Weekly Learning Theme: Thanksgiving

We've done a weekly learning theme on Thanksgiving each year since we started doing learning themes and we always enjoy it. I really like doing holiday themed weeks. It really builds the excitement and anticipation for the holiday. Read last year's Thanksgiving Learning Theme here, 2015's here, and 2014's here. One of my favorite things about recurring learning themes that we do each year is taking activities from the past years and adapting theme to meet Carter's needs now. I also enjoy doing the same things with Elise that I did with Carter at her age and seeing their unique differences with how they tackle activities and with what they enjoy the most.

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks.  I have revised our objectives to really hone in and focus on specific skills Carter will need to master before kindergarten and are appropriate to his age and development right now. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives.  Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. I have added working on his name as his teachers at school have asked us to work on it at home and I want to remember to include working on it in some form during each of our learning themes. I'm also adding in a section for Elise now that she is a year old. I don't considers her bullet points objectives, they are experiences I want to make sure to expose her to frequently. Her experiences are listed below Carter as bullet points rather than numbers. 

The highlighted objectives below are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

Writing Skills:

• holds a pencil with 2 fingers and a thumb grasp.
• draws a circle, plus sign, and square.
• uses scissors to cut a 4 inch line. 
• uses pictures to write a story.
• writes name.

Reading Skills:

• blends sounds to say word.
• chunks words into syllables.
• hears and identifies rhyming words.
• recognizes and names uppercase and lowercase letters.
• isolates and identifies beginning and ending sounds in spoken words.

 Math Skills:

• counts to 20.
• counts with one to one correspondence.
• represents a number of objects with a written numeral (0-10).
• compares objects in sets with more, less, or equal to.
• creates and extends patterns.
• identifies shapes and describes attributes. 
• understands that addition means adding to.
• understands that subtraction means taking from.                   

 Experiences Elise was exposed to during our theme this week are highlighted below:

1. Continue to improve fine motor skills and drawing (specifically I'm looking for her to be able to copy a circle and a square as well as eventually draw a person with 2-4 body parts).
2. Understand same and different.
3. Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book. 
4. Use age appropriate scissors. 
5. Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)
6. Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature such as size, color, hard, soft).
7. Count and understand what the numbers mean.

Activities/Movement:

• I wrote Thanksgiving on a sentence strip and we went through our typical activities while looking at the word. Carter identified the letters in the word and told me what the beginning sound in the word would be. Then I told him thanks and giving and asked him to blend those chunks together to make a word. We also practiced me asking him to say Thanksgiving without the giving and then Thanksgiving without the thanks. That's still a little trickier for him, but he was able to identify thanks as what would be left if we took off giving. Then I put the sentence strip under his boogie board and he traced the letters which he thought was so awesome.
  
   
• Our neighbor is a retired teacher and has been giving us stuff as she goes through her stored materials. She gave us a set of pattern blocks and Carter loves them. He is really good at building things by using the mats or plans on how to make them. Since he enjoys it so much I decided to incorporate it into more learning themes. I went online and found templates for building pattern block turkeys and the Mayflower. You can find them here. I set them out on the table and the next time I walked through Carter had already made the Mayflower. He and Elise sat down to work on them. As they worked I talked with Carter about the shapes' names and attributes. Elise and I talked about the shapes' color and name as she worked. I was really impressed that she was able to identify the correct shape to go in a spot and then manipulate the shape to get it to face the direction it needed to go. She didn't finish the entire picture, but she did a few shapes quite well before moving on to something else.
  
   
• I made some paper clip turkeys for Carter to practice with upper case and lowercase letters. I printed turkeys and cut them out so the didn't have wings. Then I wrote 4 upper case letters on the turkey and wrote corresponding lowercase letters on clips. Carter did the turkeys one at a time, finding the lowercase letter and clipping it to match up with the capital letter. Elise practiced clipping the clips onto the turkey, using her fine motor skills.
  
   
• I used one of the turkeys I had printed out for the above activity and didn't use to write down words that rhyme with turkey. I wrote the word turkey on its belly and then asked Carter to come up with words that rhyme with turkey.  This one was a little trickier than ones we've done in the past so he ended up coming up with mostly pretend words. We talked about how those words weren't real, they were made up and then I went ahead and wrote them down. I also had him practice with the word turkey blending the chunks tur/key together to make the word and also eliminating a chunk from the word when asked.
  
• I had multiple different Scholastic Newses about pilgrims, Wampanogs, and the first Thanksgiving. We read about life back then and then looked at the graph on the back. We used the graph to answer questions.
  
