Two Weeks of Thanksgiving Fun

Cricket and I did a light school schedule for the last two weeks. We wanted to relax and enjoy Thanksgiving and it worked out that we had a light plan since we all got sick at varying and overlapping times. She did get to spend a great "no school" fun day with her dad while I was with my dad at the hospital.

Here are some of the Thanksgiving activities we did though.

Cricket made a turkey and of course it had to be purple, just like any good turkey would be. 

She also made the most colorful pilgrim hat ever. Cricket also decided that this should be a puzzle and she cut it out and out it back together.

She actually did a really good job in this maze, in purple. Afterwards she colored everything blue though so it's hard to tell. 

I was amazed by how well Cricket followed instructions when we did this one. She also stayed in the lines well until she got to the feet.

We worked on numbers with this adorable printable. Cricket really liked this one. 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (belated)! Cricket loved making this cards for our family and they turned out really cute.

Finally, I pulled out these tangrams as a boredom buster. Cricket did excellent with them, and played forever!

Lions, Libraries, and Leaves

*Ll*

Cricket is losing interest in our daily routine. Does anyone else have this issue? I still want to cover day of the week, weather, etc, but I'm wondering if I should change things up.


Our new addition that we will be doing through Thanksgiving is our Thankful Tree. Each day Cricket tells me at least one thing she is thankful for and we add the leaf to the tree.

Letter of the Week

We used all of our normal resources this week and Cricket did well with everything.


Cricket had fun cutting out her uppercase L this week from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

We used Cricket's real name to find a lower case l. She struggled with this, surprisingly, but as we talked through it she got it.

As a part of our letter L work, we also reviewed Left vs Right. We used the book Righty and Lefty A Tale of Two Feet. A hand puzzle and worksheet were even more successful tools.

For some reason she wouldn't engage with the signing this week even though she easily grasped it.

Math

Cricket worked on the number 11 this week. She kept saying one one, but with verbal prompt she would correct herself. 

Through game play and activities she is consistently counting to 15 now, after that she knows it's a teen but interchanges them. 

She did really well with the Thanksgiving math page I got from this tot pack.

I attempted to do the leaf pattern set, but Cricket just refused to accept that we needed to use said pattern and not cut it up like the other leaves. I set it aside to come back to, and we just never made it back.

 

Art

After finger painting for our stART project we also painted with brushes and did a hand print project.

We also did a simplified version of the tree I saw at 1+1+1=1.

 

Tot School

Cricket did several Thanksgiving coloring pages for fun.

Playdoh was her favorite activity though. Here she was making a TALL birthday cake.

She also invented many different ways to play with her Disney Princess Hopscotch Blocks.

Puzzles are always a favorite, but this week she did one puzzle over and over again. It was a large 48 piece floor puzzle filled with a variety of backyard bugs. She needed assistance with this, but still did it well.

Check out what others are doing at these amazing sites:

2 stART Projects

We had two small stART projects this week.

The first one was at the library and went along with the book Turkey Trouble. This was one of the read aloud books, that we then brought home with us. After reading the book the librarian had all the kids make pizzas. She had small plates, pre-cut red circles for sauce, and a variety of toppings. The "toppings" were an assortment of cut-outs and dyed pasta. Most of the pizzas were covered in toppings, but my little one only wanted one or two of each thing and she was very specific about their placement.

At home we did a small bit of what I wanted to do for the book The Lion and the Little Red Bird. This book was full of great project opportunities. The lion in the book mixed paints from flowers, berries, etc. and then painted with his tail. I really wanted to experiment with making paint, but we settled for bottle paint. I also had an idea for a minute to make a lion tail and then let Cricket paint with it, but we ended up using our fingers. We did talk about coloring with a body part like the lion did though! She cracked me up gingerly finger painting, and using a different finger for each color.

See how stories are inspiring art for others at:

Books we Loved

 

I think this was our best book week yet, there were no flops and Cricket really enjoyed everything. 

Letter L books:

L is for Library by Sonya Terry
This is a great A-Z story going through everything in the library. This would be fabulous if you were doing a library unit or just wanted to teach your child more about the library.

Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
This would be another good book for a library unit. It reviews the library rules of no yelling and no running, but it also gives a really great exception to the rules! By the end of the story you are left wishing for your very own library lion.

Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis
Evidently there is a series of Ladybug books that I will be looking for. Cricket totally identified with the story's heroine, Ladybug, and I could easily picture her best friend as Bumblebee. I liked the varied font in the book and the illustrations were really cute.

The Lion and the Little Red Bird by Elisa Kleven
I think this was Cricket's favorite book of the week. It was a sweet little book about a bird that observed a lion to try and figure out what it was up to. They developed a relationship and the whole story was great!


