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…
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…
We took two days off from homeschool to celebrate Thanksgiving, but does learning ever stop?
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?
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.
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!
Of course, we spent a few minutes gazing at the Grand Prize Winner – two adorable Panda bears chewing into their bamboo sticks.
Before we left, we looked for the outdoor fire place and we found it. We also found this adorable 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.
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.
Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving celebration!
For more posts in the French Friday series, please click here.
À bientôt!
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:
Brother did not have the patience to sit through a photo shoot with the paper roll turkeys, but he made one of these
Turkey Craft I made just because I felt inspired. But then, I realized it inspired the kids to see their mom cut and paint.
This particular Thanksgiving craft personalized the holiday when we wrote what they were thankful for on every feather of the turkey
We learned/sang some Thanksgiving songs:
Then, we read these books:
Finally, the children watched some videos:
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?
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:
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