Cranberry Thanksgiving

FIAR

The week leading up to Thanksgiving we read Cranberry Thanksgiving.  My oldest loved the character Mr. Whiskers!  I think he really liked his name more than anything!  I tried to find the book online to purchase and thought the prices were a little more than what I wanted to pay, so we decided to put it on hold at the Library.



                                       Story time with Dad...

During the reading of the book we went to YouTube to watch videos on harvesting cranberries.  The boys really liked watching the machines do their work!  We learned that Cranberries do not grow underwater, that they flood the fields so the cranberries can float to the top for easier harvesting.  I learned a lot watching these videos too!

                         At the end of the book there is a recipe for yummy cranberry bread!

                             Making grandmothers famous cranberry bread...

                           


                       Watching the cranberries float to the top of the water...

                       Sifting the flour...

The day after we made our Cranberry bread we headed over to Nana's house(my mom) for the Thanksgiving Feast!

                                Watching Nana cook...

                                            My mom has an electric knife and used it to carve the turkey, Big D
                                            thought the knife was really cool!

                                Lil D watching while I cut the Cranberry bread

                                The family getting ready to enjoy the meal...

A special guest was missing...   my dad.   But I know he is enjoying his time with the Lord, and having his own special feast!    Miss you dad!

We did not do many activites with this book, but we talked about the story a lot.  I would ask Big D to retell the story to me, and I would ask him questions about the two characters Mr. Whiskers and Mr. Horace and how they were different.  This was a good story to talk about how God looks at our heart and how man looks at what is on the outside.  God doesn't care how we look or smell but He cares about how much we love HIM. 

During this week we also read the story of The First Thanksgiving...

  I am so Thankful for this country that I live in and for Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior!

Get Cracking!

A Sensory Bin Full of Nuts!!

Oh the possibilities!

I haven't posted in a week because of the holiday and my son's 5th Birthday.  But last week as part of tot school, (which I haven't posted about yet) I put together a simple sensory bin with nuts.  With the holidays around the corner the grocery stores had bags and bags of unshelled nuts.  And I thought it would be fun to make a sensory bin with nuts for counting and sorting.  

Well today I decided to let the boys crack open the nuts!  They had soooo much fun cracking them open and finding the nuts inside.  Time certainly got away from us and before we knew it 45 mins had passed!  Boys sure do like to play with TOOLS!!!!

Caution!  Hammers in use!

We don't own a nut cracker, but this hammer certainly worked well!

Finding the nut inside...

You can see how hard they worked...

We tried many tools, but the hammer worked the best!

Top down; pecan, walnut, almond, brazil nut (we also had hazelnuts but they were hard to open!)

Our bounty...

This was a fun activity that taught the boys about the different nuts and what they look like and taste like!

Check back later this week for tot school!

You can find more fun ideas here....

Gratefulness

This week we started talking about Gratefulness which is one of our Biblical traits from Character Concepts for Preschoolers.  

Gratefulness - Being sure to tell God and others thank you

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Ephesians 3:9

I myself have many things to be Grateful for...

Jesus dying on the cross for me

my wonderful husband

two sweet little boys

family

shelter

food

    I found these tissue paper leaves to use as a Gratefulness banner.  

 
  Each day I will ask the boys what they are grateful to God for.   Then I will write what they are grateful for on the leaf and we will hang it on our string.

Operation Christmas Child -  Samaritan's Purse

I had prayed earlier in the week to God how I could show my children gratefulness, and then I walked into church and there was the table for Operation Christmas Child.  I thought what a better way to help my children understand that other children do not always live like they do.  We have so much and so many people have so little.  

Before we packed our shoe box we watched a video on their website.  I wanted my boys to get a better understanding of who would be getting the box they packed.  

After watching the video Big D quickly ran to his room and started looking for a stuffed toy to give to our boy.  He said "We have to find a little bear for our boy, so he can hug it!"  I told him the toys need to be new and we would have to make a trip to the store.  

Packing our shoe box full of goodies!

They were very excited to find items that another boy might like

Well our shoe box was packed and sent off.  We will watch our email to see exactly where our box ends up.  They let you download forms from the site so you can track the box!  How cool!!

What I'm most grateful for this week...   New PIPES!

Back in September our one and only tub decided to clog up.  We had two plumbers come in two days, they could not fix it!  Aargh!!!   Our house is 70 years old.  Hence our pipes are old too!  This picture below is what our tub looked like after the plumbers came.  Yuck!!!!   

Our neighborhood plumber had been out of town and finally came over and unplugged it.  That lasted for about a week, and then it started backing up again!  Our plumber told us the pipes would need replacing because they were probably coated with gunk on the inside.  We decided to wait a while because we had lots of family stuff going on and it wasn't a good time for our kitchen to be torn up.

Flash Forward to Now....

                       

                               Lots of holes in our walls and ceiling!  

                               The Pipes for our tub just happen to be in our kitchen ceiling.

