Feeling thankful for my two turkeys as we end November

Here is a homework page from the weekend, our last fall page of the season...find the hidden acorns and rake, Alex spends a lot of time coloring this one. We do four more days that span two days on week 3 and about a day and a half the week of Thanksgiving with a birthday celebrated the weekend inbetween. Day One begins with

Someone else we know is having a birthday very soon in our class so this is the perfect read... Our bear gives the moon a birthday present... and the moon rises to the occasion , the hat fits perfectly! Frank Asch's books are always enjoyable...

I make a color copy of the moon sequence which is provided at the beginning of the book to make this next activity easy, but a little challenging as well... for Alex to put in the correct order...

Just like the tree in our reading, we make a leafless one on some poster paper and spend almost a half hour coloring it in! We will do more with this for our next class. I add some discussion about the last phase of autumn, and on our trip to the library we look and notice that most of the trees are now bare and all the leaves have fallen to the ground...

We return to class for our last day with the bears. T is for Tree so we trace a T on our tree and connect the alphabet dots below, after singing it.

We can't forget Pooh bear, and Alex spends a lot of time on this worksheet, following some video time with both Pooh and some real bears for further education, I don't want her to just remember our fairytale bears.... Luckily the videos that I have donated to the library years ago from C.J.'s younger days are still there, and we watch baby bear cubs and another one that C.J. really enjoyed on all the different kinds of bears...which will be the subject of Activity 2, but first our snack.


Our lesson wouldn't be complete without Pooh's smackerel of honey...


Alex LOVES biscuits and honey, who doesn't though?
I have even found a bear plate to serve it on.But we don't stop there ...sugar bear cereal is the main ingredient for another sweet treat...

As we get up close and personal with some real bear anatomy...how about some bear claws, Alex?


These are surprisingly good with the added chewiness of the sugar bear cereal, followed by some crunchy almond sliver claws on top. Alex imagines what it would be like to have paws with claws instead of hands ...A very cool treat as the sugar bears show up through the baking process and actually look like the bear's brown circular paw pads.
All those free junk mail animal card offers come in handy to teach us about the different kinds of bears for Activity 2 time.
Also notice our very own "Itsy Bitsy Bear Book" to color. (Enchanted Learning again, Jamie!)
It features simple facts about panda, sun, black, and brown bears that are easy enough for the girls to retain and understand..."Panda Bears like to eat bamboo, Sun bears like honey, Black bears like to eat berries, and Brown bears like to eat fish." What a great way to learn their colors as well.

We just have to include another reading of Eric Carle's great picture book series...this one is called Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? Here is the video (the second one)of Alex reading the story, that is if she doesn't destroy the pages as she flips ! Notice her laughter which I think is just her being shy and nervous of the video on her, but also enjoying having this new role of being the reader and not the listener, we also do the puppets as well.. You have to skip to the second video (the arrows on the side let you do this)After reading, we do a counting page that I make from a copy in the book (just like the one we did with Baby Bear...we count legs and the animals that swim...fly, live on the ground, up in the air... this is a lot of fun and learning as well..









Our counting today is a bee hive, that our black bear is watching with great envy for some sweet honey.
This is a purchase from Lilian Vernon, at twenty bucks it is not cheap but we have had it for a few years, and it is well worth the price for how much fun the girls have with it. It is a very cute learning "toy".

Even Amy works hard at matching the numbers on the bees to the correct hive hole. I love getting to know each of my daughter's unique personalities...Amy has a cute habit of sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth when she concentrates on doing something as here...



Alex displays such joyful smiles whenever she completes anything, I love this one-

Our last activity for this class is a reading of Bears on Wheels by Stan and Jan Berenstain. A Bright and Early Counting Book, I decide to make Alex her own counting book that she will also work on as homework. We are now working on writing numbers so that will be the focus of my little book. It may be little but the time involved to make this is TOO MUCH! Copying and cutting, copying and cutting, and then cutting out all these little bears and copying picture after picture to get enough, and then to put the book all together! I am showing every page here below as I am quite proud of my idea. Anyway, I have to show it as how much darn time it took to make, it deserves it!

Writing number 1 -



She will have to add some bears to this page...



The last page - she must count, write the numbers, and add the wheels.


