Five in a Row - Cranberry Thanksgiving

We rowed this in October during the week of Canadian Thanksgiving because I was pretty sure I wouldn't manage to get the book from the library close to our Thanksgiving date.  The kids love this book so much though that I ended up buying it on ebay to use as one of their Christmas presents.

Here are the activities we did.


Practical Life and Sensory:

Spooning cranberries (aka "feed the turkey")

Fall sensory bin

Fall/Thanksgiving Stereognostic bag  - We took pairs of some of the items from the sensory bin, and also some Indian corn.  One from each pair was lined up on the mat and the other were placed in a drawstring bag.  J-jo or Bear picked one of the objects on the mat and then tried to find it from the objects in the drawstring bag, relying only on their sense of touch.

Leaf matching and discrimination (I had these from last year so I am not sure where they came from, maybe prekinders.com?).

 It turned into a multiplication lesson.  I was writing upside down so please excuse the funny 2's.

We had other Fall themed work out that I already wrote about here and here.


Geography:

New England states lapbook components from Homeschool share. 
(New England States and also here and here)


Science:

Cranberries - We saw how cranberries are harvested in this  photo tour and then Bear completed a flap book from Homeschool Share.

Starch - we sprayed laundry starch on cloth napkins and then I ironed them and we watched the starch stiffen the fabric.  We did the discussion from the FIAR guide.   I didn't have iodine so we couldn't test for starch in food, but we discussed starchy food and the food group of carbohydrates.  I had Bear find me foods from the pantry and fridge that were from that food group.

Art:

How to draw a turkey (or here or here for a more realistic one)

Silhouettes - Bear did silhouettes for a project at Master's Academy of Fine Arts in September, so we just talked about that project and didn't bother doing another one.  A good artist tie-in here would be Roy Henry Vickers.  I love that Canadian artist.  We also did silhouettes when Bear was younger.

Learning about cool colors and warm colors and comparing the same scene painted different palettes  (in the illustrations).  This could have been a great painting project too, but we ran out of time.

Leaf collages

History:

Wrote with a "quill" to experience how the pilgrims might have written letters.

Read the following of the go-along books from the book list from Blog She wrote.


Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation by Diane Stanley
The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh

...If you Sailed on the Mayflower by Ann McGovern
The Story of Squanto First Friend to the Pilgrims by Cathy Dubowski

Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland
The Pilgrims of Plimouth by Marcia Sewall

Memories:
We drank cranberry juice and made cranberry wreaths (we glued them on with white glue) and of course the cranberry bread recipe from the book! 

We also watched a retelling of the story on YouTube, which was similar but different, and lent itself well to discussion about the similarities and differences between the two.  The actual story starts after a bit, not right at the beginning.  The kids enjoyed it.

It was a great row!

Linked to Homeschool Creations' Preschool Corner and 5K too.