Thanksgiving:
Over the River and Through the Wood by Lydia Maria Child
Cricket thought this book was funny, especially the illustrations. I think it pretty much followed the song, if I remember correctly, so not much in the story department as far as I was concerned.

A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting
Mr Moose sets off on a journey to get a turkey for Thanksgiving at his wife's request. This sweet tale comes to an unexpected end. Cricket really loved all the animal characters.

Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano
The farm turkey decided Thanksgiving was getting to close and that meant trouble for him. He went through a series of disguises until he got to one that worked. Cricket loved this book and really thought it was funny. We will probably be keeping this one for another week.

Christmas Cards

I have been using Shutterfly for years and it is my favorite and most trusted photo site. One thing you may not know about me is I worked my way through college at a One-Hour Photo Shop, you know when we still used film in our camera's. Anyway, I had the opportunity to develop all of my own photographs for years and this made me, well, a snob about photo quality. I have NEVER been disappointed by Shutterfly direct.

I have digressed. I want to tell you about Shutterfly's Christmas Cards. I think they are reasonable price and I have always received them quickly and accurately in the past. My favorite one so far was the year my daughter was born, I sent one with 6 pictures on it (one for each month since she had been born). All the family loved seeing how she had grown so far, and I got a ton of compliments.

This year I love the new 5x5 cards and I can't wait to place an order! Please go have a look for yourself and see what's available here.

For the past few years I have also been ordering myself a Christmas present that I truly love and now I get them for grandma too. Their wall calendars are really well made and have been a huge hit!

They have plenty of other great options too, everything from gift tags to photo canvas. I sincerely can not imagine you being disappointed!


I will receive 50 free photo cards for this review and you can too, just go here.

Raising Rock Stars - K

I was thrilled to get back to 1+1+1=1 Raising Rock Stars Curriculum this week. The letter K verse also seemed to be an appropriate lesson for us.


Memory Verse:
Keep your tongue from evil.

Cricket and I talked at length about how our tongue (mouths) can be used for evil and how hurtful that can be to others. The prior two weeks Cricket had been picked on in gymnastics, and what was said had hurt her. She was able to apply this and understand how if she said bad things it would hurt someone else.  Side note: Thankfully this seems to have stopped and Cricket easily forgave and forgot, mommy on the other hand is still struggling with that. I mean really struggling, alas back to Cricket.


Once again she really enjoyed the powerpoint for the letter K.


She thought making the face was cute and fun.

Be sure to see what other families are doing with their Rock Stars at 1+1+1=1

Truly Tink Talk

I didn't do such a good job keeping track of Cricket's quotes this week. This was cute though:

We were driving along and Cricket asked suddenly from the back seat "are we taking the purple path mommy?" I started to say no, and was quite honestly wondering what made her think that when I saw the GPS out of the corner of my eye. The highlighted path on it was in fact purple.

Delayed Monday With Mimi

Cricket and Mimi had a great day together yesterday. They had fun here and did a great 48 piece puzzle that Mimi brought her, it featured backyard bugs including a ladybug. Then they began discussing L words, and Cricket decided that her favorite is lollipop (shocking).

Then they went to Memaw's and played with the new puppy. Cricket had such a great time, even if it stirred up emotions and made her miss our dog (that is now in heaven)

K books, Thanksgiving, and Catch up

 

Letter K books:

Joey by Jack Kent

Cricket thought the party in the pouch was funny and seemed to enjoy the story overall. 

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
This was a good story, but not a great letter focus book. It was written in Eric Carle style and went from animal to animal. Cricket loved it though!

Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
I has seen a great stART project/experiment to go along with this book here that we just didn't get to. Cricket responded well to the book, and loved that it was about a kitten. It was also good reinforcement because she is struggling with the concept that cat starts with c while kitten starts with k.

Sesame Street Volume 1: Elmo and Zoe Fly a Kite
Cricket really liked this book, and we read it several times. We also did a mini project based on this and made our own kites.

King Midas and the Golden Touch by Charlotte Craft
Cricket and I both enjoyed this version of the story and the illustrations were truly beautiful.

Thanksgiving:
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving by Charles Schulz
Cricket absolutely loved this book, I think in part because we had just watched the Great Pumpkin and she had liked it. The story was good though, and it illustrated graciousness and thankfulness in a nice way. 

The Best Thanksgiving Ever! by Teddy Slater
Cricket thought this was silly. The story was decent and I liked the rhyming pattern. 