The back of the book has space for her to practice writing before adding the numbers in her book.

Here we go, we start our books with our little pile of bears on the table.
After they get their backpacks on, teacher has a surprise for all their bear learning...two Schneid bears to play with, a panda and polar, along with Pooh nametags.

Inbetween classes, we work on a lot of workbook pages. Our focus continues on numbers and how to write them.

The birthday girl also does some birthday and cake themed worksheets.

We also finish up C is for cookies and cats -

Alex draws a C cat-tail on the end one.

I want to work more on ordinal number placement...she has a really hard time with this one when I ask her to point out the second, third, fourth tree....

Day Two this week is all about being thankful. We do our thank you prayer today using the following book.

We are getting closer and closer to turkey day and someone's birthday celebration.

We talk a lot about the month of November and we read three more books about both the season changes and being thankful...

In November is a beautiful picture book, I like it so much I quote it on facebook!

November is the last month of our autumn season. Soon winter will be here so we finish up with a reminder of what the season is all about...

Above indian corn which will be the focus of our lesson to come. Below a great book about a little girl who takes a walk to the store to buy some whipped cream, and along the way she is thankful for everything she sees. We discuss what we are thankful for.

I have lit some fall candles, as in one of our books, we are thankful for the smell of the season.

I share some spices - pumpkin pie spice, Alex takes way too much of a whiff and is sneezing.

Our exercise is a falling leaves song that I make up....this month we notice how all the leaves are now on the ground instead of in the trees.

We add "thankful leaves", that we have traced with our own hand, to our colored tree. Amy is thankful for crayons. Alex is thankful for her family. Daddy, brother, grandma and grandma will also make their own thankful leaves to add to our tree for Thanksgiving Day.

Our last book is more of an exercise -

We have our own animals to add to our own tree as we read the story. Amy is being a mooch and trying to take all the stuffed animals to herself. She would rather they live right with her.

"Who lives in a tree?" "Birds live in trees." With each animal that is called out, the girls take turns adding to the tree holes.

We have a beauti-full tree. This is one of their favorite "toys" from Lilian Vernon. A great one for this time of year, as we talk about all the animals preparing for the long cold winter ahead.

Next up, we make our own tree book complete with every season.

Amy colors her fall leaves...

We fingerpaint green leaf buds onto our spring tree...

Using a copy from our tree book, we paste animals to our different seasons and parts of the tree. They are so busy here, focusing hard on where to put their "critters" as Daddy likes to say.

And how about some white fingerpainted snow falling for our winter scene?

T is for Tree, and we discuss again how each animal uses a tree as a home or protection...

Our leaves for winter are old and brown and on the ground.


Another book! Sorry, but I am hopelessly addicted, we end our class with T for Turkey and T for Table. Here we are at circle ready for our turkey book...

This is a fun book but tough to explain...as Alex now understands after this book that we eat the turkey. She looks a little sad in the face when I explain, but she gets over it quickly as her next question to teacher is "What part of this turkey do we eat, Teacher?" I swallow hard, trying not to laugh, as she is holding a giant turkey leg in her hand.

We do some turkey hand writing, literally.

Our snack is a beautiful and healthy turkey, all fruit this time except for cheese legs.

Alex is scrutinizing this bird, I can tell she is only going to take the bananas...

Our next book is a sing song "This is the way we... so early Sunday morning."

It discusses all the goings on of a Thanksgiving Day including family visiting and what food is usually served.

I make color copies of the food and we construct our own Thanksgiving tables. We talk about the shape of a table and the parts of a table, how the food goes to the middle of the table, and the plates around the edge. They draw their own circle plates.

We use playdoh and popsicle sticks for the legs. This is my idea pretty much so I am hoping it stays up longer than five seconds. It ends up lasting a couple days before it falls over.

For homework, they have made their own family with great facial features.

Alex begins to pray as Amy looks on happily.

We do our own sing song of This is how we set the table. I have printed off placemats and the girls work on setting the table correctly. Video included here. (You have to scroll left and right with the arrows on the side - I think the table setting is the third one, and the bingo game is also in there -don't watch the card game until you scroll further down to where I talk about it and I give the video again) i think I am a big CRAB when I do the bingo, but this is after a few times and I ame xhausted, yes I am making excuses because I hate how I sound on the video, and I also realize Amy seems to get the shaft in the bingo game, but what you don't see is that we do continue with her and she always gets her chance to win, this is one reason why I hate video!

