Thanksgiving Tree

(We're still waiting... but enough on that.)

This year we are giving thanks for nouns on our thanksgiving tree.  We've been using Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind this year as our language arts base with Jonah.  The first 50 lessons have done a lot of work with nouns.  I knew that we've really hammered it in when after dinner the other night I said "A noun is..." and Rowan replied "the name of a person, thing or idea" and of course Jonah chimed in to let him know that he missed 'place', but the fact that Rowan has heard the lesson enough to give a pretty good definition made me grateful that we'll be moving on to verbs soon.  

Anyway, as a final review we made four birds from Rowan's wet-on-wet paintings with the words 'person', 'place', 'thing' and 'idea' and then I cut lots of leaves (again out of wet-on-wet paper) and wrote 'person', 'place', 'thing' or 'idea' on the backs of these as well.  After dinner some nights we've been pulling leaves out of the dish and writing something we are thankful for from the category on the leaf.  Jonah then hangs them near the correct bird.  Its been a fun way of keeping up with school while we are taking a break from formal lessons while family is here and we are transitioning to a family of five.  And most importantly we're practicing gratitude, which is a much more important lesson than nouns.

More Pilgrim and Wampanog Pictures

Jonah waiting for his friends to arrive.

We had a fun circle time with the story of the first Thanksgiving and some other Thanksgiving books.

8 Toddlers sitting still - this didn't last for to long.

A Pilgrim and Wampanog Thanksgiving party

Jonah's friends Isaiah and Joshua show their handprint turkeys

Jonah devours his turkey cupcake

Jonah's turkey...  "The turkeys are here, the turkeys are there, the turkeys are everywhere!  The turkeys are up, the turkeys are down, the turkeys, the turkeys, the turkeys all around!  The turkeys are in, the turkeys are out, the turkeys, the turkeys the turkeys are all about!" (You can sing this to The Farmer and the Dell and do the motions with a turkey)

My little pilgrim with his Wampanog headdress.

Getting ready for a Pilgrim and Wampanog party

I made turkey cupcakes and boat place cards last night for Jonah's party. 

Jonah woke up this morning to find our whole house transformed.  First, I moved our table, coffee table and most of the toys out of our main rooms.  Then, I took the legs off the two identical Ikea desks from upstairs and propped them up on amazon boxes to make the perfect sized toddler table in the living room.  Mom sent me the paper plates and napkins and the table cloth which we used when we were kids.  

Jonah was very excited to find his place at the table this morning.  He wanted me to take pictures of both sides of his napkin. 

Gratitude Tree

So here is our Thanksgiving tree.  The leaves are being added daily - so there are more now then when we took the picture.  We can all write things we are thankful for on the leaves and then hang them.  The things we are grateful for range from Ketchup and marshmallows to the truly important grandparents.
And those of you who we have talked to recently have probably heard about Jonah's dramatics/ general moodiness.  He is obviously exploring emotions.  There might be a full minute between the above and below pictures - from utter joy to deep sorrow.

Above our sad Jonah you can see our nature table.  Jonah was forever bringing sticks and bits of outside, but the floors were getting so dirty and I was finding crumbled leaves and bits of sticks here and there about the house.  I was sad to have to tell him that he had to leave the things outside.  I just finished the book "the Creative Family" and it gave me the idea of having a designated spot for our nature play.  Right now there are a couple balls of wool yarn, some butternut squash and an assortment of sticks, leaves, and pinecones.  It think it is beautiful and we are having a great time stacking the pinecones and helping the squash to have conversations.