My Pottery Class

I’m taking a pottery class with a friend of mine though the local community school.  We are doing the best we can to learn the techniques kinda on our own. The “teacher” isn’t much help.  She’s not a fan of “beginners.”  My friend and I have stuck out this 8 week session but starting next week we’ll be moving on to another high school, and hopefully a better teacher.  We would love to learn the basics of the potter’s wheel.  It’s not an easy thing to do but it is very fun!

Ahhh, sugar cookies!

Decorating cut-out cookies gets more fun each year!

Getting excited about Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving Books

Thanksgiving Books

Our trip to the library yesterday produced some good stuff.  The kids were excited to pick up some books on Thanksgiving.  We even found a couple neat videos.  A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and another called, William Bradford – The First Thanksgiving.   Now that we are a week into November, it’s starting to feel like the holidays are upon us.  I think we are going to relax a little, and just learn more about Thanksgiving for a couple weeks. Before we know it, we’ll be packing into the car driving north to see family.  

We’ve been working on a fall lapbook.  I think we’ll expand on that more.  I also have more crafts, and baking planned. The kids get so excited to bake or when I tell them we have a project for the afternoon.  Last year, I wanted to do more with a Thanksgiving unit but we were back from grandma’s house and getting ready for Christmas before I could blink.  It’s amazing how fast time goes.

Reading A-Z Presidential Election Package

I was sent a really neat link to a site called Reading A-Z where they are giving away a Presidential Election Package.  They suggest the package will “Help students understand how the United States elects a president every four years. Read leveled biographies on 2008’s Republican and Democratic candidates. Students cast their own ballots, discover how the electoral process works, combine math and map skills, and learn about past presidents, too.” 

At 4 and 5, my kids are a little young to get too deep into this presidential election but, I wanted to share the link.

Fall Tree Craft

Over the past couple of days we’ve been working on fall crafts.  Today we are doing a fall trees that I started by tracing the kids hands onto brown construction paper.  Then it was their turn to cut out some colorful leaves to glue to their finger branches.  The craft is fun, easy and a personalized because it’s made from the shape of each child’s hand.  Last year we made a cute little scarecrow from a paper towel roll.

Our homemade king and queen costumes for KONOS

Today we went to my mom’s house and made our basic king and queen costumes for KONOS unit Obedience.  We’ll be having our medieval feast Sunday after next at a friends.  We still have lots of activities and recipes to do before then.  For the costumes went closely to how the suggest KONOS book, just some slight modifications to make it easier on us.  My mom has many lots of clothes so I just went with her ideas.  They look pretty good.  We’ll take more pics once we have the crowns made.

J’s neck line was a little big but my mom added a collar that helped with that.

 

KONOS Volume 1 – Kings and Queens – photo summary

We have really enjoying our KONOS activities so far.   KONOS seems to be a good fit for our family.  Doing all of the great, hands on activities really keeps us into the unit.  I think they may actually remember studying Kings and Queens, even at this young age.   We’ve  had a tea party and made a queen cake.  We’ve played checkers, and they have put on skits for me in their rooms.   J has a Mega Block castle where they pretend to slay dragons and save the princess!  They have been dressing up almost daily.  

  Making the Queen Cake
Tea Party

Dress up!


Playing Castle
Learning how to play checkers before we can move on to chess