Once a friend asked, if I loved Fall and Thanksgiving so much, why I didn't decorate for it. I really never have. I have a few decorations that I've bought along the years at Big Lots, after season sales at Target or Goodwill. I have several wreaths around the outside of the house. I really need to find a few more items since I do love this time so much.
This year, on Pinterest, I saw an idea of grabbing some tree branches and decorating them with paper leaves, that have what you are thankful for written on them. Peanut and I gathered acorns and branches and I bought a {expensive antique } jar to display my centerpiece. So, beginning of November, we began our activity. We tried every evening to write down what we were thankful for and tie our leaves to the tree. We didn't do so hot with this activity. I think next year I will cut out 6 leaves for everyday AHEAD of time, get a hole ready and cut the string as well. Some evenings were just TOO crazy to do this. BUT we did have our prayer time every evening as a family. We talked about what we were thankful for for each day. Hubbie and I really enjoyed talking with the kids about what they were thankful for and perhaps something that they wanted to talk to the Lord about. Some nights we had silly answers, followed by hysterical laughter. Other nights we had some good "thankfuls" and honest and deep concerns.
Spending the entire month, and focusing on our family being thankful has been good. It has taught me to put thought it to it... to look for ways to be grateful, even when our days have been filled with arguments, fighting, yelling, screaming, messes and chaos. We've always come together, at the end of the day, and reminded each other of what we have to be grateful for. Starting in November, I also started my "1000 Gifts" list, that I am posting every Monday.
When I began to plan for our Thanksgiving school activities I realized a few weeks ago that I had NO books. Last year I had requested quite a few to borrow from the library. The sad thing about our library system is that we have NOTHING that I ever want. Thankfully, we are able to request an inner-library loan, to borrow a book from any library in Georgia, BUT it can sometimes take anywhere from one day to a month, to get the request item. It makes it VERY difficult to do schooling because you never know how to plan. So, I decided to look for my favorite Thanksgiving books online and see about purchasing a few. I had hoped to get a few used. Sadly, I could only find new books priced higher than I wished to pay or might as well have been new. I thought I would take a gander at our 2nd and Charles store. Sadly, they don't have a great system so that you can find books there. I had to go through EVERY BOOK in three sections of the store to see if I could find the Thanksgiving titles I wanted. I found three. Only one of them that I really wanted. When I got home, I found one children's Thanksgiving book that we already had. My list is quite large, so maybe over the next year, I can gather the other ones that I am wanting.
We read our Thanksgiving books. We colored a few pages and wrote what we were thankful for. Bubbie had a thanksgiving word find and a story/crossword puzzle {he did excellent on it, btw}. Then we decided to make a our own Mayflower and a thankful turkey!
Our field trip co-op had a Thanksgiving party a few weeks ago, that a gal and I were in charge of. I was able to get another Mom to help with the craft and she helped us make the cutest Thankful Trees with leaves cut out. They were the CUTEST thing! We enjoyed playing outdoors, catching up with friends from the group and playing! Oh, and don't forget the food! Everyone made delicious Thanksgiving sides! We were so thankful for Hubbie to already have the day off {Veterans Day} so that he could join us!
One more quick thing to mention, we found two websites to let Bubbie {and Peanut} explore through and learn. One was Plimouth Plantation's Exploring the First Thanksgiving which was filled with lots of good tidbits. The other was Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving . Both websites, I thought, had excellent points and many different ways for the kids to learn. One thing I heard, during an interview, I didn't necessarily agree with. Many non Christians are going to try to dismiss the early settler's religion and their beliefs. We also google-mapped "Plimouth Plantation" and did other searches online for pictures of the settlement. I was so thankful to remember most of our trip to Massachusetts and Plimouth Plantation as a kid. I was able to tell Bubbie about what I could remember.
I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching and learning and remembering this Thanksgiving with our kids. I pray that as we make decisions and choose learning activities and lessons to teach to our children, that we can always remind them that God is the Author of history. We want Christ to be the center of our household and learning. We are so grateful for the blessing and freedom to be able to keep our children at home, to teach them and watch them learn. Its definitely not an easy or {many-a-days} fun, but the good days outweigh the bad ones. I am not ready to give up this opportunity to spend so many hours with my kiddos. No matter how exhausting or frustrating and how few the breaks away from them are, its so worth it when I have the privilege to teach and watch them grow and learn!
Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours!
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1 thoughtful comments:
I'm so picky about Thanksgiving books, but we did manage to read quite a few we liked this year. I also found some fun printables that I kept around for when the kids were bored. And we made our family turkey (with handprints and footprints) this week.
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