Thanksgiving Downloads

My girls have really enjoyed planning their Thanksgiving table around these free printables.  The menu planning, napkin rings, and name cards have already been assembled.  Be sure to check out Paper and Glitter for these fun paper crafts.

Nature Scavenger Hunt

We started our day by searching for these nature treasures on our scavenger hunt.

 This free printable has been in my stack of things to do for months, but I can not remember what lovely blog it came from.  Please let me know if this scavenger hunt page came from your site.

The girls started racing to see who could find each item first, but as they got harder to find, they started to work together.  Olive decided to search for the perfect sticks, while Jem searched for two circle rocks. This was a good activity to do and started our day off right.

Living Learning Books- Butterflies

Our caterpillars have arrived in the mail and have already started making their chrysalis. This is the third year that we have ordered monarch butterflies from Insect Lore and it never gets old for my two girls. In about 3 weeks the butterflies will be named and released into grammy's garden.

I am so excited to be using our new science curriculum called Living Learning Books,  created by veteran homeschool mom, Sandi Strenkowski. In level one science we will be learning about animals, human body, and plants. The best part about Living Learning Books new format is that you are now provided with weekly lesson plans and an easy downloadable format for both vertebrates, invertebrates, and the human body (coming soon). I love that these lessons can be used for multiple ages and you can add as much to a subject as you would like or keep it simple with just the basics. Each lesson has coloring and activity pages, crafts, cooking, and suggested reading.

Our Butterfly Lesson: 
Read-                                     Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons
                                              Waiting for Wings by Lous Ehlert
                                              The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
                                              The Butterfly House by Eve Bunting

Projects-                                Antennae headband
                                              Baggie Butterfly Garden
                                              coloring pages
                     
 Cooking-                              Butterfly Apples
                                              Caterpillar Cookies                          
                                              

I think this is a good start to the week ahead...plus as an added bonus their is a free sample unit to download on Sandi's site here!

Easter Songs and crafts

 The girls made these easy "Hosanna" branches to use in church on Palm Sunday, but we also use them as Easter Egg holders.  Just use a sheet of green construction paper, fringe it with scissors, wrap the paper around a toilet paper roll, and secure with tape for a "Hosanna" branch.

Add an Easter Egg for an egg holder... we also like to have races around the house with this one. If the egg falls out, you have to go back to the front door and start again.

I can't believe Easter is just 2 weeks away. I discovered this site on Friday and it's really great. Delicious Ambiguity has a wonderful Easter song book to download here.

You can also find some other ideas to go with this bunny book here at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

Collage Story Telling and download

Grab some old magazines, glue sticks, and scissors and let the kids spend an hour putting together an art collage story.  I tried explaining to Olive that the pictures could be whatever she wanted and glued in any direction she would like. This is how her neat collage turned out....

I then had her tell me a story with the photos she chose for her collage. I loved it, but it was a very long story. I asked her to tell me another story prompting her with these "about" questions and she came up with a very funny one.

Who: A tall girl named Curly.

What: She wanted to travel, but was too busy with work so she snuck out of work to go.

Where: She traveled to Italy.

When: Yesterday, but she liked it so much she decided to stay.

Why: It was so pretty and she had a big house.


If you would like to download this idea, please click on the below image.

It may be my years as a reporter, but getting to the meat and bones of a story is important.

 

  

Jem loves to cut and paste too...her collage is a little more abstract!

Early Bird Homeschool has some great ideas for making story logs, here.

Free Chore Charts

Sometimes a Mama needs to get mad to get some action around this place! Today I felt like I was saying the same thing over, and over, and over, and nothing was getting put away, or cleaned up. I found this "bright and happy" chore chart from here to help with my cause. Hopefully seeing what they need to do and watching mom cross it off the chart will work? I'll keep you posted.

 

This is the face Mama makes when she's mad!