Day four…we’re halfway done with our Thanksgiving lessons!
The consistency of reading the same story to them every day and pushing the same themes of thankfulness and trust are starting to pay off. Rudy can comfortably recite to me a condensed four-year-old version of the story of the first Thanksgiving! And they are so proud of the book that we have been making!
We started out reading the great children’s version of the first Thanksgiving, followed by a few simple questions. I really emphasized the part of the story where the Pilgrims met the Indians and received aid from them, since this was going to also be the focus of today’s page in their book and the focus of today’s game.
After story and question time, we moved on to the Thankfulness tree. With all of the leaves being added daily, the tree is really starting to take shape! The conversations we have during Thankfulness tree time are always so sweet…I love seeing them think about the wonderful things that God has given them.
Next we completed page four of their homemade book, “My Thanksgiving Book.” They assembled the face of an Indian and decorated his headband…cute!
While they were putting their page together, I told them all about the struggles of the Pilgrims, and how the Indians saved the day! The Indians taught them how to grow food in the strange, new land, and shared their seeds and food with them.
Once they were done with the book, they knew it was time for the game! They love game time!
Piggy-backing off of the Indians and the sharing of seeds and food, I came up with a counting and sorting activity.
Today’s game was actually two separate activities, both involving berries, acorns, beans, oats, and seeds.
For the first activity, they glued acorns onto a printout of a giant acorn, beans onto a printout of a giant pile of seeds (I didn’t have any actual seeds so we used beans), and berries onto a printout of giant berries. Each page had a number written on it, and they had to glue that many items onto the page. Counting!
The next activity was a really cute sorting craft. They had individual little bowls of oats, acorns, beans, and berries. They poured one bowl at a time into a mason jar until it was filled up. Sorting!
The layers were really pretty. Then I had Rudy trace a label with the word “Seeds” and stick it on the mason jar. They loved it!
So today was low key, but really sweet. I am really enjoying our Thanksgiving school with my boys.
