I looked at my list of favorite Thanksgiving books for kids and realized it was quite short.  I’d love to hear more suggestions!

Here are our favorites:

In November by Cynthia Rylant

Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin

Squanto’s Journey by Joseph Bruchac

Over the River and Through the Woods by Lydia Maria Child

Thanksgiving on Thursday (Magic Tree House #27) by Joan Pope Osborne and Magic Tree House Research Guide #13: Pilgrims

Some books I’ve seen and want to check out:

P is for Pilgrim by Carol Crane

Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla

Conversations with two different friends this week led me to believe that my recent posts have given the impression that I have everything running smoothly at our house and that our days are filled with nothing but cozy reading sessions, happy homeschooling endeavors, and yummy meals and treats.  Like one of my favorite bloggers, Melissa Wiley, I like to blog mostly about those times I want to remember and savor when chaos is threatening to destroy my sanity. But in the interest of dispelling any myths about the togetherness of our lives, I’d like to confess a few things:

Velveeta shells and cheese, hot dogs, and cereal are regularly served to the girls for dinner.

We sometimes eat cake for breakfast and very often eat graham crackers with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

Yesterday, I paid M to let C keep a pillow of hers so I wouldn’t have to hear C scream.

Last week, the girls watched the second half of The Incredibles (M doesn’t like the beginning) 8 times in the course of 2 days.

Often by the the time I get around to sweeping the kitchen floor, the pile is too big for our dust buster to handle.  I envy friends with dogs who “sweep” for them.

I haven’t seen the surface of my dresser in months.

We haven’t raked a single leaf this fall.

We got a new toilet in August and the old one is still sitting by the basement door waiting to be taken to the dump.

I’ve put off teaching M to tell time so I can put her to bed early and not have her realize it.

One of my closest friend’s first child turned 1 in October and I’ve yet to mail her present though I actually bought it on time.

When it comes to keeping the house clean, making good food, and homeschooling, I can do one of them well, or two of them not as well as I’d like but I have yet to figure out how to do all three.

I’d read many positive reviews of The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History and I’d been looking forward to checking it out when we were ready to use it.  I requested it from the library last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to see what a large portion was devoted to prehistory since that’s what we’ll be studying starting in January.  I like the concise explanations and the interesting website links.  M has enjoyed flipping through random sections.  I ordered us a copy of our own because I can tell that it’s a book we’ll keep using for many years to come.

This week’s Non-Fiction Monday Round-Up is at Abby (the) Librarian.

As the holidays approach far more rapidly than I want to admit, toy catalogs are filling the mailbox and talk is turning to wishlists for Santa and the grandparents.  For those of you who’ve also begun pondering holiday gifts for kids, I thought I’d share some of our favorite (as in actually played with often) toys.  I’ll share some activity books and art supplies in another post too.

Playmobil (We have the vet clinic, pony ranch, Noah’s ark and the take-along house.  We salivate over everything in the catalog on a regular basis)

Safari Ltd plastic animals and Toobs

Basic Building Blocks (we have these by Melissa and Doug)

Tubation building tubes

Wedgits (nothing like a toy that gets your 1.5yo saying “octahedron”)

Marble Run (we have this one)

bins of little things to sort and mix – buttons, beads, rocks, shells

Polly Pockets (both girls have loved them and they often get mixed with the Safari animals)

Diego 1-2-3 (M played this everyday at 2 and 3 and now C loves it just as much)

Ocean Bingo (no reading required, only picture matching, perfect for young kids in a range of ages to play together)

Rush Hour – Safari (great logic puzzle game)

Favorite Places to Shop online for great toys:

Fat Brain Toys

Mindware

Rainbow Resource

As I mentioned here, we’ll be embarking on a study of the prehistoric world after Christmas. I’m making our curriculum myself so I’ve started by putting together a book list.  I’m excited about all the cool titles I’ve written down to investigate and the ones I already know that we’ll love.  We’ve done a lot of reading on dinosaurs and I’ve yet to add our favorite dinorsaur books to the list, but here’s what I’ve got so far (I’ve put in links for titles I’ve described in greater detail for Non-Fiction Monday):

Books I Know We’ll Use

Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History (I’d seen this title recommended for homeschoolers many times, but I didn’t realize until recently that it begins with the formation of the universe and contains a large section on prehistory)

Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution by Steve Jenkins

When Bugs Were Big, Plants Were Strange, and Tetrapods Stalked the Earth and When Fish Got Feet, Sharks Got Teeth, and Bugs Began to Swarm by Hannah Bonner

Reign of the Sea Dragons by Sneed Collard III

Rare Treasures: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown

Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs

Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life

The Kids’ Natural History Book: Making Dinos, Fossils, Mammoths, and More (Kids Can! Series) by Judy Press

Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House #1) by Joan Pope Osborne (and accompanying research guide)

DK Evolution Revolution: From Darwin to DNA by Robert Winston

Books I Want to Investigate

Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story, Lava to Life, and Mammals Who Morph by Jennifer Morgan

Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story by Jennifer Westberg Peters

The Best Book of Early People by Margaret Hynes

You Wouldn’t Want To Be Mammoth Hunter by John Malam

The Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonnick

DK Eyewitness Evolution and Eyewitness Prehistoric Life

Kingfisher Encylopedia of Evolution

On This Spot, An Expedition Back Through Time by Susan Goodman

Prehistoric Earth BBC DVD set

Usborne Great Prehistoric Search

Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Sharks and Other Sea Monsters

One Beetle Too Many by Kathryn Lasky

What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed The World by Rosalyn Schanzer

I discovered these books from the excellent list of Prehistory and Ancient history “living books” at Funschooling,the delightful prehistory curriculum posts at Satori Smiles, the fantastic new Ink Think Tank database,  this list at Library of Books, Links, and More, and a few rabbit trails I followed on Amazon.