Last Week:
I didn't manage to write this post last week but we read: Play Ball Joey Kangaroo!; The Jellybeans and the big Book Bonanza; and Queen of Halloween. Cricket really liked Queen of Halloween, in fact I think it was her favorite Halloween book we read all month.

Letter K Week

*Kk*

Cricket had a great school week and a good week overall. Once again she loved the 1+1+1=1 Raising Rock Stars Curriculum, but more on that later. Her favorite things this week was telling me stories, everyday she told me a wild tale she cooked up in her little mind before we started school.

We were also able to go on an unexpected field trip that Cricket just loved. They even had a giant Kaleidoscope in the kids museum.

We ended the week with a movie night just for fun. Cricket and I watched The Tale of Desperaux together.

Letter of the Week

Cricket had a great time with all of our letter K resources: Hooked on Phonics; Confessions of a Homeschooler; and Leap Frog.

For our capitol letter K, I thought she would enjoy filling it in with kisses. I was seriously mistaken. I did one to show her what I meant and she lost it, not mean or angry, but hurt that I would do such a thing. So once she calmed down I made her another letter K, and she happily colored it. 

She did better with all of our other K work, including this connect the dot.

We continued using the Sesame Street along with our coloring sheets for Sign Language, and this seems to be helping. She did a good job signing K.

Math

Cricket worked on the number 10 this week. She recognized, identified, and wrote it correctly. 

I gave her a worksheet for ordering the numbers 6-10. Cricket enjoyed cutting out the numbers, but when it came to ordering she just wasn't having it. So, I changed subjects and came back to it with "magical" counting bears (I say magical, because they magically changed her attitude). With counting bears in hand she willingly and easily completed the sheet. We also used counting bears to count to 10 multiple times and sorted them according to color. 

I also had a set of which number worksheets, counting 1-10, and she did awesome on those.

She continued to do well with saying her 40 numbers in our 100 days countdown this week.

Science

We went on a mini nature walk in the front yard using this check list. For the first time in weeks there were no birds or squirrels hunting the yard, and we couldn't find any live flowers. Cricket was disappointed we couldn't complete the worksheet, but she enjoyed it.

She also really enjoyed a small unit study we did on Koalas, which we now know are not bears. 

Art

Cricket loved painting her princess pictures that Mimi got her for Halloween. 

We also did a mini stART project this week. After reading the book Elmo and Zoe Fly a Kite, Cricket and I made a kite together. To add to it further we put our number 10 on it, and we cut out 10 shapes in different colors to decorate it.  She wished it was able to fly, but she thought it was cute.

 

Plus, she made a cute turkey hat at the library this week after story time. 

 Physical Education

In addition to Cricket's two gymnastics classes I have been trying to help her improve at home. This week we worked a lot on sit-ups, curls, and windmills. I will say I partially regret this, because she hates doing these things for me. We also went to the park for a fun play day. 

Tot School

Coloring was her primary activity choice again this week.

She also loved doing and completed many puzzles.

Our game this week was Toy Story Yahtzee, and Cricket is doing much better at counting out our scores now (up to 25).

Cricket especially loved using this amazing kaleidoscope that my Aunt K sent her. It was her favorite item this week. This thing was truly amazing by the way. It's a wind up music box and as it plays that colorfully designed circle spins creating a changing pattern as you look through the spy glass.

Check out what others are doing at these amazing sites:

Ballet at the Museum

I had a great opportunity this week to take Cricket to see a free ballet, put on by a local magnet school, at our local museum. Cricket has been talking about ballerinas a lot recently, so I jumped at the chance to take her to see "real" ballerinas.

Opening Sequence

Their teacher/choreographer created a piece based on a current display at the museum. Evidently they do this every year, and this year he chose Fantasies and Fairy Tales by Maxfield Parrish.  So, it ended up being an incredible collection of Fairy Tales. Cricket was familiar with most of them, but surprisingly her favorite was one she hadn't heard. She loved The Pied Piper, or the mice as she referred to it.

Pied Piper

After wards the ballerinas lined up at the exit and actually spoke to the kids as they were leaving. Cricket spoke with the ballerina who played Little Red Riding Hood for a couple minutes, or maybe I should say the girl very sweetly spoke to Cricket. I'm not sure if Cricket actually spoke back or not (the environment was very loud) regardless she made my little girl's day!

Finale

Then, we went to the Children's Interactive Museum section. I had never actually taken Cricket before so I wanted to check it out while we were there to see if it was worth making a trip back for. It was a little crowded for my over protective craziness, and I think it would go much better if Cricket had a playmate. There was a lot to do though and Cricket really seemed to enjoy it, so we will try to go back when we have more time.