This is such a wonderful time of year in the life of a curious child. There are lots of goodies and treats to make and also a lot of learning experiences that can unfold right before your eyes. Children love this time of year, and I love making it a little more fun and a lot more memorable.
Part of the downtime on the blog has been to allow for my little preschool venture to take off and I am loving it. Just a handful of kids all under the age 4 and aside from the high energy level, its a whole lot of fun. So, as I try to merge my passion for teaching, exploring and living with these little ones a few days a week, I really want to get back to the blog. I miss my posts, and the creative outlet that is shared among fellow bloggers, moms, teachers, grandmothers, etc. We have so much we can learn from each other, and this blog is just a way I get some ideas out there of what we do around here to expose our kids to as much LIFE and FUN along their journey of childhood.
Thanksgiving is upon us, and I will be hitting the high seas soon, so wanted to start with a lengthy post to give you lots to check out, and ideas to plan while your kids are either out of school for the holidays, or to add to your daily idea list.
This is a countdown to Thanksgiving we did last week, the kids colored the turkey, and we glued on a poem
The year has turned its circle,
The seasons come and go.
The harvest is all gathered in
And chilly north winds blow.
Orchards have shared their treasures,
The fields, their yellow grain.
So open wide the doorway-
Thanksgiving comes again!
Each day the pumpkin moves closer to the turkey until it reaches the last day before Thanksgiving. This is great for number recognition, counting, calendar skills, etc.
Below we made a Thanksgiving Tic Tac Toe, We are working on the letter T, so after tracing the letter T with our fingers, and going on a nature walk to name all the things we saw that started with the T sound, the kids colored these little turkeys and pumpkins and we used my circle cutter and glued them to cardstock, and then I had printed out these tic-tac-toe sheets, the kids picked up right away how to play, and we had fun with the whole process.
Also, you can see our nature bags, the kids and I grab these each day we go out for our nature walk, we talk about what looks different from the previous day, and gather items that have fallen so we can inspect them back at home. This is great for classification, sorting, size, color, and seasonal sctivities. We also read a few books (I will be updating the AMAZON links to your right). And we have talked about the pilgrims and indians, so today they also made their little indian headbands.
We cook everyday, I get the kids all lined up at the island in the kitchen and we take turns preparing whatever happens to be the snack of the day, this day it was carrot, bananna, and chocolate chip muffins.... they liked that we put carrots into them, you would be surprised what you can sneak in (or not even sneak in this case) and have them love it, they really liked the process and they look forward to snack time everyday. I found the following snacks around the web, and we will be making them this next week.
Arent these cute - you can find them at FAMILY FUN.
These with directions can be found HERE.
Now then, if you havent checked out the following - you should instead of picking one or two ideas from these sites - for you to see, just click the link and you wont be disappointed because their list and blog roll is FABULOUS and has all sorts of great ideas to help your creativity get going during that last week before Thanksgiving.
Well, this should get you started! Hope to be back to regular postings for the upcoming Christmas season as well as have a few more ideas for you before I head off on my 4 day adventure!
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