We have been having a ball learning about the first Thanksgiving at our house. It all started innocently with some pilgrim hats. AG loved her bonnet SO much that she wore it all. the. time. To the grocery store, the library, in the car, around the house. I felt compelled to sew her an entire costume.

She loves it. It was a giant pain, and was the biggest clothing-type sewing project I have ever taken on. Hence, it is not perfect, but AG absolutely loves it. In case you’re wondering, I used Simplicity pattern number 3725. Thank you, Lord, for Simplicity patterns being on sale for $1 and the fabric being $2/yard! Hooray!

I must say, while the hats and costume were time consuming, they were definitely worth it for the amount of “pilgrim discussion” they caused. AG would sit at the table with me while I worked and asked a lot of questions about the pilgrims, and I think it gave her a much better understanding of how difficult life was for them. One day she was talking about how it was taking me a long time [thanks a lot], and then asked, “was it this hard for the Pilgrims?” We discussed for a while that I had a sewing machine and iron that used electricity, and we could go to the fabric store to buy whatever we needed rather than having to make it ourselves. It would have been much more difficult and time consuming for them to make their clothes, and they had lots of other work they had to do!

Speaking of difficult work, we also did the classic project of making your own butter by shaking heavy whipping cream in a jar. AG shook it for oh, 10 seconds, and then announced that she was tired and asked if it was butter yet! With prodding she did it for a while longer and then NP inherited the project. ;) Again, this was a very hands-on learning experience for her that the pilgrims had to work hard to do anything! We enjoyed our fresh butter and honey on homemade bread made with fresh-milled wheat at dinner. Yum.

I was so excited to come across this great website with tons of pictures of Plymouth Plantation, the Mayflower II, and the reconstructed Wampanoag village. Again, this really helped my concrete-thinking three year old to grasp more of what life was like. After we looked through those pictures, we were all ready to make our Indian headdresses!

Of course we’ve also been discussing lots of things that we are thankful for, and have greatly enjoyed our Thanksgiving crayon leaves that we made. Our Psalm 100 leaves have also morphed into a border around our dining room. It’s very festive in there. :)

Here are some of our favorite books that we’ve enjoyed learning with:
• One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy – cute rhyming text and colorful illustrations. Both kidlets love this one!
• This First Thanksgiving Day: a counting story by Laura Krauss Melmed – this book is so cute. I love the illustrations and it’s fun to read. Both the kids are fans, and so am I!
• Thanksgiving Day by Gail Gibbons – this book is a simple but well-done overview of the Pilgrim’s journey to America, their first winter, how the Indians helped them, and their celebration of their first Thanksgiving. It also ties in how our feasts today are similar to theirs, which is nice.
• Our Thanksgiving Book by Jane Moncure – AG really likes this book. This story centers around children who are learning about Thanksgiving in their class at school. It includes some simple craft ideas, making butter [AG was thrilled when she saw that they did what we had already done!], and a simple overview of the history of the Pilgrims and Indians. They also discuss Indian words and names – AG decided she wanted “Little Flock Bird” to be her Indian name!! =}
• Thanksgiving Day Crafts by Arlene and Herbert Erlbach – some great easy craft ideas in here – we’ll be pulling some things from this next week!
• Give Thanks to the Lord by Karma Wilson – this book centers around a modern Thanksgiving celebration, with a continual refrain of “it is good to give thanks to the Lord” from Psalm 92.

The links and images above are from amazon.com. I am an affiliate and will receive a small percentage of the sale of this or other products resulting from clicking through from this site.

For more preschool ideas, click over to Homeschool Creations’ Preschool Corner!

I haven’t posted much about our homeschooling adventures for a while. I probably should clarify that “schooling” for us is extremely loose at this point. It’s pretty much picking a book/topic and having as much fun with it as we can. ;)

The past few weeks we’ve been using Virginia Lee Burton’s classic book The Little House as the springboard for our learning fun. This book was a Caldecott winner in 1943 – I had never read it before and stumbled upon it in our local library. This has been so much FUN! This book covers an amazing array of topics [and great vocabulary!]; almost every page turn opens something new to learn about. Ie: this post will be long. ;)

The book opens with a description of the little house being “strong and well built.” So, we started off by making a gingerbread house together. I must say, as I did this I remembered why it worked much better to make a gingerbread house when my husband is home… this was not as relaxing and idyllic as it was supposed to be in my mind. And whether or not it is “strong and well built” is questionable.

Nevertheless, we had a great time. The next day, I pulled out our paints and let AG paint it pink like the house in the book – she thought this was hilarious that we were paining cookies. :)

A few pages into the book, Burton describes how the little house stays the same even as she watches day after day go by. She describes how the moon grows “from a thin new moon to a full moon, then back again to a thin old moon; and when there was no moon she watched the stars.” We hadn’t really talked much about the moon’s phases, so this was a great starting point. I found this online moon phases calendar, which was very helpful to look at with her.

