Thanksgiving Learning

 

We took the week off from official MFW K school, but we still spent a little time learning about Thanksgiving.  It disappoints me that Thanksgiving is often an overlooked holiday, and I want to make sure that my children have a basic understanding of its origins.  I also want them to recognize how many blessings we have, both material & spiritual.

The boys started by snuggling together in bed with Mommy one morning and watching the Mayflower Voyage (Charlie Brown) on YouTube.  It’s split into two parts; here’s part one, and you can link to part two HERE:

Later in the day, we read The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving and talked about what we’d seen on the video and read in the book.

After reading the book, Alex was quiet for a bit.  Then he spoke some very interesting words…”Mommy, when WE aren’t allowed to pray anymore, will WE get on a boat and sail to a new land?” 

After lunch, we put Jensyn down for her nap.  The boys and I worked on the Thanksgiving Preschool Pack together at the table.

Each boy could choose whichever pages he wanted to do.  I didn’t have any preset plans – it was just whatever looked most appealing to them!  It was very interesting to me to see which activities they chose.

We’ll let Max (3 yrs,  3 months) go first today, since Alex is first in our MFW K posts:

Max started with shadow matching, which is really getting too easy for him.  It won’t be long before Jensyn takes over this activity!

Then he moved on to puzzle cards. 
He struggled with the cornucopia, but the rest were easy.

Count & Color
Max *LOVES* to count.  He counts things all day long.  He was counting the floor tiles at the grocery store recently!  He wanted to “color” with a dot marker on this day.  I told him the number to count, and he did the rest.

 

Do-A-Dot turkey & corncucopia

Circle the one that’s the same size – he had to concentrate, but he could do it!

 

Prewriting…if he’s in the mood, he follows the lines perfectly.  He did a GREAT job today!
He did one with a green pen, and he did the other with a dot marker.

Sorting people and food, gluing into the correct boxes.  I drew a smiley face in the people box & an apple in the food box.  I cut out the pieces for Max, explained how to sort them, and he did the rest perfectly.

 

circle what’s different – another success

Moving on to Alex (4 yrs, 10 months)

The first activity Alex wanted to try was the count & match cards. 

 

After that, he grabbed the (way-too-easy) 1 – 10 dot-to-dot page.

 

On to Finish The Pattern.  He got the hang of patterns about a month ago,
and he LOVES to complete patterns now!

   

Counting with Ordinal Numbers

If I say, “Circle the FOURTH pumpkin” or “Circle the NINTH Native American”, he knows just what to do. C an’t trick him with those crazy ordinal numbers ;)

 

Alphabet Maze – he is LOVING these!

cutting practice – he perfectly cut every line, which surprised me, as he usually gets aggrevated with cutting during our typical school time.

So…that was school this week.  I’d planned to do a turkey craft, writing one thing we’re thankful for on each turkey feather, but it never got beyond planning it.  I just wasn’t on the ball this week!

We had a terrific Thanksgiving, and we enjoyed two extra evenings with extended family as well.  I hope each of you (Americans, anyway…) had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Christmas Nativity Fundraiser Pack – 90 Cents TODAY ONLY!

Sorry to post & post on this, but this will be the last one for a few weeks – I promise!

TODAY is the last day to get the Christmas Nativity Pack for 90 cents!   I will still receive a complete payment from you, but Teachers Notebook is giving you a 10% discount for Cyber Monday. 

The item is still priced at $1, but will show as 90 cents in your cart when you make the purchase.  If you’re interested, click below to go directly to this pack at Teachers Notebook.

 
As of today at noon, 40 packs total have been sold on Teachers Notebook & Teachers Pay Teachers.  So that means that, as of today, $40 is going to Show Hope!  It may be a lofty goal, but I’d love to reach $100 by Christmas. 

You might remember from my last post that each purchase means that I am donating 33 cents out of my own pocket.  This is not for publicity or any other personal benefit…it’s to make a difference in the lives of orphans!

Let’s see what we can do – if you’d like, feel free to spread the word on your blog or Facebook page!

Christmas Countdown Chain {Freebie}

{This is a repost from 2011…but we’ll be doing the countdown again this year!}

It’s hard to explain to little ones that there are still 24 days until Christmas.  Since we put up our tree, Alex is asking me every day, “Mom, is it Christmas yet?”  When you’re little, you need VISUAL reminders.

 

This got me thinking about the Christmas Countdown chain that I used to make with my second graders every year.  (I mentioned that in my last blog post.)  You begin on December 1st with a chain of 24 links, then you remove a link each day.  As the chain grows shorter, your kids have a visual idea that the wait for Christmas is growing shorter!

 

For my boys, I designed a new star topper in Photoshop.  After printing and laminating one copy for each boy, we made paper chains together.  I stapled the chains, but Max handed me a green chain, then a red chain to practice colors.  Alex helped me count to 24 links.  Both boys hung their own chain on their bedroom door.

