The Thanksgiving activities, church events and family coming to visit, delayed me a little bit from posting on my blog. Well, it was all worth it! I had a nice time with my family, and projects are moving forward. I’m very thankful to God for everything that has occurred in the past three weeks. Now to share our Thanksgiving Unit Study.
We began doing a little activity based on the ebook Cultivating Thankful Hearts by Lindsay Stomberg. It was nice to begin our Thanksgiving studies from a biblical perspective. The main focus was that we always have a half-filled to full-cup with Jesus when we count more our blessings, as opposed to “half-empty” when we don’t.
We did the following activity (included in the ebook to print) for five days:
Our tradition is making a Thanksgiving Tree every year. This time, I taped together three poster board sheets and drew a trunk and its branches on them. The kids painted it and then hand printed the leaves.
Painting the trunk
On Thanksgiving day, we had our traditional lunch with our family and everyone present wrote something they were thankful for on a leaf made out of construction paper, and then taped it to the tree (above). Very memorable.
As a daily devotional, I got this freebie of 20 bible verses on giving thanks from Joyful Thrifty Home. I just printed it on card stock and laminated the pages, then cut the cards out. I used a single hole puncher and a 1 inch loose leaf ring to put the cards together. This actually makes a nice little present for guests at a Thanksgiving lunch/dinner (I might do this next year).
We read “Thanksgiving Day” by Leanne Annett which I was able to get for free from Amazon. It had realistic pictures and easy enough for young kids to learn the history of Thanksgiving and traditions from around the world. Estefania was very interested to learn why we celebrate Thanksgiving and why and how it became a holiday in our nation. We all learned with this simple ebook.
Several of the activities the kids did included practice in language arts, math, cutting, puzzles, and fine motor skills from the Thanksgiving Pack made by Cassie at 3Dinosaurs.com. I love, love, love, the quantity and variety of this packet. We also did several of the add ons and extras, which I could overload this page with. I’m very thankful that Cassie offers it for free.
They also had fun with a Thanksgiving Q-Tip Letter Painting from 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. I really like the amount of resources this lady has on her site.
Alejandro got to practice with a Thanksgiving Tot Kit that Estefania did last year from LAWTEEDAH.com, and some of the resources like the graphing activity, Estefania got to do again as well.
As far as crafting goes, besides our Thanksgiving Tree, we made some toilet paper tube pilgrims and native americans. I actually got the template from here. I had planned other crafts, but it was best to keep it this simple, since my parents and my brother where in town, and we had fun going out and about with them.
We usually end our Thanksgiving celebration by putting up our Christmas tree, while listening to seasonal music or watching Christmas programing on TV, eating some Danish cookies, and chocolate covered cordial cherries (the last one its actually my guilty pleasure)…yum..yum..
The last activity we did involving Thanksgiving was watching Charlie Brown’s “The Mayflower Voyagers”. It’s really good, and it helps young kids to understand how it was for the pilgrims to journey the sea until they reached and endured the winter at Plymouth Plantation. We watched it through Netflix.
One of the perks of home educating, is that we can be off from our formal learning, and still be able to take advantage of the holiday to make it a memorable, fun, entertaining and learning time for everybody.
In all, we had a nice two weeks of learning about Thanksgiving and celebrating it, and also remembering, that God is always at the center of every celebration.
“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”( Colossians 3:17 NIV)
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