Week 15 – Done

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Week 15 is the week of Thanksgiving, so I am not sure it was a full school week as far as book learning. But doesn’t all that cooking count as a cooking lab?

We had the last day of the semester at co-op. Another day of the week I took our daughter to Knoxville for her harp lesson in person. We also shopped for Thanksgiving menu items.

Traditional Thanksgiving menu

My plate for Thanksgiving – I love this traditional menu

Then, it was all steam ahead with cooking. We had two large meals, one on Thursday and another one on Friday, with different people. It was lovely.

Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones around. Thanksgiving is certainly my favorite holiday.


Thoughtful Thursday Week 48 – Give Thanks

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To celebrate Thanksgiving, we went to Asheville, NC. The Omni Grove Park Inn serves a Thanksgiving Grand Buffet, plus one can take a look at the Top 10 National Gingerbread House Competition creations for 2015. Here are some pictures for you…

National Gingerbread House Competition

 

National Gingerbread House Competition

 

National Gingerbread House Competition Continue reading »


2013 National Gingerbread House Competition

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We took two days off from homeschool to celebrate Thanksgiving, but does learning ever stop?

Ice Sculpture Pilgrims, Grove Park Inn

Ice Sculpture Pilgrims, Grove Park Inn

What if we took a trip to a hotel that has been around for 100 years – where we saw a 1914 Ford T-model and where the likes of Thomas Edison, John Ford and many politicians and celebrities have stayed? Would that qualify as a field trip?

The main lobby features two giant fire places - The Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC

The main lobby features two giant fire places – The Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC

Thanksgiving Day found us at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. My husband’s family came there to meet us and we enjoyed a great feast.

Grove Park Inn Icesculpture

The banquet hall featured ice sculptures such as this one.

We also got to walk around this century-old establishment to admire the 2013 National Gingerbread House Competition Top 10 winners in four different categories: Adult, Youth, Teen and Child. I wish you could smell the gingerbread. Enjoy the pictures!

Gingerbread House

 

Gingerbread House - Top 10 Finalist

Gingerbread House

Gingerbread House - Grove Park Inn

Gingerbread House - Grove Park Inn

Gingerbread House, National Competition

Gingerbread House, North Carolina

Gingerbread House, Grove Park Inn Exhibition

Of course, we spent a few minutes gazing at the Grand Prize Winner – two adorable Panda bears chewing into their bamboo sticks.

National Gingerbread House Competition Grand Prize

Holding my daughter as we look at the 2013 National Gingerbread House Competition Grand Prize

Before we left, we looked for the outdoor fire place and we found it. We also found this adorable teddybear.

Children with Sleigh, Teddybear

Our children posed in front of the outdoor fireplace, with an oversized sleigh and teddybear – The Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC

I feel very tempted to put this down as a homeschool field trip, but I won’t. It will go down in our family history as a family trip and a Thanksgiving celebration.


French Friday, Thanksgiving Vocabulary

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In the United States, we just celebrated Thanksgiving – a harvest feast of giving thanks for all the bounty of the land and for the goodness of God toward us. You probably took a Thanksgiving break in your homeschool. We did.

Even though they do not celebrate Thanksgiving in France, imagine explaining to a Frenchman about this American holiday. You would need some specific terms, wouldn’t you? So let’s learn some Thanksgiving vocabulary in French. Click on the link below the picture to open a PDF with printable flash cards.

Thanksgiving vocabulary in French

French Thanksgiving

Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving celebration!

For more posts in the French Friday series, please click here.

À bientôt!


Thanksgiving Unit Study, PreK-K

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Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you will leave me a comment below about the things you are most thankful for. Among other things, I am thankful for the United States of America – this greatest experiment in the history of human civilization. Without this country, we would not know what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mean. In our homeschool, we took three days to study about Thanksgiving.

First, we did some crafts, coloring pages, math unit studies and other activities from this list:

Children doing Thanksgiving crafts at the table

My children doing crafts at the table

Girl cuts a turkey craft for Thanksgiving

My daughter enjoyed the crafts, which gives me energy to bring craft time back more often

Boy cuts a Thanksgiving turkey craft

My son cut lots of feathers, and even helped his sister a bit

Little girl with Thanksgiving turkey crafts

Brother did not have the patience to sit through a photo shoot with the paper roll turkeys, but he made one of these

  • Cute Turkey Buttoning and Matching Color Activity (Preschool) – This will have to wait until next week when I can get supplies. I was going to buy them the day before Thanksgiving, but we got snowed in.
Girl playing with snow

My daughter taking advantage of a snow day

Enjoying our first snow day of the year

My son enjoying our first snow day

  • Even Cuter Turkey Buttoning and Color Matching Activity (Preschool)
  • Cardboard Turkey – This website inspired me to make my own turkey craft. Homeschooling moms are allowed to make their own crafts, aren’t they?
Turkey Craft I made just because I felt inspired. But then, I realized it inspired the kids to see their mom cut and paint.

