Thanksgiving

So, we are obviously well past Thanksgiving, but it has been a busy stretch for us around here, and I'm just now getting to putting up a few things from our Thanksgiving activities.

Isaiah has been really interested in math lately.  (Not going to lie, that makes this former math teacher pretty excited!)  We got a few worksheets online (super shame on me for not remembering the source!), and he used some plain red tiles to match up the problem with the sum.

Isaiah also really enjoyed doing a color by number turkey, as it matched up coloring and math, both of which he's been really enjoying lately.

We really enjoyed having a little Charlie Brown Thanksgiving party with some good friends we have here.  We had a Charlie Brown thanksgiving "feast" of toast, pretzels, popcorn, and gummy bears (can't find jelly beans here) to go along with watching the movie.

I saw this idea online at No Time for Flashcards for an Indian Corn Craft using bubble wrap.  I thought it seemed like fun and pretty simple (which is never entirely true when you pull out paint with young boys, in my opinion), and we had some bubble wrap left from our move here.  

                                      

Isaiah turned his bubble wrap into a paint brush, so it sort of lost the effect, and Ezekiel's take on what I modeled turned into slapping the paper with a paint-filled piece of bubble wrap, which he thoroughly enjoyed but turned messy really quickly!  Still fun.

For our calendar time this month, I wrote a variety of verses from the Bible that talk about giving thanks on popsicle sticks and put them in a container, and each day we pulled one out to read.  The boys actually got really excited about it, mostly because they both wanted to pull out sticks and have *theirs* read, so we usually ended up doing a few each day.  Fine by me!!!

This is not actually my creation, but my good friend Lizzy (check out her Foodies in a Foreign Land blog!) made these for her kids and brought them along to our Thanksgiving dinner, and I just had to include it because I think it is amazing!  Button-on feather turkeys!  Adorable, right?  

This wasn't really a school activity, per se, but it was a fun Thanksgiving treat for my boys and their friends.  I got the idea from FunMom and adapted it based on what we can find here.  If you're wondering why the turkeys are all pink, the marshmallows that we have available here come in packs of pink and white together.  It was actually Isaiah's idea to attach an Oreo cookie for the head.  I had brought some sugar eyes along with us from the States, and we used some local candies we could find to decorate them.

This may not seem like a super exciting picture, but it has been difficult to get Ezekiel interested in books.  He has not been interested in even sitting through a short board book, so to look over at one point during our Thanksgiving celebration and see him looking at a book all on his own...SUPER exciting!

One of my family of origin traditions was to make a "Thankful List" every year during Novemeber.  Each family member added things we were thankful for, and my mom saved them.  It was always neat to look back at what we said during different phases and seasons of life.  I have kept that tradition up with my family now, but this year, I decided to do something a bit more colorful with the boys.  I combined some ideas I have seen and made a tree trunk and branches from a bag, and then I wrapped clear contact paper (brought along from the States) around this column we have.  I cut out leaves, and each day, I would write down something Isaiah said, something I was thankful for, and something we imagined Ezekiel was thankful for :), and the boys would stick them on the tree.  Isaiah usually felt the need to supervise and often "correct" the leaf arrangement.