We end class with turkey bingo. We play this at least ten times over the coarse of a week and weekend. A nice recap always happens on the weekend when the girls spend some time with Daddy playing this game and showing him all their hard work.

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Our birthday has been celebrated and Thanksgiving week begins...we head to Grandma's to learn about one of her favorite subjects - Native Americans and wild horses.

Another award winner picture book shares a beautiful legend with striking pictures.

Grandma reads the stories ...




and shares her own wild horse collection
and Native American pictures (including Aunt Melissa's own teepee oil painting)

I take a a black and white copy from the book and using colored pencils for the first time, the girls color their own wild horses.

Afterwards, we past on our own artwork, using strips of construction paper, triangles and a circle for the sun. We talk about how the Native Americans love art and nature and used the two together to make beautiful artwork and pictures like in this book.

Amy is Miss Bossy, telling Grandma exactly where she wants her triangles which will make the border of the picture.

Alex figures out her own beautiful pattern of alternating triangles right side up and upside down. She uses her strips on the side to make a very pretty border.

The bright colored pencils capture perfectly the same artwork we see in the story. The sun shines above and I notice how each girl has made a very unique picture with their chosen colors and shape placement.

Grandma hangs their artwork on her wall. Earlier in the morning I catch this shot below of the girls looking at the next craft we are going to make for our sleepover at Grandma's. My mom has been working hard with me all morning between cups of coffee while the girls sleep to figure this next one out. We have on display an example of both the wild horse picture and our next craft, a teepee for the girls to ooh and aah over. Before the craft, though, is another reading:

I make a color copy of this page below, the copy will make the wall of our teepee-

Beautiful pictures again - honoring nature and giving respect and thanksgiving for all creatiion, I still can't help but think that the Native Americans understand and appreciate the circle of this life more than anyone else, hence why I have chosen this topic for this holiday.

A special thank you to my mom who
instilled in me a love of animals and the Native American ways, it is only right that she should be the one telling the same stories to my children...

Our craft begins with a brief exercise in T handwriting...

First, roll your wall up, Alex does this just fine, and we tape it together...

We have a cut-out of construction paper fire, Alex sticks a stick through it to keep our teepee residents warm...

We make our Native Americans stick out in 3D fashion by gluing accordian- style paper to the back of our teepee.

Look at that smile when she finishes!

We add sticks and playdoh to secure our teepee, and it stands up, another adorable smile on the way this craft ended up turning out-


Perfect for pretend play, Alex and Amy add some wildlife to the scene...

Our sleepover at Grandma's comes to a clo9se but not our school day...we return home for a snack of corn chips to go along with our next counting exercise of candy corn and a counting story.

Playtime takes place after snack, and I sit down with them beside their own teepee to re-enact the Thanksgiving story with them. Fisher Price comes in handy, complete with a Mayflower boat, pilgrims, little Indian figures, and a Thanksgiving table with all the appropriate food items...

We return to circle to begin Activity 2 and a counting story. First, Alex gets introduced to some real Indian corn or maize, we talk about how the Indians were the first to plant maize corn, and showed the pilgrims how to do it...the stalk that we have is absolutely beautiful in color...

Alex helps with the counting on each page...


Here is the page that talks about our corn...

We do some counting and handwriting with candy corn...

We end our very long day of learning with a candy corn game. This is a counting card game that can be used with any pack of cards but the candy corn works perfectly for us. I have included a video here of this game I make up - I am sorry if we don't seem too enthused but this is probably the 100th game we play over Thanksgiving weekend. Allen is trying hard not to cough, and is feeling miserable. Amy is acting quite the 2-year old here, arguing at the end of the game, but as I watch I realize we let Alex help figure out her cards, and this was probably wrong to do, in doing it, it takes too long and Amy ends up missing her turn to celebrate, at one point she asks where her cards are as Alex has one...anyway, I am upset by this but I guess we aren't perfect, and I realize some of these games are too hard for poor Amy! and I need to figure out what to do about this, and trying to teach Alex with Amy,too is a little bit hard, to say the least. But it is enjoyable for both of them as they work at recognizing numbers and shapes, as well as number sequence. To play the game, Divide the suits, omit the face cards. Each player picks a suit (or shape) for their cards. My daughters always pick diamonds or hearts. Randomly, give each player half the numbers to a suit. The rest go into the draw pile. Each player sets up his or her cards in order 2 through 10, warn them that some will be missing. Take turns drawing. If you get another person's suit, give the card to the other player. Win the game when you complete your sequence of numbers 2 through 10.

