What we've been up to...

We've been working on our Pilgrim study and are about done and ready to move on to some Christmasy stuff!

But I thought I'd show you our Give Thanks countdown chart. The numbers are on pockets. And I put some little cards in each pocket. So the little one can pull one out each day. I've shown below in the pictures what those cards look like and what kind of things I wrote on each card. I purposely did not put "something" in each pocket other than the card. I wanted her to focus on not getting something, but rather seeing what she already has. It was hard on her, because she sure was expecting there to be a little treat of some kind in there. But I think in the end it's better I didn't, and one day she'll agree with me too:)

I also wanted to show a couple books that we've been reading through.

Rebekah in Danger fit right into our Pilgrim study. It tells the story of a girl and her family as they are trying to make it through the first winter in America. The Felicity book isn't set in the same time period, probably about 100 years later, and is part of the American Girl series of books. They are really pretty good books. We've read through Kirsten and Kit and are now working our way through Felicity. The little one isn't interested in the American Girl dolls, thankfully:), but she does love the books. And so far they have been really good.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Books, books, books...

The best part of today was from 3-5 this afternoon. We had a lot of reading to catch up on and there was also some fun reading we wanted to do too. I told the little one we would need to find a comfy place to be for a while, so we planted ourselves on the sofa and dug into our books. And after one brief snack break, we were done reading at around 5p.m. and neither one of us could believe that 2 hours had just gone by!

I loved it. It was so fun to sit with her and read to her and to see her so "into" some of the stories. She gets fidgety when the story gets intense. She always wants to hear "just one more chapter!!" And she loves to imagine the story in her mind and then later act out parts of the book. She will even sew herself clothes, so she has a wardrobe to go with her stories.

I love that books enhance her already active imagination. And I hope as she gets older, her love for books just continues to grow and grow...and I hope she's always in the mood for just one more chapter:)

This week...

Since nothing very exciting has been going on today, the little decided she would like to show you what she has been working on today and this week.

We did this today. It was a coloring page from here.

The little one colored it and then we laminated it and

now she has a Thanksgiving placemat!

This is a book she has chosen to read and do a

kinda-sorta book report on. Basically she will read it and

either verbally or in a few written sentences tell me what she learned.

She's actually really excited about doing it.

These are pictures of her latest lapbook.

It is about Thanksgiving.

We got the lapbook from A Journey Through Learning. They have all kinds of lapbooks, notebooking and unit studies. We've done a couple of their lapbooks before, and they have been easy to use and allow us to incorporate them into what we are already doing.

Hopefully next week we'll get to do a couple more hands-on projects. One of which is to make our own bread...from scratch...I'm excited and nervous about that! Hopefully it won't be a flop like the Turkish delight was:)

New additions...

Our little corn cob family is growing. The little one has made a doll for her first corn cob doll, and now they have their own blanket and underneath them is a mattress/bed.

She has also made some Indian friends to go along with her pilgrim

corn cob dolls.

And I'm not sure who these two are. I think just some other ones

who live in the "colony" too:)

I think the little one has an amazing imagination, but when she gets inspired by the things we are studying, it really soars...and I hope that never stops!

Lots of reading tonight...

Over at the Homeschool Post they have opened their voting for homeschool blogs. It's really fun to look through all the categories and find some really great blogs to read. So I think that's where I'll be spending the rest of my night tonight! If you want to check them out too, just click here. Voting is open until November 20. Have fun!!

One of the many things you can do with corn...

Today we went outside and crushed up a little corn to make some "corn bread patties." I'm sure the Pilgrims' corn bread probably looked and for sure tasted a lot better, but we were going for a modified version of the real thing:)

First there was the collecting of the corn.

We used some that was left on the road after

the field across from our house was harvested...that was handy:)

Then the little one got busy.

She started "grinding" our corn!

And then we added a little bit of this and a little bit of that...

and well here's what we ended up with.
It isn't pretty, but it was fun:)

And then we headed back in to do some more sewing.

While we were outside we found a lonely

piece of corn, so the little one came up with

an idea for it.

Her very own, and very first, corn cob doll!

Let me introduce you to Laura!

Can you guess that someone is really lovin' the Pilgrims?!!

It's almost done...

Well the little one is almost finished with her sampler. She is still working on some of the "finishing touches." We even went out and bought a frame the other day, so we'd be ready to frame it when it's completely finished:)

So here's a peak at the almost finished project...

She's done a great job!

I'm very proud of her!