   
   
   
• I printed some Thanksgiving number cards I found here. We played with the cards, me showing them to Carter and him telling me what number it was. Then we used them to complete a graph on the back of one of our Scholastic News magazines. He determined the number on the graph and then found the corresponding number card to place with it.
  
   
• Carter and I played a game called Roll a Turkey. We used a dry erase board this year rather than drawing our turkeys on paper. Since our chart to show what to draw based on what we rolled on our die had the dots showing, I used my dry erase die and drew the number on it. Carter would roll, tell me what number he had rolled, and then find the set of dots that matched that number. We had fun playing for a while and then at the end, Carter couldn't roll the number he needed to finish out his turkey and didn't want to play anymore so we decided to both just finish drawing our turkeys and end the game with no winner.
  
• I put together a feather sensory bin for Elise one day while Carter was at school. I put a wipe container in it for her to put the feathers in and then open to dump them back out. She really enjoyed doing that. We also talked about colors and I identified the names of the feather colors for her. I'd show her a feather, tell her what color it was, and then ask her to find another feather of that color and put it in the box. That was our variation on sorting for this learning theme. As she put the feathers in the box we counted to see how many she had added.
  
   
• Elise had so much fun with the feathers and asked me if she could make a turkey with them. I thought about it for a while and then decided to get out Play Doh so she could stick feathers in it to make a turkey. She loved that!
  
• One of our Scholastic Newses had a map on the back. We read the directions and talked about the map. It was also a reader's theater so we used popsicle stick puppets I made to act out the story. Carter did a good job of repeating the lines I read to him. Elise just made her puppet move around as I read the lines for her.
  
  
   
   
• We played hide and seek turkeys with the turkeys Carter and I made either last year or the year before. We gave each other hints about which room they were hidden in and then used hot or cold to help each other out when the seeker couldn't find a turkey. When we found a turkey we talked about where it was for Elise, such as on the bed or under the table.
  
    
• I found some cute Thanksgiving letter cards here. I used them with Carter, mixing him up and then showing them to him so he could identify the letter names. Elise sat next to him and repeated the letter names after he identified them. It was so cute. I have a feeling she's going to pick up on a lot of this quickly when she's older since she's observed Carter practicing it so much! We did uppercase and lowercase letters.
  
• I found some awesome Thanksgiving Play Doh mat ten frames but forgot to save the link and now I can't find them. I'll come back and add the link if I can find it later. I loved that it was a fun Play Doh mat and also a ten frame which is a great way to practice with addition and subtraction even though Carter isn't ready to learn the facts that make a sum of ten. He looked at the number, identified it, and then filled the correct number of boxes with Play Doh. We talked about how many boxes were filled and how many were empty. I told him the addition fact that went with it. Then I had him tell me how many he'd have if we added Play Doh to another box or if we took Play Doh out of a box. He also wanted to make the number on the mat out of Play Doh so he practiced forming the numbers. I also had him tell me whether the number of boxes with Play Doh in them were more, less, or equal to boxes without Play Doh.
  
   
• We played pin the feather on the turkey. Carter and Elise both thought the game was hilarious. This year Carter felt around on the wall to help himself figure out where the turkey was. Elise didn't want to wear the blindfold so she just taped feathers onto the turkey.
  
• Carter used our turkey puppet to make up a story about a turkey. He told the story orally and I didn't write it down because he said he wasn't interested in illustrating it. I figure it's good for him to plan out his stories and get to tell them verbally rather than in writing sometimes.

• Each day in November the kids told me something they were thankful for and I wrote it on a strip of paper for them. Then on December 1st we stapled them into a chain to use as a countdown to Christmas. You can read what they are thankful for here. They get so excited to read what they wrote on their strip each morning. Elise always guesses that hers says kitty which cracks me up! This is one of my favorite holiday activities we do.

Craft:

• I found some Thanksgiving dot pages here and printed them for use with our bingo dabbers. The kids love to use the bingo dabbers so that's something I've been including more and more with our learning themes. It's good fine motor practice for Elise and Carter likes to count the dots and mix colors. Carter made his pictures for his Uncie J and his Uncie Taco. Last time we were at Thomas' house they were hanging on his fridge.
  
   
   
• My mom found cute foam turkeys at Dollar Tree with foam stickers to decorate with. Carter's perfectionist side came out a little bit because he ended up abandoning his turkey because he couldn't get the feathers to fit exactly in the space that was drawn out for them to go in. He let Elise finish. He made a color pattern with his feathers and told us about it. Elise put her feathers where they belonged and then stacked the rest of the stickers on the turkey's belly.
  