 

You can keep it just that simple, OR you can use it as I did with my second graders: write a simple prayer request on each link.  As you remove it before bed at night, include that request in your bedtime prayers with your children.  My second graders wrote down their classmates name.  For your family, you could pray for friends, relatives, neighbors, or anyone/anything else that comes to mind.

 

As long as I was designing a printable, I figured it might as well be shared. 

 

Click on the picture to download from Teachers Notebook…

Little Monkey Printables SALE

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I’ve been offering 20% off for Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend.   Today it’s my birthday…my present to you is that I’m increasing that to 25% today only. 

Teachers Notebook is offering an additional 10% off of your purchase this weekend! 
(It should show up when you go to check out.)

So you can get close to 35% off of your purchase today!

When I head to bed tonight, I’ll reset the sale to 20%…so today’s your chance to get the lower price ever on Little Monkey Printables :)

*This discount does NOT apply to the Christmas Nativity Pack.

**You *CAN* still do the Buy 3, Get 1 Free via e-mail deal.  If you buy 3 packs, I will send you a message (via Paypal e-mail *and* Teachers Notebook private message) asking you to select a free pack.  All packs except for the Nativity pack may be selected as a freebie.

The Ants Go Marching…

In a few weeks, we’ll be learning about insects with our kindergarten curriculum.  We ordered this fun, blue gel Ant Works habitat.  It’s not the one recommended by My Father’s World Kindergarten, but I thought it would be a little bit more fun to watch the ants tunneling through this blue gel.  I was also happy that we would not have to open the habitat often because the blue gel is food for the ants.

I preordered our little vial of ants for our ant farm, as it says to allow 3 weeks for the ants to arrive.  Well, our ants came QUICKLY!  So quickly, in fact, that when I opened the padded envelope from the science lab, I thought it was the dinosaur kit that we had ordered.  I got quite the surprise when a tube full of big harvest ants fell into my hand!

The instructions included with the vial had a large print label stating “WARNING: ANTS BITE”.  I couldn’t bring myself to open the vial of ants, so we waited until Daddy came home.

Daddy started by poking four holes into the gel with the provided stick.  This is to show the ants how to get down into the gel.

 

While he did that, we put the vial of ants in the fridge for a few minutes to “chill out”.  (Thanks to Leslie, from MFW K Facebook group, for this suggestions!)  This helps to keep the ants calm while you pour them into their new home.  It worked like a charm, and there was no trouble while transferring our new little friends.

Once they were in their new home, Daddy made sure the lid was pushed down very securely.  Then Mommy placed a piece of clear packing tape over the top to ensure that little hands didn’t pry it open.  (Call me paranoid, but I really don’t want 30+ biting harvester ants on the loose in my house!)

The kids had so much fun checking out the ants. 

 

We learned that all of the ants in our habitat are female.
Males are used only for reproduction, and they die soon afterward.

The kit includes a magnifying glass and a small magnifier.  With the small magnifier, you can even see the little hairs on the ant’s legs!  It’s pretty amazing!

  

We started it at about 6 PM, as it says to allow 24 hours for the ants to start tunneling.   Within an hour, though, they were already digging into their new home!

 

By 7 AM the next day, they had some pretty good tunnels going!
They also had some pretty neat hills of gel forming in the open space
at the top of the habitat.

The fun thing about a transparent gel is that you can see
the ants and their tunnels from every angle!

Everyone, kids and grown-ups alike, has been fascinated to see what the ants will do next.
Watching as they decided which tunnels to extend is interesting!
It’s always fun to wake up in the morning and find a new project in the works.

Their newest project, at 5 days in, is to dig tunnels through their newly formed hills.
They are also building hills up to the very top of the enclosure,
and they are making gel blobs on the inside of the lid!

A few of the ants are trying to eat through the white foam seal around the lid.
(Can you see the one in the top left corner?)
Thankfully, they haven’t had much luck.

 

We’ve had one ant die so far.  The instruction manual states that the ants will bring their dead to the surface, and we are supposed to remove any dead ants.

Well, it’s true that they brought the dead ant to the surface.  We weren’t able to remove it, though, because they buried her in a hill of gel!

The manual says that you can open the habitat once a week to allow a little fresh air into the habitat.  Ants don’t have lungs, but they do take in air through small pores in their body.  I haven’t been brave enough to do that just yet, but we will probably stick them in the fridge for a few minutes before doing so.

You can get the AntWorks Habitat for $15 on Amazon, and the ants were ordered from ScienceKit.com using a coupon code (NEWBY) that I found online, so the total (after tax) was $4.67. They had a chemical warming wrap included in the package to protect the ants from cold weather.

We are really enjoying this adventure, and we’d highly recommend it!  Once your ants are safely inside the THICK acrylic habitat, I doubt they can escape.  So even if you’re a little afraid of these creepy crawly guys, there’s nothing to worry about.  It is AMAZING to watch them at work!

If you’re still looking for a fun Christmas present for your kids (nephew, nieces, grandkids…) I would highly recommend this as a fun option!

(Yes, I did include affiliate links…feel free to search for “AntWorks” on Amazon if you’d prefer.)