A Time to Be Thankful

This week began our unit for Thanksgiving as well as our unit on the homeless and those in need.  We read several books on both subjects, and we did a lot of discussions and group activity.

Some things we did this week for our Thanksgiving unit:

Thanksgiving Bingo - This was printed out from DLTK's website which has a bunch of preschool games, coloring activites, art projects, etc. to pull from.  You can print out these things in color or in black and white.  For us, I printed out 3 cards (you can print much more than that if you want), and we played forever!
Thankful Thoughts Tree - I made a tree out of brown packaging paper and a bunch of maple leaves from red, orange, yellow, brown, and green construction paper.  For the first day, the boys had to come up with 4 things they are thankful for.  After that, we all come up with one thing a day, and I write those thankful thoughts on the leaves and add them to the tree.  It was very entertaining to hear some of the things that they said.  For example:  one of Sawyer's thankful thoughts was, "I'm thankful for my dog because I love him so much!" and then, three seconds later, "I'm thankful for lions because I love nice lions!".  Hayden had some pretty typical thankful thoughts such as, "I'm thankful for our toys because we get to play with them." and "I'm thankful for holidays because on Thanksgiving we get turkey and on Christmas we get presents."  It will be interesting to see if these thankful thoughts morph as we get more into our homeless/helping others unit.
TeePee Craft - This was just a fun little art project where the boys got to color and decorate a small version of an indian teepee. 
Roll a Turkey Game - This was a game that involved rolling a die and getting a shape based on the number rolled to eventually build an entire turkey.  The first one to complete their turkey won the game.  Hayden enjoyed this game so much that he played it again over the weekend with his Dad.
Make Cranberry Sauce - After reading a couple of chapters in one of our Thanksgiving books, we made cranberry sauce from a pioneer recipe that was in the story.  Later in the week, we taste-tested it with some roasted chicken.  The boys didn't think they were going to like it, but were pleasantly surprised to find out how delicious it was!

Our Homeless/Helping Others Unit will really take effect next week during National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.  However, just to kickstart the boys thinking about it, we read a few books and had some discussions on respecting others' differences, being kind to others, and being helpful to those in need.  On Friday, we joined the Stocking Stuffer Drive with the Sulzbacher Center located in downtown Jacksonville.  We'll use the next two weeks to collect items for this campaign, and then we will take them all to the Center where Hayden will get to see how the items will be given to the Sulzbacher's residents as well as to needy community members as part of holiday gift stockings.  We'll also be given a tour of their facility so Hayden will be able to get a feel for what it is like for those without homes.