Week 12 & 13 - The First Thanksgiving

We are foregoing our journey around the world to instead journey back in time and learn some of the history behind one of our favorite holidays - Thanksgiving! Just when I feel like I know everything there is to know about this special holiday, there is so much more to learn about it! We used two full weeks to study about Thanksgiving, but you could easily pick and choose which activities and topics to use and condense it into one week or less.

We started off the two weeks by learning Psalm 100:

 Shout with joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful hearts. Know that the Lord is good. We are his people the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good. His unfailing love endures forever and his faithfulness continues to all generations.

We made this Thanksgiving tree with a roll of kraft paper wrapping paper and different colors of cardstock that I had in my scrapbook box of scraps. This could have looked much better with a professional pattern or proper dimensions, but honestly I just cut it out freehand and think it turned out just fine for its purpose.

We practiced Psalm 100 with this great song on YouTube: Psalm 100 Song. I've seen that the kids learn better by singing the words and they like to make up motions to go with it.

We also made a Psalm 100 Memory Book. B loves to read it and then use it to sing the song we learned.

Our vocabulary words were the standard Thanksgiving terms one would imagine:

• Native American - the Indians who lived in America when the Pilgrims arrived
• Pilgrim - someone who takes a religious journey
• Mayflower - the ship that the Pilgrims used to come to the New World
• Wampanoag - the Indian tribe that lived in Massachusetts
• Plymouth Rock - the place where the Pilgrims arrived
• Squanto - the Indian friend of the Pilgrims
• harvest - the time when crops are gathered
• feast - a large meal usually with a lot of people

We used a lot of repetition during these two weeks to learn about Thanksgiving and its history. I created a First Thanksgiving Read-Aloud booklet last year for B to read with me and this year she was able to read most of it on here own.

 I added a worksheet with questions for her to answer based on the story I wrote.

There are so many great books to read about Thanksgiving and we got an early start on reserving them at our library before they were all gone. We've also accumulated our own stash through the years. Here are some of the great ones we used:

Squanto and the First Thanksgiving
This book was a good one to learn more specifically about Squanto and the Native Americans during the time of the first Thanksgiving.

If You Were At the First Thanksgiving
So there are many things we learn about Thanksgiving that aren't exactly accurate. Or maybe assumptions that are far from the way things were back then. This book gives you an inside look on what it really might have been like at that first Thanksgiving. And just a hint: there was no pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce!

T is for Turkey: A True Thanksgiving Story
An alphabet full of Thanksgiving terminology for kids to learn! From Sarah Hale to today's traditions, this book is an overview for everything we've been learning and a good conversation piece for things we never knew about this great holiday.

The First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story

Count your way to the first Thanksgiving as the Wampanoag and Pilgrim children help prepare for the big feast. Each page shows different ways that they would have prepared for the occasion back then and has interesting artwork that keeps little ones searching for a turkey here and a rabbit there. 

Pete the Cat: The First Thanksgiving
My kids love Pete the Cat, so who could go wrong here? Not only did we have fun reading this book with the lift-the-flap pages, but it retells the story of Thanksgiving in a fun and easy to understand way for kids.

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims

A twist on the traditional Indian counting song, this paperback book counts through the pilgrims, Wampanoag and Thanksgiving preparations. Read it or sing the whole song to the traditional tune.

The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks

Sister and Brother Bear put on a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving for the family and Sister gets a new pet turkey named Squanto. At the end there are discussion questions and activities that you can do with your kids to continue learning and exploring Thanksgiving.

Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

A cute book about a group of kids who go to the farm on a field trip. Once they learn the fate of the farmer's turkeys, the kids' clothes somehow get more fluffy and the turkeys go missing.

You can read the book then watch it on YouTube!

10 Fat Turkeys

This fun picture book is about 10 fat, goofy turkeys who fall off the gate one by one until the gate finally crashes. There isn't much here as far as education is concerned (except the counting) buts its fun and cute.

And then you can watch the video:

Setting the Turkeys Free

In our studies for each country we've tried to find an artist to study and a project to mimic his or her work. There isn't an artist for these two weeks but this book helped fill that gap with handprint art. The child in this book uses his or her handprint to make turkeys. When a frisky fox shows up for some turkey dinner, the child uses art to protect the turkeys, set them free and entice them back.

