With its all its controversy, we love Thanksgiving. We always make our own decorations, prepare food and clean together to get ready for the holiday, but the kids really enjoyed having some themed trays last year so we did it again this year!
We have been going through a lot of transitions and one of the biggest ones has been settling into a new country. Homeschooling has adapted a bit to cater to our small hotel apartment but we are making it work. This is what our work table looked like for Thanksgiving week. The work available to them is a lot less than our usual shelves with up to ten rotating weekly activities back in Saudi, but for now we are making the best of what we have.
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| The Work Table (clockwise): Clothespin turkey, Thanksgiving images on cutting strips, gluing practice, pencil sharpening, pumpkin sensory basket and book on autumn |
Making a clothespin turkey and Thanksgiving cards were Abe and Mimi's favorite trays. The clothespin turkey was especially good for Mimi in helping her work on strengthening her hands. For the first day she was quite frustrated because she couldn't open the clothespins but she was persistent and I continued to model for her how to carefully open the clothespin using the tips of my fingers. By the end of the week she was finally able to make her own turkey and boy was she happy. "I did it, look!" Music to my ears :)
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| Abe making a clothespin turkey |
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| Thanksgiving card with images glued |
And of course there were Thanksgiving preparations to be done as well! This year we made a Thanksgiving banner painting stencils, and then I cut them out and strung them on some gardening twine.
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| Painting Stencils! |
And, of course there was the food. They were really only interested in making the pies this year! We made the pie crust from scratch and completely by hand. They loved digging their little fingers into the dough and smacking it together to form a disc-shape. Scooping pumpkins did not get the same excitement but they still enjoyed scooping the "guts" out.
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| Scooping pumpkins for pumpkin pie |
We also made a "Thankful" tree (no photo, sorry!), inspired by Craftionary. The kids are a bit young to understand the concept but the idea was to get them thinking about what they have and being thankful for it. They were really interested in tacking the leaves on the tree but not so much about talking about being thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving!