• My mom also got the kids some cute turkey stickers where you built a turkey using the stickers. She thought there was one page in each package but there were actually quite a few more, I didn't count but probably 10. We used the stickers to make turkeys on paper as decoration for a letter to our Meals on Wheels friends. Carter was really disappointed I was sick on our regular day to deliver so someone else filled in for us. He kept asking me how our friends would get their cards so I mailed them.
  
   
• Each of the kids colored a paper plate to look like a turkey body. Then we glued on feathers I'd cut out and written the letters of their name on. Carter put his letters in order to spell out his name by himself. I did it for Elise telling her the letter name and then showing her it spelled her name.
  

 

• Carter made a cute corn craft at school with foam stickers to apply as the kernels on the ear of corn.
  
• Carter also made turkey tracks at school, using pipe cleaners in the shape of a bird's foot. I had seen the idea and planned to do it with the kids, but since they did it at school we didn't do it at home.
  
• Carter also made a turkey headband at school. They had spaces on each feather to write a letter of their name so they'd spell out their name on the turkey's feathers. Then it was added to a strip of paper to make a headband.
  
• Carter also made a placemat at school where he dictated different things to be written down. He used the placemat during his school feast and I also took it to my parents' house with us to use during our Thanksgiving dinner.
  
• Carter made an adorable turkey pot holder at school. I love it and am so glad I get to keep it to remember when his precious hand was this small!
  

Special Snack:

• Carter made a blessings mix at school that he brought home and was so excited to share with all of us. He wanted to wait until Ty was home because he wanted to share it with everyone.
  
• We also enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving.

Make Believe:

• Carter made a turkey vest at school which he wore during their feast. Then when he brought it home we played with it, wearing it and pretending we were turkeys. Carter liked to walk and gobble like a turkey.

Carter showing off his turkey vest.

Songs:

• We listened to a Thanksgiving mix on Youtube a few times during this learning theme. The kids' favorite song was Disco Turkey. Carter would get up and dance along to the song. It was adorable! We also sang some Thanksgiving songs I always sang with my class at school.

Technology:

• Carter played a silly turkey game on Starfall here. His favorite part was getting to change out the colors of the turkey's feathers. I liked that the book highlighted the /ur/ sound in turkey.
  

 Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

• We had a Thanksgiving themed playdate with our Monday play date group. The kids liked doing a bingo dabber page.
  
• Carter had a feast at school. His school doesn't normally serve lunch so they just served chicken nuggets and french fries but Carter still loved it and told me all about how he got ketchup and ranch to dip his chicken nuggets in!

  

  Pictures courtesy of Carter's teacher, parents weren't invited due to space limitations.

   
• We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family, eating a turkey dinner with traditional sides. Carter was all about the turkey, cranberries, and sweet potatoes. Elise didn't eat much at all, mostly just marshmallows off the top of the sweet potatoes.
  
  
  

Books:

• Splat Says Thank You! by Rob Scotton
• Feast for 10 by Cathryn Falwell
• I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Allison Jackson
• Turkey Day by Grace Maccarone
• Gobble, Gobble by Jo Ryan, Penny Worms, and Amy Oliver
• The First Thanksgiving by Linda Hayward
• Our Thanksgiving by Kimberly Weinberger
• Clifford's Thanksgiving Visit by Norman Bridwell
• Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit! by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
• Feeling Thankful by Shelley Rotner and Sheila Kelly Ed.D
• Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson
• A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman
• Who Will Carve the Turkey This Thanksgiving by Jerry Pallotta
• Thanksgiving Mice! by Bethany Roberts
• Hide and Seek Turkeys by Judith Ross Enderle and Stephanie Jacob Gordon
• Over the River: A Turkey's Tale by Derek Anderson
• Pete the Cat: The First Thanksgiving by Kimberly and James Dean
• Too Many Turkeys by Linda White
• My First Thanksgiving by Tomie dePaola
• It's Thanksgiving by Tessa Kenan
• The Circle of Days by Reeve Lindbergh
• Arthur's Thanksgiving by Marc Brown
• Thanksgiving by Meredith Dash
• Thanksgiving by Eileen Spinelli
• Thanksgiving Is For Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland
• Look And Be Grateful by Tomie DePaola
• Thanksgiving by M.C. Hall

Elise Update

I'm a little late getting this update posted due to Thanksgiving and then our family cycling through sickness. Then I had trouble with our nice camera so I ended up last minute taking pictures on my phone. I wanted to go ahead and get this one done because I missed last month and I had a lot to document about Elise's ever changing and growing personality. She is such a bundle of fun and leaves us laughing daily. She is so sweet and kind and she has really grown into a loving and sweet, little girl.

