Party on Dude....Ummm, I Mean Dad!

We had such a blast at Dad's surprise birthday party! He turned 60 the weekend before Thanksgiving and retired from his job of 38 years in EMS. He secretly knew something was up, but we still managed to pull a surprise on him I think! We all dressed in our best 60's gear (get it? Since he was 60 haha)



We got a lot of our ideas from Pinterest like this picture idea:


and we all wrote him letters to tell him a fun memory that we had of him.


Even the cake was tie dye!


Of course the kiddos LOVED the balloons best!


Here is the present we got for dad, which he loved! I asked each kiddo what they loved best about Poppa and then I typed it up on a little sign for them to hold and took their picture. J said that he loves Poppa because he "tickles my toes and watches TV with me." E said she loved Popps because he "drinks coffee and chases her down the hallway." It turned out really cute and it was such a simple, but meaningful idea!


It's always fun when the fam all gets together! Happy Birthday Dad!

Thanksgiving Activities Continued

Well, sorry about E's silly face in this pic. Apparently she has had too much turkey! This is a cute little activity I made for the kids. We did so many activities with this one little mat. It just has turkey body on it and the feathers are separate. Here are some activities we did with just this one little guy!
-We made patterns with the feathers
-We counted the feathers
-We rolled the die and put that many feathers
-We put some feathers on the right side and some on the left. Then we compared the sides (which has more? etc.)
-We put some feathers on the right side and some on the left. Then we counted them altogether (this is really adding sets!)

So much math with just one little math mat! I LOVED this activity AND I will definitely be able to use it again next year for more complicated math concepts. I didn't get enough pictures of some of the other things we did, but here are some more. I took this turkey coloring page and put capital and lowercase t/T all over it. I also mixed in other letters (especially ones that look like T!) and the kiddos had to stamp the T. We also read This is the Turkey and Thanksgiving Day by Gail Gibbons. I'm a sucker for Gail Gibbons nonfiction! We did the typical art projects too (handprint turkey, mosaic turkey, etc.)

Hope everyone enjoyed their Turkey Day and didn't get hurt on Black Friday!

And now on to Christmas!!!!!

Yes I have two crazy turkeys in my house! We have been having fun with all our Thanksgiving activities. Here are a few that I wanted to share with you. Most of them I have found via pinterest (which, by the way if you are not pinning yet, you really should be-It's awesome!).

This is a beginning sounds game, which my kiddos LOVE! I thought this might be a challenge for them, but it was not at all. It was so easy for them that I'm going to have to make more!
So basically it is just a cute little seasonal pic (you could do whatever) and three options for a beginning sound. Then you punch holes in cardstock below the letters. The turkeys then take a pipe cleaner and put it through the one they think is the beginning sound. Then they can flip it over and look for the sticker to see if they got it right (I think that's their favorite part!)

We have also been doing a lot of matching with dry erase markers, which my turkeys are obsessed with! They had a matching activity at church the other day that was difficult for them, so I thought we should practice that! The worksheets can be found here

One big project we have been working on is a Thanksgiving Book. If any of you really know me, you know I'm a little obsessed with book-making. I loved to make books when I was in the classroom. I really think it helps students/kids love books that much more. So we've begun the book making process here!


Some days we get a lot done here (homeschool wise anyway) and other days.....

..... it's just too much to do homeschool!

We have a big birthday coming up this Friday for our Poppa! I can't wait to post some pictures from what we are getting for him! He will love it. P.S. Nona if you're reading this, don't say anything to Poppa!

Halloween Costumes and Sewing

Here are just a few pics from Halloween, Pumpkin Patch and a cute litle skirt I sewed for Sass!


These are of our trip to the Pumpkin Patch. That's brother giving the scarecrow a high five when he finished the little kid corn maze, which was neat. At each station the kids had to trace an animal print and once they got them all they were done. They did this one with Nona while Uncle Do and I did the big one, which was fun (but HARD!)




These are from Trunk or Treat at Nona's church where Sass and Brother were Raggedy Ann and Andy. I was supposed to be a housewife from the 50's, but it was raining and really I just looked kind of pitiful-HA! The second is from Halloween night. Everyone usually congregates at my Aunt Robin's. Usually we're not able to, since we lived too far away-Not anymore! SO we had chili and just hung out. It was nice to be with family. That's Brother and Sass and Baby Jonah in the middle. They just all happened to have their skeleton pj's one. Brother's pants have gone MIA though!



Here is the cute skirt I made for Sass! Super easy and CUTE!!! She wore it everywhere this season-Pumpkin patch, church, Halloween parties!

Halloween Activities

Well, we really didn't do too much for "Halloween" homeschooling per se. Not necessarily because I'm against it or anything like that. Time just simply got away from me. We spent two weekends at different pumpkin patches and we went to Trunk or Treat, so between all that, I just didn't have a whole lot of time to make any activities. Here are some things we DID get around to doing:

-We measured the pumpkins we got at the patch using our different lego blocks and unifix cubes
-We made a shape scarecrow, which was a lot of fun. I gave the kids a completed copy and they had to try and figure out how to put it together, which was surprisingly difficult for them (Note to self: more work on this later!)
-Our favorite activity was the candy corn match. We had the three parts of the candy corn with the capital, lowercase, and a picture and they had to line them up all correctly. They LOVED this activity and they were SOOOO good at it!




I also did some sewing in October. I made this cutie little skirt for Em and some scarves. I wanted to do a few fun things before the Christmas activities begin!
We also took a week out to do dentist activities because the kids had their first trip to the dentist at the end of Oct. I'll post some of those activities next! I can definitely say they were VERY well prepared. The kiddos also had their first trip to Dollywood this month! So all in all, very busy!