Little Pilgrims

We are studying the first Thanksgiving (the pretty and glorified version anyway) this week and into next.

Most of the Thanksgiving books were checked out from the library and I had to go yesterday with all three kids. So I got a lesson in previewing books…

A quick glance at this book, which was in the Thanksgiving section of the holiday books shelf, led me to believe this book was about the Mayflower crossing. Nope! I started reading it aloud to the kids after we got home and quickly realized that it is likely about Cubans fleeing to America on a fishing boat. While they do arrive on Thanksgiving, it wasn’t exactly the topic I wanted to be broaching with my three and almost-two-year-old.

But we did find a couple good ones that are perfect for this week.

This First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story by Laura Krauss Melmed and The Very First Thanksgiving Day by Rhonda Gowler Greene.

Today we followed these Martha Stewart tutorials for a paper pilgrim hat and paper pilgrim bonnet.

This picture cracks me up! Check out Sprout’s “smolder” (you’d have to have seen Tangled to get it).

And then we also made a paper plate pilgrim girl and boy using this tutorial.

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Sickness got the better of us, but we still managed to get some more projects done.

Despite my somewhat diligent efforts to keep the germ factories (aka Bean & Sprout) away from the baby, every chance I turned around they were touching him and coughing in his face. So the inevitable happened and he got sick too.

His sickness somewhat overlapped with Sprout’s so Stephen wound up staying home to help out.

It was so sad. Sparrow could barely breathe or cough. And even the doctor said there was pretty much nothing that could be done for an infant with croup besides breastfeeding, humidifier, cold night air, lots of love and very little sleep for us.

I was so stressed out and extremely exhausted the last couple days.

Then yesterday things started looking up. Sparrow finally started getting some cough-interruption-free sleep.

And he started smiling again.

And he stopped wheezing. It was a huge relief. The other two still have a nagging cough, but Sparrow seems much, much better. Breast milk antibodies for the win!

Here are a couple more pumpkin crafts we managed to get done that made good occupiers for the older two while we took turns taking care of Sparrow.

Felt, yarn & pompom pumpkin patch. The kids glued the pompoms on the brown felt “dirt” and I added all the details. Then we used it to talk more about the pumpkin life cycle.

This next activity got us transitioning to Thanksgiving which we will talk about next week.

The kids painted orange inside of an orange circle that I painted for them. We let those dry and then I used green paint to make handprint leaves. After they dried we talked about some of the things they are thankful for.

Sprout is thankful for the trash truck (watching the trash truck come is one of the big highlights of his week on Friday mornings, he gets so excited), toys, clothes, food, books, painting, Bean & Sparrow, sticks, Mama & Papa, cars and the step stool.

Bean is thankful for music, toys, cars, movies, flowers, Mama & Papa, her bed, sparkley shoes, good food, dresses, Sparrow & Sprout.

Pumpkin pie & pumpkin math

Today the kids persisted in being sick and yet energetic.

This morning we made pumpkin pie scented paintings. Part of this idea I borrowed from this education.com project and part of it I thought up on my own.

So first we started with yellow and brown construction paper. I traced one of my salad plates with a pencil on both colors. I cut the brown circle out perfectly round and the yellow circle I cut outside the line and wavy. Then we used a glue stick to attach them together. Whenever we do gluing, I use it as an opportunity to reinforce the concept of counting. I totally remember my preschool and kindergarten teachers doing the same thing. I say, “Press down here and let’s count to five together,” or something like that.

Next we mixed up our pie scented paint.

It is a mixture of white glue, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla extract, water, and orange and brown paint. I talked about each ingredient with the kids and let them smell the spices. Then I let Bean mix it up with her brush and they painted their pies.

I know they aren’t much to look at, but the kids had fun and they smell nice.

Next we did a little pumpkin math activity that I found in this free pumpkin printable. The kit had a pattern for a paper die and a chart to graph the number of instances for each face of the die.

Sprout can count and match, actually a little better than his sister, but this activity was still a bit over his head. Having him be our thrower, though, was a great way to include him in the activity.

Bean was our grapher and dutifully colored each square as we charted and rolled.

This all happened before we made our one necessary trip out of the house to Target for vitamins, juice, and wipes (and of course wound up walking out of the store with more than those things) and our weekly veggie pickup. Then naps got ruined by the car ride, lunch was delayed a couple hours and the whole day went downhill from there including Sprout figuring out how to climb out of the crib.

Sprout was a crying, clinging, snot faced, coughing, sad, pathetic mess, by the end of the day, but I did manage to distract him for a few minutes by letting him help me make a real pumpkin pie. He was super proud of cracking the eggs in particular, so much so that he ran to Stephen when he got home and shouted, “Papa! I cracked egg!” instead of his usual, “Papa’s home!”

But it’s generally known that when it comes to baking, I’m terrible at it. I used to think it was because of my limited ingredients due to the kids’ food allergies, but I don’t have that excuse anymore. This pie was way too spicy and it didn’t really set up so it was goopy. So there you have it, I’m not good at something. Not perfect.

There’s a couple of scarecrows at my breakfast table this morning

Top left: Sprout
Top right: Bean
Bottom: Bean waving her mask

Fall wreaths made from nature walk scavenging

This afternoon when the kids got up from their naps we made some fall wreaths with stuff they found on their nature walk. I love how each one is unique and Sprout’s has sticks because he is obsessed with sticks.

Sprout’s:

Bean’s:

I got this idea from one of the many home preschool sites that I’ve been scouring lately for ideas. They suggested using a paper plate and cutting out the center, but I didn’t have any paper plates. So I traced some of my dishes (a salad plate and a smaller bowl) onto card stock and cut it out to make the wreath base. I put a bunch of glue on the wreath base and then let the kids pick what items from their bags they wanted to put on there and where. I added more glue on top of leaves as needed for additional layers. Then I glued the bows on at the end.