Learning about the first Thanksgiving

Last year, I quickly discovered that most of the library books about Thanksgiving were gobbled up (lol) before I could get to them. I put a few on reserve, and did get to borrow some...but yeah holiday books at my particular library can be tricky to nab in a timely manner.

So, I bought a few, since I figured we'd want to read about Thanksgiving each year anyway. I love to preview books on Amazon by using their "look inside" feature to get a handle on the text and illustrations. Some books that sounded awesome in reviews ended up not suiting my purposes. It's nice to just be able to preview some pages/chapters without buying it first.

Our preschool Thanksgiving books:

















Earlier this week, we read some of the books together and then thought it would be fun to reenact the Pilgrims crossing the ocean on the Mayflower using toys.

I grabbed Johnny's pirate ship, dug out some Playmobil people, and we put down a blue blanket to be the ocean. We used our huggable globe to point out their starting and ending routes and then captain Johnny set sail. Fortunately, we also had an ark that Vivienne used. Couldn't share ships, apparently. Good grief.

Upon arrival in the New World, we had Squanto and Samoset join them. We built them some Duplo cabins.

All the while, Johnny was talking through the storyline of what happened --basically narrating back to me much of what we just read. He just did this on his own and I was impressed at what he remembered and understood.

Fun!

Later, we watched the Charlie Brown's The Mayflower Voyagers on Netflix. I've had trouble finding other Thanksgiving movies on Netflix -- anyone know of any? We also watched an episode of "My Life as a Turkey" lol. Really bizarre but you could see baby turkeys grow.

Johnny was talking about doing some sort of craft, and I'll probably do a quick search for free Thanksgiving coloring pages to print and color. Maybe a more complicated craft via Pinterest, I dunno. I'm not going to overthink it.

Our preschool day on Monday, August 26

Note: I found this still in my drafts. Thought I'd hit publish. I have no idea what we did the rest of that day, so I can't finish the post. Heh.

This morning, I quickly threw together some activity cards for the kids to do and we got to work.

I pulled out the Lauri uppercase and lowercase puzzles first. The MFWK set came with I think the lowercase? But I also bought an uppercase, since we could make good use of it and if I had one puzzle set for each child that would go waaaay better.

They played with the letters, matched them to the pictures underneath the puzzle, and put them back. I had Johnny count to see how many letters there were in the alphabet. He can count to 100, but sometimes he skips #13. Does he think he's a hotel with a 13th floor or something?

Next up, workbooks. Did two pages in Developing The Early Learner (a simple trace-maze thing and a match an item to the big picture thing). That page showed a picture of a lit match, and then a picture of a campfire and a picture of trees. He was supposed to color the picture of the thing the match went along with. Instead, I had him circle it. We were going to do more coloring in a minute.

Next up, we read the Adam and Eve story in our Bible Pictures to Color/Read books. This time, I read the story while they colored. I'm not really sure if it's an approach I want to take too often -- not sure how much Johnny was listening but many kids *do* listen better while coloring, so who knows. We had some discussion after I read the story.

Vivie didn't want to color that page in her coloring book. She just kind of wants to do her own thing with it, and really I'm going to let her I think. Mainly I want to keep her entertained and occupied, rather than "color this correctly."

I grabbed another workbook for her to flip through and do. She likes doing "paths" (mazes) so she sorta did a few, and colored some things.

I had Johnny do two pages in the Counting With Numbers book. We're on number 4, and he just isn't interested in the repetitive nature of writing a bunch of 4s. Didn't push it. Not that big of a deal. So he did the next page which had him count and label objects with the appropriate number. We'll hit handwriting again with his kindergarten, so at this point it's just exposure and if he will form the letters and numbers correctly, that's great.

Following that, Johnny asked if he could do a craft. Sure! I asked which supplies he wanted me to grab, and he wanted a paper plate, some googly eyes and his markers and glue.

Great deal on some educational DVDs

We picked up the boxed set of Liberty's Kids and Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? a few weeks back, and we've watched several episodes together.








They're decent, with some educational content within.

Liberty's Kids focuses on the American Revolution and the Carmen Sandiego one is different than the game show -- it's an animated series tracking Carmen the thief around the world. So it's more geography/cultural/etc. based, I suppose.

Anyway, each show's boxed set contains 40 episodes. At $5.99 per boxed set, that's an insanely cheap deal.

Use it in conjunction with your studies on the American Revolution, or maybe a geography thing, or just for when you are laying on the couch nursing a tiny baby and would rather have something like that vs. total drivel.

Episode list for Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?

Episode list for Liberty's Kids and see the main website for extras

Planning some 'extracurricular' social time

This year, we're joining two regularly meeting social groups. The first is MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and the second is like MOPS, but not affiliated. I think. I haven't been to that one yet.

We went to the first day of MOPS this morning, and I think it will be just what we need. I tried a different MOPS group 2 years ago when Vivie wasn't even crawling yet and Johnny was 2.5. We went to the first meeting but I just wasn't in a good physical place to commit to going more.

But now, I think it will be great for my kids and myself. Johnny will be in a class of 4-5 year-olds and Vivie will be with the 2s. They'll have their own activities, do a craft and have a snack and playtime and such. I'll be with the other moms and there's usually guest speakers, a hands-on project and social time.

This group meets 2x/month, and on weeks that it doesn't meet, there's also Bible study offered (with childcare as well). I'm thinking that would also be good to join.

The second group meets once per month, and the first meeting isn't until September.

I really want my kids to have a chance to play with other kids their age, and see the same kids on a regular basis to develop friendships. Since we're not doing away-from-home preschool, this is the next best thing for playing in a group, as far as I can tell.

I know I'll need to take some time away from everything once the baby comes. I just hope I can spring back to stuff sooner rather than later. Perhaps it will help my kids from being too restless.

I briefly considered also signing up for Kindermusik -- but the price is a bit much considering we will probably miss several weeks. Perhaps we will do it next semester when I have a better handle on life with three kids.

Also on my radar is Awana, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to do it this semester. I can't find a location that has a class for both Johnny and Vivie's ages, and I'd really like them both to be involved rather than just Johnny. Vivie wouldn't really appreciate being left out, but she's too young to be in with Johnny's age group. Plus, the classes near me meet pretty late in the evening -- it wouldn't be done until after 8 p.m. which is our target bedtime.

So...maybe next fall for Awana?

Not sure if we'll make it to any library classes. There is a preschool class with no parent in the room for ages 3.5-6 or so, but again that's just Johnny and not Vivie so I don't really know how I'd handle that. There's a few story times that we could all do, so maybe just that.

Lastly, there's a homeschool group that meets at a park every week. It's as laid-back as it gets, which is perfect. I'm hoping to connect with some families who also have some young ones like me.

What else am I missing? I really want to keep it all fairly low-key so not to overwhelm myself. But, I do value having things like this to do.