Thanksgiving Unit

For the next few weeks, we will take a break from our regular history studies to do a unit on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. The end result will be a folder/lapbook project. Bessie and Gabe are doing the actually books with the Littles listening to the readings and I've found color pages for them. I'll probably put their art work together and make a book for them.

We started the day with our regular seatwork...math, handwriting, reading, copywork, etc. Dan and Hannah worked with a couple of preschool folder activities that I got off the net. Hannah is doing well and surprisingly, Dan is picking them up very quickly. It is hard for me to assess his capabilities because of his lack of language, but I'm thinking he will be catching up very quickly.

The first book we read today was The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh. This is a good introduction to the Pilgrim story. We were able to finish this in one sitting. Dan wandered off a few times, but with no one else to play with, he soon came back to join us at the table.

Each of the Littles colored a picture of the Mayflower, while Gabe, always marching to a different drummer, wanted to do an Indian. Bessie listened while she worked on her science.

Bessie and Gabe worked on three of the mini-books for their folders, terminology, a map of the Mayflower route and information on the Pilgrims. This is a lot of writing for Gabe and I did do some of it for him. Bessie dove right in with the dictionary and finished hers off.

The kids watched a video before dinner and then played.

Brian was flying tonight, so we had a light dinner. The Littles love to sit at the table and color and cut. They did this after dinner. Bessie practiced piano. She is already working on Christmas music and Gabe played upstairs. He seems to need time at least once a day to get away from the crowd. He'll play with his stuffed animals or actions figures in his room.

After the Littles went to bed, Gabe and I headed upstairs to snuggle and read. We picked another Thanksgiving book. He wanted to wait up for dad. The book was The Pilgrims of Plymouth by Lucille Recht Penner. This was a very nice book. The illustrations were great and there were some fun sidebar additions. The information was basically the same as the first book, but more detailed. I really enjoyed this book and Gabe must have too, because he sat and listened intently to the whole book, asking questions and adding little bits here and there. He thought it quite funny that the captain of the Mayflower was named Christopher Jones, which is the name of one of my nephews.

Brian arrived home around nine, spent a few minutes with Gabe and then headed downstairs to install a new CD drive in the kids computer. We have been without the drive for a few weeks. The kids will be thrilled to be able to play their games again.