It was my turn to host the preschool co-op this morning. I taught about Thanksgiving. First we read a book called The Story of Thanksgiving. It is a nice, simple story that explains why we have Thanksgiving.
Then we made some pilgrim hats for the kids to wear. They turned out really cute. I think I'm going to have Lincoln's class make them at Friday Fun this week.
After the hats we made Indian (Native American?) necklaces out of yarn and dyed pasta noodles. I'd never died pasta noodles before this week. It's so easy, and makes the necklaces look so much cooler than just using regular pasta. So I think we will also make Indian necklaces with Lincoln's class. (Sweet! Lincoln's class is practically planning itself. It's sounding like, for once in my life, I am going to be able to reuse an idea and save myself some time!) Here are the preschool kids in their hats and necklaces:
After they had dressed the part, we had a small popcorn snack. Then we read another story that had to do with how we celebrate Thanksgiving today. It's called Thanks for Thanksgiving. I really love this book. It's cute and rhymes, but the illustrations are the best part. All the pictures are drawn from the perspective of a child watching preparations being made for the Thanksgiving feast. So the scenes look like you are looking at them from about knee height. I love it. And it talks about the things kids are thankful for. It's really cute. Read it.
Then we went back to the table and made our own thankful turkeys. We talked about the things we were thankful for and the different traditions each family had for expressing the those things. I had a few pictures cut out that they could glue onto their turkeys to show they were thankful for their house, food, family, and books. I let the kids go wild, and glue their feathers on any way they wanted, so things got pretty interesting. But I think they still turned out cute. Here's Ivan's, along with his cutting sheet (which was pretty simple to make in Word), and our dyed pasta.
How to Dye Pasta Noodles
1. In a ziplock bag, put 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol, 10 drops of food coloring, and 1 cup pasta.
2. Let sit a couple hours, then turn the bag over, and let sit a couple more.
3. Dump the pasta our onto cookie sheets covered with a layer of paper towels and let dry 24 hours.
So that was preschool today. I thought it turned out ok...a little heavy on the arts and crafts side, but oh well.
Lincoln and I did some good school work today too. Last week he finished his Primer (Kindergarten level) book in Math U See. He liked it, and did well, so I went ahead and ordered him the Alpha (first grade) book to start working through. We started at the first of the week and the first lesson was on place value. Math U See has this cool idea called Decimal Street, that works really well for explaining place value. For the last couple of days, Lincoln and I have been building our own Decimal Street our of poster board, and playing with our manipulatives to make all kinds of numbers, and showing where they live on Decimal Street.The idea is this, basically you have a street with houses on it. The little green house is the units (ones) house. Nine little unit blocks can live there, but as soon as a tenth one comes along, they all have to move to a bigger house if they want to stay together. The tens house. The tens house is the tall blue house that holds the tens. Nine tens can live in the house, but as soon as a tenth one comes along, they have to move into a bigger house if they want to stay together...the hundreds house, which is the red castle house.
We can play two ways. #1 I put different numbers of manipulitives in each house, and Lincoln has to knock on each door and ask how many are home. He knocks on the units door, three units are home. Five tens are home and one hundred is home. Then he looks at what he has written down and tells me the number is 153. Then I clear the board and put our more manipulatives. #2 I give him a number, say 396, and he has to put the correct number of manipulatives in each house and tell me the number. Linc has been really enjoying this game. I think we played for about an hour today while the other kids napped. So Math U See is going well, and that makes me happy.
And this child...
I don't even know. Yes. She's climbing in the window seal in her monster snow hat and Snow White underwear. I have no idea why. Because she's two? The only reason she's in underwear is because we are going through a stripper phase. She refuses to keep a diaper (or clothes, for that matter) on her body. So, as an alternative to getting pee everywhere without my knowing, we have entered into some sort of potty training phase. She runs around in underwear and is occasionally agreeable to trying to sit on the potty. She's probably pooped in the potty at least 8 times though. Not on any kind of regular, or trust-able basis, but at least the idea is getting across, maybe? I can't count the number of times I've gone to wake her up in the morning and found her butt-naked on her soaking wet bed. This means a lot of laundry for me, and a safety pin through the zipper of her jammies for her. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she figures out how to get the safety pin off pretty quickly. She's figured out how to get around all our greatest parenting tricks so far. I keep telling myself that I'm happy she's smart. Stinker.
After preschool, and lunch, and naps, and school, all I really wanted to do was lie in bed and read my book club book. We're reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for November. Of course the kids didn't want to entertain themselves and let me read in peace; but instead of giving up, I just invited them to join me. They brought in stacks of their books, and we all piled in my bed and cuddled up under the covers and had a books in bed party. Surprisingly, I actually got a decent amount of reading done. I'm sure we were quite the site when Aaron came home from work.
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