We used this book as a springboard to make our own turkey art with handprints.....

and with footprints and fingerprints.....

Thank You, Sarah

Why have I never learned of Sarah Hale before? When I read about her in T is for Turkey: A True Thanksgiving Story (see, I told you it was educational), I realized I had no idea who she was and what she did to "save" Thanksgiving. I decided to research her and grabbed this book from the library to learn more. Boy am I glad that I did! Sarah was extremely instrumental in creating the Thanksgiving holiday that we have today! This book is full of great information and  is written in a manner that makes it easy to insert a lot of animation and expression to keep kids interesting as they are learning. It also introduces some new things to my kids: Presidents, war, women's rights, etc. At the end there is a "Feast of Facts" that includes some background information on Thanksgiving, Vintage America, The Civil War, and Sarah Hale.

From this book, I created a Sarah Hale Saves Thanksgiving one-sheeter for B to read herself and answer questions. We reviewed a few large and new words for her (i.e. national and President) and she easily completed this while I reviewed K's sight words for the week with him.

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie

Another cute, not really educational, book to read during the Thanksgiving season.

You can also watch this book on YouTube! 

The First Thanksgiving Scholastic Reader & The First Thanksgiving Step into Reading

These easy reader book were a little above B's reading level so we read them together. Both books were great for practicing reading and continuing to learn about the first Thanksgiving.

A Pioneer Thanksgiving: A Story of Harvest Celebrations in 1841

Follow the Robertson family as they prepare for Thanksgiving in 1841. Though it is a fictitious book about a made up family, the book is based on the life, conditions and happenings from that time in history.

Cranberry Thanksgiving

This traditional book is part of the FIAR (Five in a Row) books that I've seen on many homeschool blogs so we borrowed it from our library too. You can find so many activities to go along with this book from other bloggers and Pinterest boards. We didn't do a lot of these this year but will plan to do this when the kids are a little older as I didn't feel like they'd enjoy it now as much as they will in the future.

Here are some of the best sites I've seen with activities for Cranberry Thanksgiving in case you're interested:

• Delightful Learning
  The BEST!! I always love following this woman's blogs and getting ideas from her, but seriously, this is one of her best in my opinion. So many ideas in this book and she does a great job of showing how she teachers her kids cold hard school work through everyday fun activities. 
• School Time Snippets
• Mud Puddle Soup Blog
• West World Blog
  Another great one that I follow! I love the silhouettes they did!

Thanksgiving on Thursday - Magic Tree House

Jack and Annie learn how to do things the Pilgrim way as they travel back in time and prepare for the first Thanksgiving in this chapter book for middle school aged kids.

B is learning subtraction this week and reviewing simple addition so it was easy to make and find Thanksgiving themed math sheets for to to go along with our studies.

I love the idea of combining art and math with this FREE paint by addition turkey worksheet. 

We also used these Subtracting Turkeys and More Subtracting Turkeys worksheets. 

We did even more adding and subtracting turkey with this freebie from Ms. Jones' Junction:

B loves drawing, so I found some fun activities for drawing Indians and Pilgrims. There are videos on YouTube that she used and worksheets that we downloaded.

 

 

B used the videos to draw her Indians and Pilgrims.

Here is her finished work. Not bad for a Kindergartner, right? 

And speaking of videos, of course there is an abundance of Thanksgiving related videos on YouTube! We have included many of them in our BKS Prep Morning Warmup this week! Here are some that we included:

Fun Thanksgiving Songs

Fun Thanksgiving Stories and Books

Educational Thanksgiving Videos

There are even more videos, ideas and resources on my Pinterest page. 

Follow BKS Prep - Thanksgiving on Pinterest.

What do you use to teach your children/students about Thanksgiving?

Week 11 - United Kingdom

I went back and forth on how to include England in our studies. Originally, I had planned for us to study England with France last week. Then I decided they are just too different and each has way to much to offer to try to cram them into one week. As I began researching England for this week's lesson, I realized that it would make much more sense to go ahead and focus on the United Kingdom because it just felt a bit more complete.

