Cranberry Thanksgiving

Cranberry Thanksgiving is one of our all time favorite books.  I don't know if it is because it was one of the first successful unit studies our family did , if it is because of the yummie treat the reading of the story always demands or if it is just the signaling of the changing seasons we enjoy most.  Whatever it is, this story is here to stay and a family classic in our home.

This season I decided to share the story with our homeschool co-op class.  This class was for k and 1st graders.  We started out by identifying the New England States on our maps and coloring them.  I used a printable from Homeschool Shares Unit Study found here.

Then we watched a video from You Tube of the cranberry harvest:

From Bog to Table

I think the children really love seeing all the equipment used to bring cranberries to our table.

After all the background information it was time to read out story:

And of course, we followed it with a tasting of Cranberry Bread:

Here is a good recipe to try from Ocean Spray. I don't have a picture of it but we also cut the berries in half and used them to stamp a decorative border on a copy of the recipe to take home and try.  I really loved how the stamping turned out and gave so much detail of the berry's insides.

After our snack and a bit of play we strung cranberries and popcorn to take home and hang on a tree or bush to feed the birds, chipmunks and squirrels.

That's it.  A quick study for Thanksgiving.  Thanks for stopping by and I am linking up with Montessori Monday.

Winnie the Pooh Storybook Center

Every afternoon after lunch I have both our little and big kids lie down on their beds for read-aloud time.  This is a peaceful time of rest for the older children and a relaxation time for the little children prior to napping. We all look forward to this time of day and for some strange reason I like sitting in the hall reading to the children as they listen, rest and add the occasional opinion, question or comment. We recently finished reading The House at Pooh Corner, so I thought it would be fun to put a learning center together.  My primary source for our center were these printables. Here are our 2 youngests in learning action:

I was so delighted to see this game in the activity pack.  The game  is called Honey Money and has been a wonderful help to identifying the coins for K.  She has asked to play many times and each time that we do she always wants more.

I really liked this printable because I have not seen anything like it on the internet.  B had to match the counter color to the background color on the page.  Wonderful color identification practice, matching and fine motor, because for those young hands it is still so hard to pick-up small items.

In the printable pack there was a set for patterning activities.  B is just beginning to work on this skill so we had a fun introduction.  The pattern set could also be cut up for a game of Memory or Go Fish.

When we practiced patterning I would walk B through each card and have him look at them for details like color or size before he followed the pattern sequence.

 

This was a fun activity to match the real life animal with the character animal.  This could be printed as a worksheet, laminated for reuse or like here, we put it in our Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center.

The Pooh Pack also included a beginning addition page which was great to use with our Montessori Addition Strip Board.

Then of course a Pooh story must be accompanied by a Pooh Show.  The older children were the directors and the 2 littles were the actors.  I had totally forgotten about these 2 costumes and it was so fun to see the littles wearing them.  The Pooh Bear costume is my favorite because of the puffy Pooh belly.

Here K and B are holding their version of honey pots, really syrup containers from Costco.

We also looked at the book Tigger's Giant Lift the Flap Book

Then we gathered all of our bears together for a bear hunt.  The children searched their rooms for bears and then I hid them around the house for them to find.  These hide and seek activities are always an enjoyable activity.  The bears could also be counted or sorted according to size or color.

And finally we read every bear book in the house.  My favorite bear books are by Karma Wilson.  We own Bear's New Friend, which you can't see in the picture.  We also really enjoy Martin Waddell's bear series.

Now I think it is time to fix a little :smackerel" for dinner.

I'm linking up with Montessori Monday and the Preschool Corner.

Storybook Center--The Mitten

I have always been a fan of learning with good books.  In the past I have used Peek with Books, Five in a Row and Homeschool Share to develop study units for our favorite books, areas of interest or new learning. Then I thought why not make a center based on our seasonal reading and I have been blessed that there has been something for everyone.  From reading, writing, hands on and reporting all of the children have been able to use our newly created center.  Our first storybook center is based on The Mitten by Jan Brett. The resources I used to develop our center materials are below:

The Mitten Printables

The Mitten Printable Pack

Activities to go with the book

We also read The Hat by Jan Brett.

B and K had a lot of fun with this mitten printable:

Painting with a brush

Painting around the dots with a brush.

Dot Painters

It is hard to see but K is using one of her painted mittens for fine motor practice with stickers.  She is trying to place the sticker in the circle only without going out of the lines.

I hid The Mitten animals in the rice box for B to find.

K and B going on an animal hunt for The Mitten animals using my very large kitchen mitt.

Our animals are numbered on the back and K is putting them in order

K completing a mitten beginning sound printable in our Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center.

Ayden is sorting one and two syllable words from the story.

E and A went on a "write the room" hunt.  Each of the children had clipboards (everything is more fun with a clipboard, right?) and had to search for each of the animals and copy their names.  K also did this several times, one time just looking for the animals and checking them off and another time looking for the animals and tracing their names.  I thought is was a fun way to incorporate copywork into our storybook center.

 

And finally E and A are completing an animal notebook page for one The Mitten animals to put in their Exploring God's Creation Notebook.

This has been a fun idea that we have worked on over the last 3 weeks.  I hope to change out the center this week to The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  I'll keep you posted.