our daily routine.

Besides the basics we have tried to do a few fun things as well. We made pumpkin playdough from scratch. The boys really liked doing this and it was super easy to make. We then made turkeys out of the playdough. I think they turned out really cute. With the extra playdough and materials we had we made up 2 packages for our friends Luke and Elizabeth and sent them in the mail. We talked about Thanksgiving and how we are thankful for things and people in our lives. We got the idea from my friend Susana, who did this last year.

We also did our crafty ABC for the week, the letter I. We made Iguanas. Tommy is REALLY into writing the letter "I" lately and even though he knows how to write his name he is much more excited to write "I, I, I" over and over again :) Charlie got creative with his Iguana and added his name and his initials to it. If you look closely at the bottom right corner of his picture you will notice that his Iguana has "pooped"....so typical of my little fella :)

Charlie had a great time making a paper bag city. One of his magazines had a few sheets of store fronts, houses etc that he could cut out and then glue to paper bags and make a city. He loved this project and did it over 2 days.


Tommy had a fun week doing projects around the house, helping me do laundry and washing the dishes.


First 2 weeks back at school went slowly, as to be expected. But we had fun doing our studies and projects and starting to figure out a new routine.

Over the hills and through the woods.......

Our last stop on our Thanksgiving travels, took us to Nie Nie and Papa's house.

We did a lot, and yet we did nothing at all!

We visited an incredible cheese house where we stuffed ourselves with cheese and watched cheese being made. Very cool and very yummy!

Grandpa took the boys on loader rides, as usual. Tommy could hardly wait and went from vehicle to vehicle asking for a ride on them with Papa. Charlie was skeptical this time about a ride, but compromised with Grandpa and found a safe spot near the gear shift for him to ride and put the loader into "gear".

The boys love to ride with Grandpa on the loader.
Thomas x's 2

There were cuddles and shows


We decorated our Gingerbread house as part of our Advent activities


And Charlie and Grandpa also did some building together.

Two little Christmas Elves at work.


And this sweet boy, well, he is just sweet!

We are back............

Wow, what a wonderful whirlwind the last 10 days have been! We have been here, there and everywhere!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at our house with our my sister and her family and my parents and chatted with most of Trent's family on the phone.
It was truly a blessed day because we were together!
The kids had a lot of fun with their cousins

Daddy cooked a delicious bird as usual!!

After Turkey day was over, our bellies were full, and our prayers of Thanksgiving said....we were off to Aunt T and Uncle's house.

THANK YOU dear friend who let us borrow their DVD player for the car!!
WHY have we not bought one of these before?!?!?!

4 hours later and we were playing, chatting and catching up with more family.
Aunt T watching trains on the computer with the boys, and Uncle showing us his engine. Who do you think was in awe??

We had a great visit, we played outside A LOT, ate lots of pie and even celebrated Nana's upcoming bday!
and have we mentionedthat this boy is fearless?

and have I told you that I love this boy?

If not, now you know!

next stop Nie Nie and Papa's house......

To be continued.

My First Thanksgiving

We had a nice week, still figuring out this whole "home schooling" thing. We did A LOT of fun things this week and spent a good amount of time training Sir Thomas. Wow, is it difficult to teach and have a little one under foot! However, I really tried to turn those training moments into positives and with each day those moments became fewer and far between! Thank goodness for small miracles!!

This week we read My First Thanksgiving by Tomie dePaola
An easy read for both the boys, yet enough information to expand on for Charlie and simple enough for Tom.
We colored pictures of turkeys

We made our annual Indian Corn. This year Tommy was artistically inspired and painted more then the corn :) And big brother followed suite.

For Tommy time, we worked on grouping our counting frogs (that I purchased at the Dollar Store) together to practice our colors and counting

We made our Thanksgiving Fact Book, put up our Tepee
dressed up as Cowboys and rode our horse(swiffer) around the house.

The boys used our new dry erase board. Tommy practiced drawing circles and line, Charlie wanted to write our address and Daddy's cell phone number.

The boys made Native American Headdresses using feathers, construction paper and tape. Our first go with tape and they both did really well!!

So cute!

We also played with a bunch of our favorite learning toys that we checked out from the library's toy loaning program. LOVE the library!! We played ringtoss
Tommy and I worked with the clock on shapes, numbers and putting the puzzle pieces in the correct spot. Charlie and I did the same thing and then used the clock portion to introduce him to telling time. I would call out different times, like what time we go to bed, have lunch etc and he would position the hands in the appropriate position. He did great and really enjoyed this! We might need to get this for Christmas!!
Charlie also did the math puzzle and matched up the numbers with the corresponding picture.

We played a lot of games this week, some of our favorite were Feed the Turkeys. Charlie fed them , and himself some candy corn.
And a Harvest Pattern Game I would make a pattern and then he would copy it, then he made me one and I did the same. It was fun working together.

Meanwhile, my good little helper was hard at work.....love it!

We also covered our daily work, devotions, calendar, weather, Kumon workbook, Explode the Code workbook and read a lot of books about Thanksgiving!! Charlie also enjoyed doing several lessons on Starfall.com...great resource!
Turkey Poem:
The Turkey is a silly bird
His head goes wobble, wobble
The only word he really knows is,
gobble, gobble



Thanks for the ideas!!
Native American Headdress notimeforflashcards.com
Harvest Pattern Game, Feed the Turkey Game and coloring sheets from makinglearningfun.com