Cranberry Thanksgiving (quick n easy)

Our book for part of the week is Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin. It is a cute story where Grandma learns that it is not what is on the outside that makes a good person! This is one of the few books that I did not buy for Five in a Row. The reason I did not buy it because it was out of print. I was lucky that this was the only book that our school library had on my FIAR book list! Out of print books can be soo expensive and it tends to be a problem with some of the FIAR titles. This reason alone will probably be the main reason I will not continue all the way through the FIAR curriculum. I try to find the books while in the states but sometimes, it is just not that easy. I have to return this book since I have had it for two weeks, so we will be doing a short row with it and then move on to our Science learning - dinosaurs.

We read the story and J drew a picture about what we read. She drew Mr. Whiskers holding up the recipe for the cranberry bread.

She practiced her handwriting, writing a quote from the book. We discussed the characters from the book and about Thanksgiving. We talked about the Pilgrims and Indians (who we will study more later). We would have made cranberry bread but I have yet to find cranberries here. So, maybe later. We moved on to our study of dinosaurs which will be our focus for the rest of the week.

We filled out our dinosaur chart with facts that we already know. Then we will add to our chart when we read our dinosaur books.

We had the chance to go to our school consignment sale this week and I scored a dinosaur skeleton as well as a dinosaur card game. I put the skeleton in our sandbox on our balcony. I had J dig up the bones with her shovel and detail brush. It was pretty windy and cold out there but she had fun.

She found a skull and some rib bones. These dinosaur bones also glow in the dark!

J painted a dinosaur with water colors. We will finish this tomorrow.

Our game of the week is the Dinosaur card game that I found at the sale. I only paid 1 TL and even though there were 2 cards missing, we can still play. We played memory first.

I love this face. We then took our knowledge about meat eaters and plant eaters and separated the cards.

After that, we separated our plastic dinosaurs into plant and meat eaters.

J and I discussed her birthday since we are now in November. She asked if her birthday was tomorrow. So, to help her visualize when her birthday will be here, we made a paper chain. Each day she will remove one of the links and she knows when the chain is done, it is her birthday.

She cut the pieces of paper and stapled them together with alittle bit of help.

Here is J with her birthday countdown!

I leave you with a picture of Keke and her friend who dressed up as the wolf. That's my cape that I made from two polar fleece blankets and two knit sheets. They were both single size. Not too bad, huh? Keke is such a ham!