Reading Comprehension 

We've been doing reading comprehension worksheets that I've been creating due to the fact that B doesn't always listen when I'm reading to her and she's struggling with recalling information. Since we are really working on her literacy, I find it helpful to create these easy to read summaries of a topic or person followed by five questions about what she just read. This activity is not only a reading and comprehension exercise, but it also requires handwriting practice and grammatical skills to form answers and copy them over. They've also been much more effective on helping her to learn about and recall the information we are studying.

I created an United Kingdom Reading and Questions worksheet for B with basic information about the countries which make up the United Kingdom, their primary language and the capital city.


I also created a one sheeter for Florence Nightingale. Florence was a nurse in England who traveled all over Europe studying and improving hospitals, nursing practices and healthcare studies. Her work inspired many of today's healthcare practices and standards. We used two books Florence Nightingale and Usborne Famous Lives - Florence Nightingale and talked together about how God called Florence to take care of other people and how she made such an impact on the lives of so many people because she listened to God.

The Queen and royal family were in the news this week as Princess Kate is expecting her second baby and the family is preparing for a trip to New York City, apparently Kate's first visit to NYC.  Isn't amazing the things that become "newsworthy" from someone like Kate?  Thanks to her big "news" I was able to show the kids what the queen and her royal family looks like. I pointed out Prince William and Princesses Kate to them as well as Buckingham Palace, the guards and other points of interest. It was a good opportunity to explain to them the way the  countries together are "united" in the "kingdom" under the rule of the royal family. I think B was interested and maybe even a little bit puzzled to see Princess Kate without the princess ball gown and crown that her Disney princesses wear.

In our free time this week, we watched Disney's Robin Hood and chose a few "England themed" episodes from some of our favorite cartoons. Justin Time has a Brave Sir Justin episode in season 1 that takes place in Ancient England during the times of the knights.  During season 2, the Mystery of the Missing Hat episode takes place in London. Pit Crew Hullabaloo and The Big Toot are also based in England.

I have some other ideas and resources pinned on my Great Britain Pinterest board that we didn't get to, one being some resources on the BFG by Roald Dahl. I loved that book when I was a child and had planned to read it with my littles but decided that some of the parts where giants steal the kids from their beds and chomp their bones might still be a little tough to grasp for them. We'll put that off for at least another year but ultimately plan to read the book with them at some point.

Week 10 - France

France is a country that we often assume that we know so much about because we've adopted so many things from their culture.  After all, the word "French" has become a commonly used word for us. We know all about French fries, toast, kisses, and braids, but it was fun to learn about some of the special things that France has given the world that we never knew.

We read Look What Came From France and learned that a stethoscope was first invented and used in France. Ambulances, motion pictures, Braille writing and photography are also special gifts they gave the rest of the world.


Morning Warm Ups
We started something new this week with morning warm ups and activity/coloring pages. I'm finding that B likes to do these throughout the day so I created a box to put in all of the worksheets for the week. In the morning on whenever she feels like coloring or doing a worksheet, she can go to the box and pick it out herself. The only exceptions are handwriting worksheets and specific math or reading comprehension assignments.

Here are some of the worksheets included:

• Cursive letter C worksheet
• France flag and map
• Eiffel Tower coloring sheet

Bible Story
Our Bible verse was from 2 Timothy 1:7 - For God did not give us a spirit of fear. David & Goliath was our story to discuss from the Bible. We talked about the courage that God gave David to fight Goliath and how God wants us to be courageous in our lives too as we look for the calling God has for each of us.

Vocabulary

• illusion - a false impression of something
• mission - a purpose or goal
• bonjour - "hello" in French
• collage - artwork made by several things pieced together
• bum - someone who depends on others for their needs
• tramp - homeless wanderer or beggar
• organ - part of the body that has a specific job
• skeleton - the bones of our body

Proper Nous:

• France
• Paris 
• Eiffel Tower (whoops! I misspelled it on our chart!)

