Finishing Thanksgiving

We finished up our Thanksgiving Unit this week, with a few new activities.

We also just polished off a few old ideas.

First, if you're doing a Thanksgiving unit, your kids should TOTALLY watch

The Mouse on the Mayflower.  My girls watched it on YouTube and LOVED it.

It's actually got a ton of information in the cute little animated film.

We did lots of word-building.

We also played a lot of games.  

Below is a syllable game.

My favorite was "Where is the turkey?"

It was a great practice for Adelyn who still doesn't know all of 

her numbers by sight yet (1-10).

Daddy even joined in the fun to make some Native American dolls!

Whew!  We're heading into Christmas now :)

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

The Mayflower

We're continuing our History of Thanksgiving unit!

Yesterday, the girls started by painting the bottom of two milk jugs, 

without knowing what we would do with them later!

Charlotte was super diligent with this task!

We came upstairs and read more pages from the virtual book.

Then, the girls watched a video about the Mayflower.

I wasn't sure how much this would hold their attention, but they really listened!

They actually begged to watch this same video after nap time.

Who knew?

We read a lot of facts about what life was like on the Mayflower.

Then, using the numbers of passengers, we did a replica with a 100s board.

There were 50 men, 20 women, and 32 children.

The girls used dried beans to represent each group.

They chose the largest lima beans for the "Men",

kidney beans for "Women", and black beans for the kids.

I asked the girls a bunch of questions about the groups.

How many women, men, children?

Were there more women or men (etc) ?

How many more children were there than women (etc)?

Charlotte's reasoning skills have really taken a bump up the last couple of months.

With "How many  more" questions, she knows automatically to discount the amount from the smaller group and count the extras.  For example, when I asked her how many more children than women, she held her fingers on two lines of 10 on the board, and then just counted the extra 12.

We learned the second verse of our song.

I wrote it on the board for Charlotte mostly (because she can sort of read it).

It has been pretty effective because she sings it each time she walks in the room.

We finished with calendar time!

We had a playdate scheduled, so we stopped and went to Treehouse Discovery.

After quiet time, Charlotte cut out the sails and flags for our Mayflowers.

She helped hole punch the sails. 

As you can see, it was pretty hard work :)

By the time Adelyn was up, we headed to a friend's house for dinner,

so we didn't actually finish out Mayflowers.

I used the sails and straw idea from this resource,

This morning, we finished our lesson.

We used a little brown play dough to stick our straws in.

I drew the two flags from the Mayflower because 

I couldn't find them anywhere to print.

Our Pilgrims fit! YAY for pretend playing tools :)

We didn't do our "Read-Build-Write" words yesterday, so I thought 

we could use our freshly-made play dough to cut and build the 3 words.

I didn't expect Adelyn to make it through all 3 words, 

but amazingly on Daddy's lap, we can do anything (with a princess dress on!)!

Finishing "mining" all of our letters before putting the letters in order!

Our 3 words: Pilgrim - Mayflower - Hat

After finishing, we tried to see how many "-at" words we could rhyme

One of the unexpected things that I really love about having my laptop, desk, and printer right in our loft is my ability to print something on the fly.  I save lots of resources, but don't use all of them.

Charlotte has been getting up from quiet time and telling me she wants to do "some school".

Instead of going to a new topic, it's really great to just be able to print a color-by-number Pilgrim, or Dot-to-Dot Mayflower, etc that will reinforce what we're learning.  This way I only print things as we need them instead of wasting things that the girls don't get to.  Win-win!

Homeschool Room

Almost immediately following the decision to homeschool, 

began a thought process about WHERE 

all of this homeschooling might take place.

We had already been "doing school" at the kitchen table a bit.

However, Joe and I thought we would probably want more space for this journey.

At first, we had envisioned using one of the rooms in our basement.

After a few warnings from Moms who had tried, I realized

that natural lighting would be important for a space you're learning in.

The first steps...

Our thoughts moved to our loft.

Our amazing neighbor helped us move our piano out of this space.

Then, with a clear (generation 1) vision, we began our ikea trips!

We bought a desk for Joe and I to share, and two smaller desks and chairs for the girls.

After finding a rug (from AFW) that fit some of the ikea colors, we bought 

a pink chair for our girlie girl and a green for our baby girl (her choice of course).

Almost immediately, we LOVED having desks in this space.

The girls woke up asking for school daily 

(weekends included - my husband was stunned).

The loft was clearly the perfect choice.

It was so close to the girls' living space (rooms) that proximity fueled motivation.

We thought the desks could be on the wall, and we would put a whiteboard on the big wall in front of them.  However, I was still a little uneasy about the limited storage chest that we had planned under the window.

Then I found this mom's blog with SUCH a similar space to ours and she solved it for me :)

http://homegrownmom.com/domestically-challenged/3642/3642 

She used a storage cube system from ikea (Expedit).

Then, she hung a whiteboard on the front of it with velcro.

BRILLIANT!

I would have never thought of it myself.

Generation 2 vision.

So, we moved the girls desks under the window, which works pretty well!

Another pro to this setup is that we still have a TON of open space in the middle of the room.

The blogger above used plexiglass for hers.

