Thanksgiving

That's the word of the week - Thanksgiving. We're reading Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende & Harry Devlin this week for FIAR. It's about a grandmother & granddaughter who try to invite one person each to Thanksgiving dinner - someone who is lonely or poor. The grandmother gets an unexpected lesson in judging someone from their appearances.

Today's FIAR activity didn't go exactly as planned. We have a book written by Barbara Rainey about the history of Thanksgiving, so I thought that would be a great go-along to explain the origins of this holiday. Sigh. I didn't realize it was so in-depth. Don't get me wrong - it's fabulous to learn the nitty gritty details. I just wish I had opened it earlier to decide if a squirmy 4 yo could sit through it. Plan A didn't work so much, but I'm not giving up. Plan B will be to find more age-appropriate explanations of Thanksgiving to try later this week. Or maybe we'll do that next week (I don't have any plans for school next week). A friend had asked what Thanksgiving crafts I had planned, which made me realize that I had completely whiffed on that. Another sigh. So maybe we can do crafts & light history next week. The phrase "the best laid plans" comes to mind.

Math was pretty interesting today. Jimmy did very well on calendar work (he's really getting excited about Thanksgiving now; he's noticing that it's getting closer & he realized that it was the holiday in our book). We're keeping this up, though, to help him with Thursdays, 13, 20, and 30. The math activity proved to be finally challenging. We used pattern blocks (always a bit hit around here). First, Jimmy filled in a pattern that showed which shapes to place where. Then Jimmy had to fill in 3 different shapes that did not show which shapes to use. He figured out right away that he wasn't going to find the exact match to what was on the paper. For 2 of the 3 patterns, he was able to pick out the necessary pieces immediately. The middle of the patterns gave him a little challenge, but he didn't get frustrated. He stopped, thought about the problem, carefully positioned the pieces he did place, and identified the piece that would fill in the gap. Caleb had his own pattern to fill in, and he did very well... until he got bored and wandered away. =)

This week's letters are H and I. To start the week, I read the Bible verses we'll be memorizing ("Honor your father and your mother." Exodus 20:12 and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13) along with the stories in the book that help explain what the verse really means. I was amazed at how well Jimmy understood the concept that Jesus gives us spiritual muscles ("all things" being all the things that God commands us to do), but he had a surprising amount of trouble getting what "honor" meant. That certainly explains a lot. LOL!