For the week we ate and fixed meals in our dinning room.  The boys loved it!  It was like camping for them.  It was kinda fun? I didn't have to cook just heat up the food.  

Well we now have new pipes for the tub, and my walls were patched up today.  Now it will be time to clean up the dust.  

And maybe I'll ask my husband if we can change the paint color in the kitchen!?  

Have a great week!   I'll be back next week with Tot school!

Preschool Character Concepts

Responsibility  - Doing my best at every job because Jesus is watching

As part of our Bible curriculum we are teaching the boys how to make wise choices.  For three weeks we work on one character trait, there are twelve character traits covered in this curriculum.  So far we have covered Obedience, Responsibility and Honesty.   We found this curriculum through The Learning Parent and absolutely love it!  

I wanted to share a little bit of our 3 week study on Responsibility.   I have seen God working in my oldest and it has been just so much fun watching him try and be responsible because Jesus is watching him.

Week 1

Big D and I read a story about responsibility from the book Crossroads of Character.  Then we worked on memorizing a Bible verse from our Learning Character with the cousins flashcards...

"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men." - Colossians 3:23

The mom's guide suggest getting a fish to help your child understand responsibility.  So we headed down the street to a really neat fish store.  (They have sharks in this 10,000 gallon tank)

We have no pets in our home so I thought getting a fish would be perfect for Big D.    We found a fish we could all agree upon but told Big D it was his fish and he had to feed and take care of it.  Big D was excited about his purchase and we headed home.

                                        At home with our new pet!          

Big D named the fish "Fish Fish"

Week 2

The second week we read a Bible story from the moms guide; Matthew 25:14-30, The Parable of the Talents.  This story relates to the trait of responsibility.  There is also a coloring page to go along with the story, but my boys are rarely interested in coloring these.  Big D loves hearing stories from the Bible and always asks good questions.

During this second week I found a chore chart that I really liked at Homeschool Creations.  The moms guide also suggest a chore chart for learning responsibility.  We had not yet implemented chores with our oldest except for making his bed and cleaning up his toys.

I like this chart because Big D can see exactly what needs to be done.  And when he has done his chore he takes so much pride in taking off the cards and putting them in the cup.  This chart has really helped Big D take more responsibility in our household.  

Big D's chores:  make bed, brush teeth, feed fish, set table at dinner, help unload dishwasher w/ mom, vacuum bathroom floor, clean up toys in room.  

We have not implemented any chores for earning money.  We want him to feel a sense of  responsiblity in our household,  everyone has a job to do to make our household run smoothly.  In time he will be able to earn money with odd jobs we find him.

Week 3

The third week we get to listen to a history story on CD.  The curriculum comes with a CD of History stories for Preschoolers.  They are about 10 minutes long and in the moms guide there is a picture of the Historical figure we are learning about.  

                                                   Here are the boys resting while they listen to the story.  

                                                   (Yes, I do need to do something about my boys bad habits; sucking on fingers, and the pacifier. Ugh!)

For responsibility the person we learned about was George Washington.  These stories are really great!  I'm not sure how much Big D really understands but we can always listen again later on down the road.

I really like this curriculum from the Learning Parent.  You can find more information on their blog.

The Learning Parent Blog

Tot School - Letter I

Ice Cream

Lil D is 30 months old.

This past week we went a little off course with school and so I came up with I for Ice cream.  We had a lot of fun making ice cream, playing with ice, and ice cream cone hand prints.

               
                               Matching Shapes

                             
                                I found these shapes at Target in the dollar bin.  Lil D had to match
                               the shapes from the bowl to what was in the muffin pan.

                               Putting cherries(from a game) into an egg carton.

                                Letter "I"stamping.  Find the printout here.  Big bro helped.

                 Making ice cream cone Hand prints.

                               Big D's cone                                      Lil D's cone          

 You can find the printout for the cone here.

                                            He was having fun painting his paper plate after he 

                                            finished with the handprints above.

                

             Playing with ice.

                 They both wore gloves because the ice was so cold.   Brrrr!

I put some salt with the ice so they could see that salt made the ice melt faster.

                Do a Dot painting Letter I

 You can find the print out here.

                                       
                                                   More Do-a-dot painting,  I for igloo

                

                Making Ice Cream!! 

This was a lot of fun!  I pulled out the ice cream maker, which was collecting dust in the basement.

We decided to make vanilla ice cream.  The boys helped put the ingredients in and then load up all the ice and salt around the cream canister.  They tried really hard to be patient while it churned.

My favorite photos are of the boys while they indulged themselves in yummy ice cream!

           Pretend Play -  Ice Cream Shop

I set up an ice cream shop for the boys to play in.  We used buttons for money and made milk shakes, and ice cream cones.  This was a lot of fun for both boys!  

Of course my battery on the camera died right after this picture.  So no pictures of the boys playing.  Boo!

Come back next week for more Tot School!

~Christine

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