However, plexiglass is pretty expensive and scratches fairly easily.

Instead, we went to home depot and got some

Thrifty White Hard Panelboard

It's $13 for a huge piece.  

I had the whole thing cut into 3 different boards (for free).

Panelboard is really sharp and will peel on the edges if left raw.

So, I found some patterned duct tape at Hobby Lobby that we used to edge it.

We cut it in half, then edged the board to make a really thin border.

This is our mostly finished room!  I bought some storage from the Container Store.

Plus, we added 5 pink doors that are add-ons to the Expedit system.

The plastic containers on the bottom are for activities that the girls can get themselves.

The first 3 levels are built for them to be able to access.

The top 2 are too high for them to reach.

There is still room for our calendar near the desks, which is perfect.

We are pretty happy with our workspace so far.

We love having a place for the laptop and I love having a place for my work textbooks, materials, etc.

The whiteboard is already being loved for pictionary :)

The Stuva Benches that we're using as desks are the perfect height for chairs or kneeling.

This is perfect for this age!

I was hesitant about the chairs, but the colors are great.

The desk caddies are also from the container store.

The whiteboard is already being used for writing, activities (wikki stix), etc.

I especially LOVE that we still have a great amount of carpet space for crafts and learning at the primary level since these girls will be little for awhile.

There are still cork boards, etc to be added and hung. 

I have chests and baskets that must be unloaded and reorganized into this space.

 However, the major items are done and the room is fully functional.  

We are loving it so far.

What is a priority in your room?

How did you make it happen?

Share, please :)

Who are the Pilgrims?

I've been playing with the idea of teaching the girls a little bit of history and geography 

with Thanksgiving coming up.  

However, I was a little late thinking about this.  

I tried to put books on hold at the library, only to realize that I'm 10th in line 

(which means I won't get them until Christmas).

Lately, I've begun looking for videos of people reading the books I can't get my hands on.

Today, however, I used Amazon's "Look Inside" feature because for the book I wanted to read, it previews the first 15 pages.  WINNER!  We read the book together in front of my laptop, looking at the pages :)

This is how we read the story this morning.

The brilliant part is that we could toggle back and forth between the story and an interactive map.

SOURCE

We talked about England and Holland and the "New World", where the Pilgrims wanted to go.

Charlotte wasn't sure about where the states were in the "United States, so it was helpful to have an interactive map where we could zoom in to show her Colorado, Virginia, etc.

I'm roughly following Caroline Allen's "Day 1" of 

The History of Thanksgiving (a unit study of Thanksgiving) with a few changes.

After the story, we talked about the word "Pilgrim" and completed a Do-a-Dot

from Our Little Monkey's Thanksgiving printable pack.

Both of the girls LOVE these and including one is a no-brainer at this point.

Afterward, Charlotte used our first word from 

Homeschool Creation's Thanksgiving Read-Build-Write list

I noticed today that Charlotte sat in her chair sometimes and sometimes

would sit on her knees on the floor.  I love that this desk is perfect for both!

She is a wiggly-girl and sometimes knees not being in a chair is better for her.

While Charlotte built the word - Pilgrim - 

Adelyn used Wikki Stix to make capital Ps on our whiteboard

Of course Charlotte always joins in with whatever Adelyn is doing :)

After a few minutes of break to play with wikki stix, 

we worked together to sort pictures that started with P from those that did not.

This sort came from Homeschool Creation's Thanksgiving printable pack for Kindergarteners.

I love all of these free packs, but I sort of pick and choose what I use from each one.

Much of it is repetitive and doesn't fit my girls perfectly.  

The great part is that I get to choose!

One of the things I loved about Day 1 in the "History of Thanksgiving" unit is that she says to make paper doll pilgrims.  I found a lot of these and they looked kind of cool.

However, I found these Pilgrim People last night and thought they would stimulate more pretend play.

We'll make the Native American another day.  

Today was only about Pilgrims.

There was lots of cutting, gluing...

…and rolling!

This craft took much longer than I thought for me and the girls to do.

I like for them to have as much autonomy as possible, so total it probably took us over an hour.

I love that the girls could really do most of the cutting themselves.  

You can see that their skill level is quite different, but both of their pilgrims are adorable!

While we waited for the Pilgrim boys' hats to dry, we realized it was almost 10:30 in the morning and no one had eaten breakfast!  We grabbed some cereal and played a memory game from the Nomenclature cards from Mama's Monkey's pack.

There are so many ways to use nomenclature cards and 

I've found that I love having them in all of my unit's!

Adelyn's Pilgrims

Shhhh - don't tell Charlotte, but I think her Pilgrims caught the measles ;)

While we were finishing our dolls, we learned the first verse of the song.

Source

Prior to today, we have also been doing a few "Thankful" pictures.

Charlotte has done 3 of these pages, and 

Adelyn has done 2 (although I can tell some help has been had by her sister)

Day 1: I am thankful for goats (by Charlotte)

Day 2: God, thank you for trees and flowers   -   Day 3: God, thank you for sunsets

Adelyn  -  Day 1: I am thankful for chickens (written by Charlotte)    Day 2: God, thank you for a colorful day.