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.

Traveling - Road Trips

I keep meaning to blog about this, but I keep forgetting!

After a road trip with my 3 and 4 year old I want to SHARE - SHARE - SHARE the wisdom I gained.

I am a crazy planner.

I crazy planned before this 2-day road trip from Colorado to Virginia with my 2 girls.

Then, at the last minute our government shut down and the hubby got to ride along for 

the ride (at least the first direction).

Planning is your friend.

Here are the "biggies" that really made our 30 hour car drive (twice) enjoyable!

1. BE PHYSICAL ON STOPS

We stopped at a park only once on either trip, right before the sun set.

After hours in the car, they needed to MOVE.

This was 13 hours into day 1

We tried to stop at rest areas as often as possible because there is usually a grassy area.

Every rest stop we had a "run" or "race" to get everyone actually running.

Rest area stops usually lasted at least 20-30 minutes, but we didn't take them often.

I had more than one comment from other travelers about the brilliance of this as they watched my kids run.

2. REINFORCE POSITIVE BEHAVIORS 

I knew our "time out"/ love and logic parenting approach wouldn't get us down the road very quickly.

Although I'm not big on only rewarding good behavior all of the time, a road trip seemed like a good exception to me!

I found this "behavior clip" idea off of Pinterest.

I made a clothespin with each girls' first letter (of their name).

As long as good behavior exists, your clip stays on the visor.

If there is bad behavior, your clip comes down.

At the end of every hour, anyone who has a clip still up gets a reward.

I had a bag full of candy.  They chose their reward.

Before you yell at me for feeding my children candy every hour for 2 days, listen.

IT REALLY WORKS.

We had virtually no behavior issues.

3. LAPDESKS

You could make one or buy one, but these SAVED me on both trips!

I made one with cookie sheets and made a pillow to attach with velcro.

The thing I loved about cookie sheets with small kids is that nothing rolls off.

They could have crayons, colored pencils, etc and easily not drop them.

4. HIGHLY ENGAGING ACTIVITIES

I packed a different activity for every hour.   

I didn't need that many, but I had them all organized in bags to just grab.

It turns out the MOST engaging thing I packed was a blank little journal/scrapbooking pad

from the dollar tree for each girl, along with colored pencils and stickers.

This kept both girls engaged for I'd say 1/4 of our first trip.

I kept a few up front (in the passenger seat on the trip i was along with the girls) 

and the rest in the trunk to swap out at rest stops.

If you use a cookie sheet, you can create games with magnets that will stick and stay!

Charlotte is 4 1/2 and was into games, etc.

Adelyn is 3 and was not.

Fortunately, a couple of books and paper and she was happy!

I bought a few "special" things like color wonder markers and water color pant sheets.

A couple of these special treats would have been fine.

5. KEEP DRIVING!!

We did not stop for meals.

I packed a cooler full of yogurt, uncrustables, fruit, etc.

I also had a 31 bag full of non-perishable snacks.

Many of these snacks (and the uncrustables) were things I NEVER buy.

This added to their excitement value.

Even for breakfast and dinner, we only grabbed the food and kept driving.

With small children eating is this long process.

The lap desks made it possible to eat as we drove.

Oh - and pack LOTS of wipes :)

6. DVD PLAYER

I'm kind of a nut about limiting screen-time.

However, the time NOT to be a nut…is on a road trip.

A friend let me borrow her DVD player for the ride.  A small one is all you need.

We used a splitter and headphones.

That was a rule.  You only watch a movie with headphones.

Ahhhh - sweet silence.

I borrowed a bunch of shows and movies from the library.

We worked on 3-4 hour cycles because that's about how long we could go between potty breaks.

So every 3-4 hour cycle the kids could watch one DVD.

7. WATER ONLY

This is the biggie.

Don't let your kids drink ANYTHING except water.

This sounds horrible, right?

Here's what I know about my kids.  

If they are thirsty, they will drink water.  If they aren't thirsty, they won't.

Any other beverage: juice, sports drink, soda, milk, etc. this rule doesn't apply.  

They will gulp down a gatorade like someone is going to steal it.

Which means…. LOTS of potty breaks.

This will drive any parent insane.

I have 2 preschoolers and we stopped no less than every 3-4 hours when they told me they had to go to the bathroom.  They were amazing.

If this is difficult, reward them with a drink of their choice at your destination.

This 2-way trip has given both Joe and I the feeling that we can TRAVEL by road again.

This is incredibly freeing.

Be free!

Pumpkins

We ended our Fall Unit by studying pumpkins!

We dissected pumpkins with our buddies :)

We cut, counted seeds.

I made a word sort on pumpkins!

Both big girls worked together :)

   

I found these pumpkin magnets at the Dollar Tree. 

I bought 2 sets and decided to make a number match from them.

I put this on the fridge in our kitchen.

This activity turned out to be good in a few ways:

It was placed in a nice location that the girls saw daily.

Whenever I noticed the puzzles had been completed (after the 1st time) 

I would take all of the numbers (or all of the dots) and put them on the side of the fridge.

All 4 of us took turn with the number magnet puzzle.  

A little pumpkin versus jack-o-lantern sorting :)

We read lots of pumpkin books!

One of our favorites is graphing!  The girls LOVED these silly graphics!

A few finished products -

Clothespins are a pretty cool tool!

Here's an abc mat with lowercase letters.

The clothespins have capital letters for a matching activity!

Most months I reset the calendar, putting the numbers in the right place, etc.

This month I decided to take EVERYTHING down and let the girls put it back up.

They had to sing their days-of-the-week song to figure out the order of the days.

They had to count in order and find the next consecutive number.

Always a hit is the do-a-dot!

We even spent time measuring our pumpkins.

Here is little C weighing her pumpkin on our scale.

We used our "mark both sides and measure" just like our nurses use at our check-ups!

Then we measured the length with unifix cubes!

We even found and marked "ribs" and counted them!

We used our Venn Diagrams just like we used with the leaves to compare and contrast Apples and Pumpkins.  Wow - my girls did some really great thinking!

We did a little word building!

and word writing! (She looks super-excited, right? ha!)

Adelyn is working on letter-writing!

One of the things I'm trying to get better about is letting the girls draw pictures and write about it (or Adelyn letting me write about it)

Here's Adelyn's picture (and story) of going to the pumpkin patch!

 And Charlotte's :)

We also did a ton of math (CGI problems)

Why not use marshmallows as manipulatives, right?