Thankful, Thanksgiving

Today when N went down for a nap, I said, "ok, C, let's sit at the kitchen and do some school activities together!" and he grumped big time about it- "But wait!  I'm hungry!  I want a snack!  I want to play!".  But, we sat down and started on our new program "All About Learning".  It's awesome!  We are doing the pre-reading program.  It has lesson plans all laid out for you, which makes it so easy for me (then I supplement on my own with things I find and make from the internet).  Everyday we point to the letter we are focusing on for the day on a big poster.  Then we read a poem from a book that has a lot of words with our letter.  Today it was about bears and bumble bees wearing bibs and eating berries.  We point to all the B's that we find.  Then we color our letter sheet for the day and practice writing the letter.  We also choose from a list of ways to creatively work with the letter- tactile things like making the letter shape out of play dough or popsicle sticks or pipe cleaners, and also tracing it in a salt box.  Then we do a learning activity from the book.  The first two days were rhyming.  Rhyming helps him to learn to listen for all the sounds in words.  C rocked it out!

We did some do-a-dot marker sheets for fall.

We also did some Thanksgiving patterns.

C loves to cut and paste, so he cut and pasted a Bible verse about being thankful.  Then he signed his name!  We talked about what it means to be thankful for everything we have, and how we are to always thank God for everything.

Then, when we were all done, "Mr. Grump About School" said "Mommy, can I please play that story game!"  (the Lauri Toys Sequencing Kit- in which he lays out picture tiles in order, for example- 4 tiles of a boy making lemonade from start to finish).  Ha ha!  He asked to play a learning game, after school was over!

So, sometimes they grump, but as long as you get them going and moving through it, they usually have fun, and they learn!  I love to see him progressing.

It's a fun week of singing Thanksgiving songs and talking about the Thanksgiving story.  Now we're ready to eat some yummy food!!