I wasn't able to use the nice camera this month, so these pictures are from my phone.

Elise still loves babies and plays with her baby dolls a lot, kissing them and being sweet to them. She is so careful to put them in the stroller just right and is always sneaking kisses on their heads. It is the absolute cutest! She calls anything small a baby and refers to her potty chair as a baby toilet. That may be why she still prefers it to the regular-sized toilet when at home. We used a family restroom at Wal-Mart that had a smaller toilet and a regular sized toilet. She said, "Awww, baby toy-lit!" and then bent down to hug the toilet. Yuck! She also still refers to my parents' puppy, Garo, as Baby. He is now bigger than Harper but she still calls him baby and tries to get him to sit in her lap and snuggle. He is so much bigger and more grown up that he doesn't sit still for long periods of time but that doesn't stop Elise from trying. I got canned mandarin oranges and she referred to those as baby oranges. She will dig through grapes, carrots, and broccoli looking for the baby grapes, carrots, or broccoli. It's so cute. Then she'll say, "Awww, baby gape (or whatever it is)," snuggle it to her face and then eat it. Whenever we read a book where a child is in the picture alone, she's always very concerned about where his/her mommy is.

Another thing she has picked up and loves doing is telling knock knock jokes. She and Carter will sit in the car telling each other knock knock jokes the whole drive. Elise's go to is always to say "kitty" when you say "who's there." Then when you say "kitty who," she responds with, "kitty booty." She is still caught up with trick or treating and wants to play trick or treat. She'll say, "tick o teet" and then when I pretend to hand her something she says, "thank you!" She says anothy for another. She'll say it in place of more. When she's eaten all her grapes, she'll say, "Anothy gapes, mommy." It is pretty darn cute! When I rock her before bed she just chats away. She'll tell me all about her day and often tells me the same story over and over. For a while she was telling me, "Carty goes to a house and says tick o teet. Then I say tick o teet. Then we say thank you!" One night we went to take care of Thomas' dogs because he was out of town and she told me, "I go to Uncie Taco's house but I not see Uncie Taco." It's not what she says that's funny, it's how she says it. She uses her hands to express herself and really flaps them around as she talks. I always end up rocking her for longer because I am enjoying her stories so much!

Even Thomas was commenting on how sweet and affectionate she's been lately. She gives lots of hugs and kisses. Every kiss and hug seems so genuine and love filled. One night she kissed me and when I said, "I love you," she said, "I love you so much." Then she whispered, "I love you the best." It melted my heart! She has a way of wrapping her arm around my neck and giving me the sweetest, most genuine hug! She's picking up so many words and phrases and talks so much now. It's pretty rare for her to say something that I can't understand. But, I swear, when she does, it's in the car and she has a meltdown when I can't hear/understand her. Carter did something naughty one day and got in trouble. Elise wanted me to pick her up and when I did, she said, "I'm sorry that happened to you." It really reminded me of how much the kids are listening and how they pick up so much of what we say.

Elise is so physically capable. She can do lots of tricks that Carter has a hard time mastering. She can spin around in a circle. She was trying to teach Carter and was so sweet with him. She'd say, "Not like that, watch me Carty," then she'd model for him. She kept telling him, "Good try, Carty! You get it!" It took him a few tries but he was eventually able to do it. Her newest goofy trick is standing on one foot like a flamingo while hopping up and down. I had never seen her do it before and my parents were visiting and mentioned it. I asked her to do it for me and it was hilarious. I have no idea how she does it! She doesn't even wobble or start to fall at all. Carter can't do it nearly as steadily or sure footedly as her, it's amazing!

She grasps her pencil, crayon, or marker really well and already holds scissors appropriately. She can't cut on the line, but she sure can cut with them! One day she got ahold of scissors somehow, I thought they were all hidden, and cut up a puzzle bag for the puzzle Carter was putting together. She absolutely loves to draw. If you hand her a coloring page, she'll flip it over to the blank side so she can draw instead. I'm amazed at the progress she has made with her drawing just in the past couple of weeks. She told me she was drawing a kitty one day and actually drew legs coming out of the circle body. I couldn't believe it! Most of the time she just draws a bunch of circles. They are her favorite thing to draw right now. She can stand or sit contentedly drawing for long periods of time. She still draws on herself and other stuff she shouldn't at times. When I was sick I let the kids draw on the couch while I caught up on some cleaning and I caught Elise drawing on the couch!