We have been learning Psalm 19:1 – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” We covered a sturdy piece of cardboard from an old box with silver wrapping paper, and I wrote her verse on it and then let her put some star stickers on it. Then we took black circles and glued various “moon phase” shapes cut from white paper onto them, and hung them with yarn to make a mobile. This is fun to have in her room because the paper is very reflective and she can see it at night.

I was so proud of her when we were making this. First when I was explaining that we were going to learn about the moon, I asked her what day God made the moon. Without missing a beat she said, “day 4!” [I asked her how she remembered and she said, "because of our creation book!"] :) As we worked we were discussing that the light doesn’t make light on its own – it just reflects the sun’s light. I asked (without expecting much), “how are we kind of like the moon?” She just kept on working and said matter-of-factly, “because God’s light shines through us.” Awesome!!!!!!! Oh, moments like that make bad days fade away, don’t they? I think that must have been fresh in her mind from when we carved our pumpkin and talked about God’s light shining in us.

Burton then spends four pages talking about the seasons – she shows the little house and the surrounding hills and how they change from season to season. We made our own versions of her illustrations with construction paper, crayons and markers, a house stamp, and some tree stamps I happened to have.

After a while, the city near the little house begins to grow and consume the countryside where she was built. The first thing that happens is that steam shovels, trucks, and steamrollers come and build a road in front of the little house.

We learned more about roads are made in Building a Road by Henry Pluckrose. Then we went in the kitchen and made our own “road” – almond brittle covered in chocolate. :) Some almonds were whole, some were sliced – they were our “big stones and little stones.” We talked about steamrollers as we spread the brittle out thin with spatulas, and the chocolate on top was our “tar.”

Most delicious road ever.

Today, we wrapped up our The Little House unit with a brief activity to talk about shadows. As the little house is swallowed up by the city and has skyscrapers built on each side of her, Burton mentions that she only saw the sun at noon. In order to explain this, we built a house out of duplo blocks, put it between two chairs covered with blankets, and moved a flashlight in an arch from one side to the other to be the sun rising and setting. AG could see that the light only shone on the sun when it was straight up in the air – at noon.

If you have older kids, I found a great book at the library that is far beyond AG at this point, but it has some fabulous learning activities regarding skyscrapers. Skyscrapers by Carol Johmann is full of interesting facts and history about Skyscrapers and city planning, and then gives step-by-step instructions for kids to design and build their own structures! Such a neat book!

One thing I did grab out of this book to talk about with AG is the fact that newer skyscrapers are “stepped back” as they go up, rather than rising straight up from the street all the way to the top. The design of skyscrapers changed because people living in the city were complaining that they hardly ever saw the sun (because of what we already illustrated with the little house.) To talk about how this works, we moved the chairs around so the seats were facing the little house rather than the backs, and then did the flashlight experiment again. Sure enough, the house was in the light much longer that way! I don’t know if that really made sense to AG, but her nerdy mom thought it was interesting. :)

There really was a lot more in The Little House that would have been fun to explore. I was hoping that we could work in a trip to a “big city” and ride a subway and see an elevated train, as Burton talks about those things… maybe another time. She also talks about the house being moved back to the country – perhaps some day we’ll see a house being moved and we’ll check this book out once again. :)

But, that’s all for now… must move on to Thanksgiving!

Last weekend when we were gallivanting around in Amish country, AG and LB stayed with their “pretend grandparents.” I was so glad to hear that they had gone to an apple orchard on Saturday, because I had been planning to have an apple unit this week! Fortuitous timing!

I never made it to the library, but I was wanting to read Little Apple Goat, which is such a cute story. Better late than never… we’ll pick it up this weekend. :)

Anyway.

Image via Wikipedia

On Monday we went to a grocery store that had their bulk apples on sale. Usually I buy bagged apples because they’re cheaper, but I wanted AG to know how many different kinds of apples there are! We went down the produce section and selected one of each kind of apple. I also picked up a big bag of granny smiths to make an apple pie.

We’ve had a great time sampling our apples – she picks two each day. We look at them first and write down how they are the same and how they are different. Then I slice them and give everyone one slice of each. Then we create a comparison chart between the two (I stick the stickers from the apples at the top of the columns!) – which one is sweeter? Which one is more sour? Which one is crisper? Which one is juicier? Which one is your favorite? We take one bite of each one and then answer the next question. AG has really surprised me with this – she tastes them so carefully, and several times I think her taste buds were more accurate than mine! We’d have different answers and I’d try them both again – sure enough, she was right! :)

This was her first experience with making comparison charts, and it fostered a lot of discussion about vocabulary (what is “crisp?”), that it’s ok that we like different things, etc. I also learned that Granny Smith and Cripps Pink apples are my favorites. Who knew?

We pulled out the poster paint and did some apple stamping (on freezer paper – doesn’t bleed through!), which then worked well to reinforce our Bible verse. I decided to teach her the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) this week, since it was a natural connection. We talked about the way our lives show “fruit” when we know and obey God, just like healthy apple trees give us apples. The day after we had stamped our apples I realized she had done just the right number to write in the fruit of the Spirit! We’ve also been singing the Fruit of the Spirit song from Hide ‘em in your Heart quite a bit this week, which has been a great learning tool.