When we decided what to do for M’s first grade year, we toyed with the idea of homeschooling full time, but ultimately chose for her to stay with the three day per week distance learning program she’d been in for kindergarten, giving us a balance of school and homeschool.  As the weeks have gone by, I’ve thought more and more about homeschooling M-Th and having her attend the 1 day/week enrichment program at her school.  Last week, we made a big decision, after Christmas break, she will start doing exactly that so we’ll be full time homeschoolers.  I’m very excited and so is M.

Since deciding to make this change, I’ve been indulging my love of planning and book and curriculum shopping (a bit dangerous to both our budget of money and time).  For the most part, we’ll continue with what we’ve been doing.  The biggest change I’ll make for M will be the addition of history and more science, subjects she’s previously been soaking up a lot of on her school days.

For January-May, we’re going to combine the two into a study of prehistory covering everything from the formation of the earth to the first farmers.  All this will lead up nicely to a study of the Ancient World which we’ll likely do next fall using Sonlight Core 1.  I’ll be sharing lots more here about the prehistory curriculum I’m putting together for us.

Here’s the rest of our curriculum:

Language Arts: Sonlight Language Arts/Readers, Explode the Code, journaling

Handwriting Without Tears

Math – We needed some new life in our math studies so I recently ordered Singapore Primary Math and M loves it.  We’re also using Mind Benders logic puzzles and Math Analogies (both from The Critical Thinking Company)

Latin – another subject she’s enjoyed at school, still looking for curriculum though I’m leaning toward getting Minimus

Music – very unschooly exploration of classical music using Classical Music Start Up Kit, Volume 1 and random pieces from our collection

Art – Meg takes time to do art daily.  We’ve done less formal art lessons/projects than I’d intended since she typically just wants to create on her own and that’s fine with me

And of course oodles of read-alouds.

M is reading the first story in The Norby Chronicles by Janet and Issac Asimov with her dad. She and I finished up Ballet Shoes by Noel Streffeild and read Dolphin Treasure by Wayne Grover.  Now we’re reading Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop.

Every time I sit down to read with C before her nap or at bedtime, she asks me to read Ghosts in the House, Kitten’s First Full Moon, and Time for Ballet. Dinnertime has also been frequently requested as has Hen Hears Gossip and Cock-a-Doodle-Doo: A Farmyard Counting Book.

Other reads we’ve enjoyed together: Caps for Sale, Moongame by Frank Asch, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems, Leaf Man by Lois Elhert, Penguin by Polly Dunbar, several of the Blue Kangaroo books by Elizabeth Chichester Clark.

I’m making plans for a prehistory/evolution study with 6yo M, so when I saw Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution by Steve Jenkins on top of a library shelf, I grabbed it.  C (2yo) saw it in the library bag and asked me to read it, so the three of us sat down and started it.  Both girls were fascinated by the diverse animals, some modern and some extinct that are shown on the opening pages.

Jenkins included just the right about of text to keep to give a basic description of the development of life on earth and the process of evolution while keeping young children engaged.  Lots of illustrations enhance the explanation, and near the end there is an excellent timeline showing the development of life on earth as though it happened in a 24 hour day.  Modern humans come onto the scene at 11:59:58 PM.

This week’s Non-Fiction Monday Round-up is at bookstogether.

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!!

We’ve been reading Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara several times every day for the last week.  We all love the quirky story and the fun black, orange, and white art. Inspired by a Ghosts in the House art project at Journey Into Unschooling, I came up with a simplified art project suited to a 2.5yo artist.

I traced Halloween themed cookie cutters on black construction paper and cut them out.  Then I cut ghosts from white tissue paper  (M did her own).  I gave each girl a piece of orange construction paper and some glue. They glued the black shapes on first and then put the tissue paper ghosts over them.  We were all thrilled with how they turned out.

M turned 6 last week and we celebrated last weekend with several of her friends. We were torn between a cooking themed party and a witch themed party so we combined the two.  We started the afternoon with the girls gathered around the table helping to make pizza dough.

While the dough rose, we rolled out and decorated gingerbread cookies using our Halloween and fall cookies cutters and Halloween-themed sprinkles.

Then the girls headed outside (we were blessed with a beautiful fall day) and made potions using glitter, beads, poms poms, sequins, and water.

Once the potions were complete, they took turns using their brooms to break open our bat pinata which was filled with beads and candy.  Then they raced around they raced around the yard on their brooms while I pre-baked the pizza crusts.  They came back in and chose pizza topping then settled down for stories.  I read Excuse Me, Are You A Witch? and a few chapters of The Three Little Witches’ Storybook.

When the pizza was done, we headed back outside for dinner.  Next up was the cake.

M requested a witch cake with a house and a stream with candy rocks and the cake designer at Carolina Mountain Bakery did an amazing job with this difficult request.

After eating cake, the girls settled down to watch M open her gifts and play one last game – guess the food.  I blindfolded each girl and passed around a container of food. We peeled grapes, cold spaghetti, rice, and peeled banana slices.  The girls did a good job guessing. We were all worn out when the party ended, but M keeps remarking on how fun it was and that makes the tiredness worth while.