Homework pages...

Alex connects the dots and Amy colors.

A very hard leaf match from Enchanted Learning. I like it, a little more challenging than usual.

We work on our candy corn counting book with number writing... Alex is very happy when she figures out how to write "2" perfectly!

She is pretty good with some of these numbers, shockingly, the number 4 is no problem for her. We also cut out a triangle for one more class day to follow.

We have a review day of letters C and T. Above is a Thanksgiving table workbook search and find hidden letters. This last day is short and sweet, and ends up a very fun time full of music and song play for our review.

We start Activity 1 with our Guessing grab bag game. Using description of everything we have learned in the last couple weeks, they must guess what I am talking about and when they do I will grab it out of the bag. I am above the world, I have 5 points, I am yellow, I am made of fire, I am like a diamond (I pull out our own homemade construction paper star). I start with the letter A, I wear a suit and fly to the moon in a space rocket (astronaut). For letter T we guess turkey, table, and Thanksgiving. For letter C we do cat, cookie monster, candy corn, cub, Corduroy bear, and cave. We also guess seasons, and types of bears.

Exercise takes place with Bearobics by Vic Parker. A counting book with a catchy rhyme...we hop, show off fancy footwork, do a hippy hippy shake to the left and right with some snakes...and so on.



Most of the fun though for this class is with all the music. As we do our grab bag, I include songs inbetween. When they guess teddy bear, we sing "Oh Where, Oh where has my teddy bear gone...oh where oh where can it be? " Inbetween, I hide each girl's bear for them to find as the song plays, here is Amy searching for hers.

In addition to that, we sing The Bear Went Over the Mountain, Me and My Teddy (Barney)and a great CD sung by Brent Holmes called Bear Tunes for Kids with songs about hibernating and different color bears, that all work great for our review of learning all about bears. We also sing Laurie Berkner's I'm Gonna Eat on Thanksgiving Day, All the Pretty Little Horses, and I'm a Little Snowflake. Fun songs, and we jam over and over to these, teacher is having just as much fun. One thing to mention for How Do You Feel, the last two weeks we have been singing a song instead, we do the Sesame Street version of If You're Happy and You Know It, and they love this! The song is so cute, with a grumpy version by Oscar, and it fits Amy well, who likes to sing this one better!

We do some corn review, and a corn craft...

Using our cutout triangle and some colorful orange and yellow tissue paper with vinegar, we make a pretty window decoration to end November.

After craft time, we have a birthday snack and party game. Our snack is leftover cake and our party game is Perfection. What a fun game for them both! Hard shapes and little pieces require a lot of effort!
We end class with puzzle time - like before, they get a sticker for each numbered puzzle they complete. Our puzzles include Cookie Monster and Three Little Pigs that mom has dug out of the basement...puzzles I remember doing myself and then again with C.J. and now for a third time with the girls.

Our puzzle play stretches to nighttime and bedtime. What a great activity before bed. One of Alex's birthday gifts, this 35 piece puzzle below is huge and a good hour of fun. Wow, are they proud when they complete it. Daddy gone has mommy in a tizzy most of the time but preschool for November sure kept us all busy.
I decide to change it up for December and do a Christmas program complete with songs and the story of Christmas according to all the alphabet letters. Instead of covering our classes, I want to give you the program. As it is now January when I write this, I find out trying to do 26 letters for Christmas is a little more than I can handle while getting ready for a birthday and holiday. It about kills teacher but in the end, it is worth it just to watch the laughter it provides. What they end up grasping and learning through it all is definitely surprising. December did go on, I am just behind on this blog - To Be Continued!