Turkey Craft I made just because I felt inspired. But then, I realized it inspired the kids to see their mom cut and paint.

Boy making Thanksgiving Craft

This particular Thanksgiving craft personalized the holiday when we wrote what they were thankful for on every feather of the turkey

Small girl cutting paper with pink scissors

More than anything, my daughter loved cutting paper in small bits

Little girl with Thanksgiving turkey craft

She is thankful for Jesus, good food, birthday cakes, her brother, snow and the Titanic

Boy with Thanksgiving turkey craft

Thankful for snow, sun, sister, parents, God’s power, and evergreens

We learned/sang some Thanksgiving songs:

Then, we read these books:

            • Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving
            • Turkey Trouble
            • One Tough Turkey
            • Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit (still to get)

Finally, the children watched some videos:

  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving – 25 minutes. It’s such a classic piece of Americana. They liked the silly parts and how Snoopy set the table. Later that day, when daddy came home, they set a Thanksgiving table with their toy kitchen set, complete with a tablecloth (daddy’s coat) and referenced how Snoopy tied the corners of the tablecloth. One of the characters uses bad language once and I had to explain to the kids we don’t talk that way. Also, that they will meet people who talk that way and we should love them as Jesus does and pray for them and respect them.
  • Plimoth Plantation and Scholastic Virtual Field Trip – 5 minutes of skipping around the video, to see different characters present their lives. It’s a longer documentary, for upper elementary grades, too boring for my kids. The Google Earth presentation of the Mayflower itinerary fascinated them and reminded them of the Titanic’s attempt at crossing the Atlantic. I would have never put the two together. It seems our Titanic visit and its wall map showing the intended itinerary over the ocean is still fresh in their minds.
  • Mayflower movie trailer – 1 minute.
Little girl sweeps the floor

She made most of the mess and was willing to clean it up.

Teaching a Thanksgiving unit study inspires me because I know from experience what it is like to move countries. While growing up in Communist Romania, I used to listen to The Voice of America – a forbidden activity. Their broadcast about Thanksgiving has stayed with me ever since. Who would have thought I would end up in the USA, homeschooling my American children and teaching them about Thanksgiving?


Thanksgiving and Homeschooling

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This time of the year, I reminisce about how, just before Thanksgiving, when my son was one, my heart told me I would homeschool. I did not understand it right then. Hindsight is 20/20. But I should have seen it coming, this desire to homeschool. I should have known it was going to grow and take over my life like few things have conquered me.

You see, five years ago, I scoured the Internet for “Thanksgiving crafts.” I made a list of supplies and bought them dutifully. My son watched me as I printed, measured, cut and pasted construction paper. Of course he could not help. He was one. I made this:

Pilgrim Boy Thanksgiving Craft

Pilgrim boy Thanksgiving craft I made in 2008

A pilgrim boy. I also printed out two Indian children – a boy and a girl – for him to color. Hopefully, they are in the box of early craft projects I decided to keep. My son grabbed the crayon and scribbled all over the coloring page like only a one-year-old can. I felt so proud.

That should have been my first clue that I wanted to homeschool. No preacher or friend pressured me into it. Alas, I don’t read my own heart-directed actions well. At the time, staying home with my child for a few years seemed like the most I could do before running back into the work force. I grew up thinking that exchanging my skills for money was the only dignified way to live my life. Motherhood fulfilled me, but I was programmed to want a career, too.

I discovered that the more time I spent with my son, the less I wanted to leave him. Then, I felt the desire for a second child. We welcomed our daughter and, by then, the little bud, my desire to teach my own, had grown into a plant I could not ignore. And yet, I did. I pushed it to the side, sleep-deprived and up to my knees in diapers and bibs.

The pilgrim boy graced our Thanksgiving table every year. I protected it from chubby hands by placing it on top of a book shelf the rest of the time. It collected dust. I felt it held a secret message, a prediction for the future, but I was not ready for it.

Two years ago, the plant – my desire to homeschool – had become a small tree. God asked me to stop pretending like it did not exist. I researched homeschooling thoroughly. The pilgrim boy craft, with its enigmatic smile, revealed its secret.

I will always treasure this Thanksgiving craft because it was the first inkling my heart gave me that my children have turned a PDA-wielding professional into a craft-seeking, cut-and-paste project preschool teacher. At home. The other grades will come in due time. Wait. Kindergarten already has. We are still at home. I would not have it any other way. This post has been linked to Blog and Tell with @hsbapost Show us your Orange