Pilgrims & Turkeys

favorite book, before its disappearance

the boys capturing a close up of their ant farm- so fun to watch!

sweet, sweet Moriah doing her school and pretending to be a "caveman"

Austen's  fish,corn,dirt picture

Riah coloring her Indian wooden person ( the boys had pilgrims)

Getting ready to walk for life!

What a busy, busy week we have had! I cannot even believe everything that has been accomplished in one week and that was a huge part to me not being able to blog as much as I wanted to. We are wrapping up our unit on responsibility. Let me recap everything that we have been doing. First off, the kids made a picture showing how Squanto helped the Pilgrims learn how to grow corn. We glued down three goldfish crackers, then five kernels of popcorn kernels, then dirt. The kids each drew a picture of a blackbird, crow and worm and we learned the following poem:

" Five kernels of corn in a row

One for the blackbird, one for the crow

One for the cutworm and two to grow."

We talked about the meaning of the poem and what the fish were for and then the following day, they drew the sun and rain to their picture. This is a progressive picture as tomorrow we will add a cornstalk and then finally draw in a corn ear. The kids really understand the importance of the Indians, the Pilgrims and the difference between the Jamestown settlers and Pilgrims.

We sang " A Turkey Sat On A Backyard Fence" and used Jay's beanie baby turkey to act it out. That was really cute and pretty festive. The kids then traced their hands and created turkeys out of their hand prints with glued on sequins, feathers and whatever else they deemed necessary.

I thought of having a huge Thanksgiving Feast but I think we will wait until the actual Thanksgiving and tonight the kids are going to a Fall Hoe Down with dancing, chili, bobbing for apples, caramel apples and fellowship so I think that will take the place of a finale for this unit and make it a lot easier on me as well.

We completed our unit reading of "101 Dalmatians" and are beginning "The Incredible Journey". Austen's reading is really coming along- slow but coming. I think, for five, he is doing great! Math is moving along - what is the saying, " slow and steady wins the race"?

The kids and I walked in a Crisis Pregnancy Walk today and I was so proud of them. On the way to, they were talking about helping mamas and their babies. Riah goes, " We going to help the mamas and maybe even chase their babies around, high five!!!" - the girl cracks me up! On a sad note, we lost Hannah's favorite dinosaur book on the walk. Now I need to hunt it down on Amazon to buy. Poor Lou.

I think I am going to wrap up our Responsibility unit this week, like now, I'm wrapping it up- its done. I feel that the kids fully understand responsibility- to the core. They work very hard, most of the time, at demonstrating it and I am so ready to move on to a new trait. We have had a great, spanning all the way back to our start with chores and pets, beavers, ants to now- the settlers. Wow, and the fact the kids remember and retain so much of what we have learned is so exciting for me. Moriah thinks the entire Bible is "Psalms" and  wants me to sing every verse she finds- sometimes I sing it in minor and make it sound intense and scary- haha :)

Our next trait- Courage!