As I mentioned, we also made an apple pie together with the Granny Smiths we bought… YUM. She loves to cook with me – I must say I wasn’t the most patient mommy the day we made this pie, but it still was good to work on it together. AG doesn’t get a whole lot of sweets, so this was a treat to make it and because I’ve let her had a small piece every day after lunch!

The last couple of days we’ve worked on our first dictation project based on the apple pie – I had AG help me talk through all the steps to making the pie and I wrote it out for her. Without having a formal “grammar lesson” about sentences and proper verb usage, talking through this dictation was good reinforcement for correct phrasing. She was also starting to really enjoy it – “can we write this too? Let’s say…”

Today as we ate our pie together she wanted to know how apple juice is made. Oddly enough, I had already planned on showing her the first part of this “How it’s made” video about apple juice! We watched this three times – she was much more interested than I expected!

Tomorrow’s project: apple sauce. She has made apple sauce with me in the past, but she doesn’t really remember it. We’ll make more to can later in the season, but for right now it’s all about the experience. :)

For more preschool corner ideas, visit Homeschool Creations! [For more apple ideas, check out this post from ABC and 123!]

The resource images above are linked to amazon.com for your convenience.  I am an amazon associate and would receive a small percentage of any sales resulting from these links.

It’s county fair week! As I’ve mentioned, AG has been smitten with the idea of the fair because of her favorite children’s documentary about a sheep farm, Sheep Crossing. Knowing that the fair was coming up we built in some learning fun.

Starting out at the public library, as always, I found out that there aren’t really that many picture books with fair themes, at least in our district. The librarians did dig up a couple of good ones for us:

County Fair (adapted from Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder) is a wonderfully illustrated story about Almanzo’s trip to the county fair with his family. Almanzo is thrilled that his pumpkin wins a blue ribbon, which got us into discussing the competitions at the fair and what the different ribbons mean.

Country Fair by Gail Gibbons had a lot of content about the variety of activities at a fair. This book is very fact-oriented without much of a story, and the illustrations weren’t my favorite. But, it added in some more “modern” elements of a fair than the little house book had, such as fireworks, a demolition derby, and a tractor pull.

A Week at the Fair by Patricia Harrison Easton is a longer story – really too long for us (it feels like it takes a week to read…), although AG likes it and has requested it several times. This is a more detailed account with real photographs and text from a girl who is taking animals to show at the fair. It goes into detail about how they prepare for the fair, how the animals are shown in different classes, how they are judged for the quality of the animal and showmanship, etc. This book was a great introduction to why the animals are at the fair and what all the kids are doing with them.

At the Educational Resource Center I used the Ellison machines to cut out some fair-related shapes – blue and red ribbons, tickets, tractor, “treats”, pig, sheep, cheese, milk, cow, apple, rabbit, basket, pumpkin, vegetables, and chicken. I wrote the words on lined word strips, put all the shapes into our pocket chart, and told AG it was a game to see if she could match the word with the shape (everything is fun if you call it a game, right?!).

She really reads pretty well for a 3 year old, but I have noticed that she tends to guess at the words based on pictures. This was a great game for reading practice to sound out the word first and then find the picture that matched.

Today we spent the morning at the county fair, much to her delight! We spent all of our time in the animal buildings and the art hall. It was fun to have the kids see all the different breeds of chickens, bunnies, cows, and sheep – our “city kids” don’t often stand face-to-face with a huge turkey or see that rabbits come in all shapes and sizes! When we were walking through the animal buildings, NP pointed at the rabbit building and asked AG what was in there. She looked at the word at the top of the building for a few seconds and then exclaimed, “rabbits!” It is so fun to see her catching on to reading!!

LB was very impressed with the sheep – remember how they both love the Sheep Crossing documentary? When we first went into the sheep building he just stared and them and then signed puppy and barked! As soon as we told him they were sheep, he was kicking and squealing and “baa-ing” at them like crazy. Good times. I’m sure the sheep were happy that we showed up first thing in the morning to liven up the place!

AG really enjoyed watching some of the calves and lambs be shown- we were able to reference back to the A Week at the Fair book about what the judges were looking for, how the kids were supposed to keep their animals under control, etc.

This afternoon after LB laid down for his nap, AG and I worked on making some “quilts” out of paper (art and geometry!) – I’ll tell you more about these on Free Fun Friday (click here to read about them). :)

While we were making these AG said, “it’s kinda like our house is the fair. A quiet fair – with only a kitty and a fish.” She doesn’t like loud noises – our pretend fair is probably more her speed!!

This might not have been the best way to spend our day, as the kids and I all have bad colds. We laid low yesterday… but the fair comes our way but once a year, and the free days must be taken advantage of! Everyone is a little tired and crabby this afternoon, but it was worth it. :)

Is there a fair near you this fall? Have any fair-related learning ideas to share?

The book titles and images above are linked to amazon.com for your convenience.  I am an amazon associate and would receive a small percentage of any sales resulting from these links.