Almost Killed Me

This past month, Pinterest almost killed me. 

As a card carrying member of the "I Love Themes" Club, holidays are my time to shine. I want to do every craft, every worksheet, every baking expedition. Turn a grocery bag into a life sized turkey?  Sure!  Fill it with popcorn for a special surprise upon carving?  Well, duh. 

I love it all. 

And now that I can categorize and store every idea I come across on a pretty Pinterest board, there's no need to worry about forgetting a single one. 

I was doing well, rolling right along, filling our bulletin boards and the front of our fridge with art depicting all we were learning. I had books checked out and YouTube videos in my que.

Then one afternoon I glanced at the calendar and felt my throat start to tighten.

How could it be November 21st already?!  How will I ever fit in our Diary of a Turkey Project?  We didn't watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or make tee pees or pilgrim hats!

Halfway through my freak out, I realized I have at least a few more years before I need to complete this freak out session.  Deep breath.  Count to ten and step away from the Pinterest page.

So now that you have that little peek into my neurosis, take a gander at what we did squeeze in before the big feast.

We started it out with a field trip to Pilgrims To Pioneers at The Rock Ranch.  It was awesome and we all learned a lot.  (read full post here)

We read a ton of great books.

Seasoned homeschoolers have been telling me for years that the best way to teach and learn is to read great books.  I'm finally grasping the truth in that.  So many neat facts in these two little books.

After reading a bit about what it was like to travel on the Mayflower, Josie did a writing assignment about what she would have brought in the one trunk she was allowed to take.  Of course, she only brought the essentials; a doll, pizza, and a pillow.

She made a Mayflower Fact book.  This one turned out super cute.

It was interesting to me since I always assumed there were way more then 100 people on the Mayflower.  Learning something new everyday over here.

This popcorn estimation sheet from The First Grade Parade.  Josie loved it even if her guesses were all way, way off.

We read about Squanto.  

Confession: I totally thought Squanto was a girl.  

See?  Learning something new everyday.  I can't wait to pretend like I'm an expert at all this when it's Gabe's turn!

She got to play with her food a little while showing off what she learned about Squanto.  

In Squanto And The Miracle of Thanksgiving, we learned that he was from Massachusetts.  So we pulled out her state notebook and did the pages for it.

Both kids had a Fall sensory tub.  I colored rice with some Fall colors and doused it with cinnamon.  It smelled awesome.  Then I just threw in some random Fall things and some scoops.  Josie likes these for a day or two, Gabe will go back to it all month.

Gotta have a craft for my child who speaks in glue sticks and glitter.  These leaf turkeys were a pain to make, but cute enough to earn a much coveted spot on the front of the fridge.

We spent a couple days this week having some fun with cranberries.

We read A Cranberry Thanksgiving, researched cranberries, and of course, made cranberry bread.

Josie did this science activity with a bag of cranberries.

We watched Dirty Jobs: Cranberry Harvesting and then did a mini cranberry bog in their sensory tubs.

Then we juiced cranberries and made the bread.  FYI, homemade cranberry juice is sour.  We even added apples and carrots to try to bring it down a notch.  Yowzers.

Next year I'll totally get to make that paper bag turkey, but for this year, I think we're good!

DIY Garden Markers

Our garden is planted and, one week in, we haven't killed it.

Like most other things in my life, I want the garden to be functional but I also want it to be pretty.  So I set out to find some garden markers.  And found out pretty fast that they aren't cheap.

And I like cheap.

So I called 2008 Me and asked her for a crafty DIY idea.

I came up with canning lids, paint, bamboo skewers, and a sharpie.  Put my two workers to work and ended up with some pretty darn cute garden markers.

The kids worked hard, got along, and were genuinely happy for the duration of this art project.  It was almost enough to make me want to pick up crafting again.

Almost.

My pretty silver marker doesn't show up enough.  Planning to cover it with a regular black sharpie.

Valentine's Co-op

I know, I know.

We are all over Valentine's Day and have moved on to, ah, President's Day?

And I'd totally leave the hearts and glitter in last week, except that we had a really fun co-op day at Kelsey's last week and my girl loves her some pink and red and fluffy love so I'm sharing today anyways.

On Valentine's Day, we went over to Kelsey's house to join up with her brood of boys and a couple other fun homeschool friends.  It was loud and slightly crazy, but super fun.  Having 10 kids in a room together to learn does make me wonder how a real classroom operates.  There has to be some serious focus and a whole boatload of patience to make that work!

We painted some art, made thumbprint trees (sort of), and played a couple of math games with conversation hearts.  I had a writing worksheet too, but the kids were too hopped up on candy chalk to make that one happen.

Game Printables found here and here.

Cloud Unit

So we are more then half way through the school year and I am determined to finish strong.

Towards the end of November, life started happening and I felt the blahs sneaking into our school room.  The kids were over stimulated and I was all themed out.  So we took a couple weeks off of the fun stuff and just got in some reading, writing, and math work.

It was so nice to be done with school so fast, but I started to miss all the glitter and glue that's normally flying around the room.  Which I guess was the point of taking the break.

So I spent an afternoon downing lattes at Starbucks surrounded by books and my trusty Pinterest boards and got to planning.

January's theme was clouds and man, did we ever have fun!

cloud type poster; cloud song; KWL sheet; Little Cloud cotton painting; 
shaving cream clouds; Imagine It field trip; Spilt Milk project; cloud viewer;
cloud snack; make a cloud science

Next month I'm taking Josie up to Minnesota so we are going to spend a week learning about snow and icy roads before diving into some cool dinosaur studies.

I think I've got my theme work mojo back.

Pinterest is a homeschoolers dream.  I organize my boards by theme and it makes planning a breeze.  You can see my boards here.