She loves Carter so much and is so sweet to him! She'll tell people, "I have a Carty! His name is Carty Ty Coc." She says Carty like it means brother. I've heard her ask people if they have a Carty, meaning to ask if they have a brother. If Carter does something naughty, she'll yell, "Carty Ty Coc!" One day I spilled something and she reprimanded me saying, "Mommy Ty Coc!!!" I cracked up over that one! She'll also say, "Daddy Ty Coc," which is funny since that's actually Ty's name. She gets onto herself by saying, "Elise Kay Coc!!!!" She's a pretty tough critic of her past behavior. Recently she's switched to saying, "Mommy Kay Coc," when she thinks I have misbehaved. I think it's cute she's made the distinction between male and female and the males are Ty Coc whereas the females are Kay Coc. When Carter and Elise watch tv before bed she wants to sit right up against Carter and snuggle him. If he moves to a different chair, she follows him. She is such a snuggle bug. I love that about her. She's the sweetest about moving close to you and snuggling in. She'll come stand by me and yell, "There's no room for me!" Then she'll plop down on my lap once I've arranged my legs how she wants. When we read books before bed she always wants to sit in my lap but insists on looking at a different book than the one I'm reading to Carter which makes it hard to see the words in the book I'm reading. She also likes to turn off the light as I'm reading which is pretty irritating for both me and Carter. She's her most mischievous during our bedtime routine, go figure! Just recently she's started pulling Carter's hair when they get into a tussle. Her strength and ability to grab on and not let go is crazy! They get along really well, but like all siblings have their moments. I'll catch them hugging while whispering into each other's ears, "I love you." It really doesn't get any better than that as a parent!

 

Elise's relationship with her friend, Charlee, is so darn sweet. I met Charlee's mom when the girls were just a few months old and they've been friends ever since. We do weekly playdates and often see each other multiple times a week. When we drop Carter off at school Elise will say, "We see Cha-lee?!" We do see her most Tuesdays and Thursdays. When we make it somewhere we'll be meeting Charlee before they get there, Elise gets so excited yelling and dancing when they arrive. She refers to Charlee as "my Cha-lee" and Charlee refers to her as "My Leesey". I love their special friendship. She's also very close with my best friend's daughter, Addison, and calls her Addy. I love that Elise and her 2 best friends all have rhyming middle names with Kay, Rae, and Mae. They also have very similar birthdays with March 21st, April 20th, and May 22nd. It's wild! Unlike her friends, Elise still refuses to wear anything in her hair and doesn't like me to pull it back out of her face. Then she goes around all day brushing her hair out of her face with her hand. If I do pull her hair back she will rip chunks of her hair out to get the offending bow, clip, or tie out of her hair. If I'm lucky, she might leave it in for a few hours.

 

When we are out and about and people try to talk to her, she usually engages them with, "I sick," or "I have a ouchie." She burned her hand on a cookie sheet and for weeks after it healed was still telling people she had an ouchie and showing off her arm that was healed. When Carter's with us, she's really friendly and will interrupt him to yell gibberish at strangers. If it's just me and her, she often times just turns her head away and ignores them or hisses at them like a cat. So her social skills are all over the place and vary depending on who is around. But if she does want to talk, she will chat you up and tell the most hilarious stories. Just yesterday I got home from the doctor and Ty had opened the crock pot while I was gone, getting burned by the steam. She came running up to me and told me, "Daddy say hot, hot, hot!" I got the whole story from Ty and he hadn't just said hot, hot, hot but thankfully that's what she took from it. He said after he burned himself she said, "Daddy I sorry that happen to you." She's just the sweetest and I love her so much. Some days I stop and look at her laying on the ground or standing on the stool and my breath is taken away by how big she is. My baby sure has grown up! While it's hard to see her grow, it's wonderful to have conversations with her and to listen to her knock knock jokes. She really is a light in my life! Carter is already talking about and helping Elise plan her birthday party and I can't believe she will be 3 years old in just 4 short months!

Wordless Wednesday

When mommy and daddy are both sick, you get to wear jammies and a medal all day!

Hugs for Carter when he got home from school.

 

She was acting out the book with the Rudolph figurines but by the time I got my phone was done.

 

 

 

Walking Uncie Taco's dogs when he was out of town.

 

Making her own lunch, a pb&j.

Our Elf on the Shelf, Marco, came back!

He brought the kids special doughnuts!

 

Elise bouncing her baby to sleep.

Uncie J walked with us home from his house when we went to check out his Christmas lights.

Carter and Jake looking for hidden objects in Carter's Highlights Magazine.