Picture Books
There were a couple of great picture books that we read this week and really enjoyed. Everybody Bonjours! was one of them. There isn't a whole lot of reading in it so I let B helped me as much as possible. A little girl goes throughout France while on vacation with family and hears "Bonjour" at all of the major site-seeing spots before returning home from her trip to a "hello" from her grandma.

We also read City Cat, a story about a cat who tags along on a family vacation to some of Europe's hot spots. We are keeping the book for another week to read again as we study the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe.

Madeline
We read Madeline everyday (we were inspired by the FIAR bloggers) and the kids loved it each time. Its the cutest little story and it seemed like the kids noticed a new part of it each time we read it. In the story there are topics that can be pulled out for discussion. We discussed telling time when it was referenced in the story (half past nine, Visitors 2 to 4, etc.) and learned about our body's organs after Madeline has her appendix removed.

We also borrowed Madeline's Tea Party and I helped B read it. She was able to do most of the reading and we read it a couple of times throughout the week and talked about manners and caring for others even when they aren't nice to us.

We borrowed The Madeline Movie: Lost in Paris from the library and watched it together later in the week. Several of the reviewers for this dvd were very negative about how dark and scary some of the movie's scenes were but we had no issues with it. Madeline goes to live with who she thinks is her uncle and attend a "fashion school" but when she gets there she learns that he is a fraud and is taking her to work in a secret factory making lace. The lady running the operation yells at the girls and cuts off their hair when they won't behave. I watched it with the kids and explained what was going on when necessary but the kids understood that the man and women just wanted money and free labor, not to actually harm the girls. If you're worried about it, you might watch it for yourself before letting your child watch it.

We also watched the Madeline movie together on Netflix and enjoyed it. I love how the movie starts off retelling the original story with the language almost identical to the text. 

I would have loved to purchase a little Madeline doll to sit in our living room throughout the week as we read and learned but I couldn't see paying the current asking price. The little dolls are the cutest and even come with an embroidered scar from having her appendix removed. Maybe in the future the cost will go down or I can find one used. 

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse began his love for painting after finishing law school and falling sick. During his recovery at home in Paris, his mother gave him a paint box and the rest is (art) history. Some of his most unique work was done in his self-created style of "painting with scissors" in which he used cut out shapes to make collage style art.

We read Henri's Scissors and Drawing with Scissors to learn about Henri's style and prep for this week's art project -  a collage!

Human body
The stories of Madeline and Henri having their appendixes removed inspired us to learn about the human body. We drew a life sized outline of ourselves and used body part templates from Confessions of a Homeschooler to cut out our organs put add them to the outline. I used PicMonkey.com to create a comic book outline of their faces to color and add to the body. They LOVED this project!  

We watched The Magic School Bus Season 1 - episodes 2 & 3 to learn about our digestive system and circulatory system/germs. We also used select pages from the Usborne's Flip-Flap Body Book to learn about the body and used it as a guide for placing our organs on our giant bodies.

Math
We are continuing to practice telling time with the help of a Thomas the Train book we borrowed at the library. As I already mentioned, each time we read Madeline we pointed out the time references and reviewed "half past" each hour.

We also started the Singapore Math book this week and reviewed Chapter 1 on Monday. We worked on number bunches the rest of the week in Chapter 2. B used candy corn to practice this skill.

There were a lot of books, ideas and resources that I didn't get to use this week either because of time or not having the resources. Some of these ideas are on my BKS Prep - France Pinterest Board if you're interested in checking them out.

Learning Resources & Media
I've tried to give links to any ideas that didn't come directly from my head. Here are some additional resources where I gathered information or resources.

• Learn about France
• Magic School Bus Episode 2: For Lunch and Episode 3: Inside Ralphie
• Justin Time - Too Many Cupcakes
  Justin and Squidgy help a French baker with his cupcake order.
• Cat in the Hat - Inside Your Outside
  We didn't use this book but I typically like to use the Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That books in our lessons because they present so much information in a way that is educational and enjoyable. In the future, I'd love to use this book when learning about the human body.
• Henri Matisse interactive website for kids
  Has interactive features that teach kids about Matisse. The words are on the screen, however, so unless you have a child who is able to read very well, this might not be as much learning as it would be just general exposure to some of his art.