The Combs Krewe

Today the boys each made a pilgrim couple out of toilet paper rolls. I'm not sure the pilgrims clothes are approved colors especially Ryland's pilgrim ladies blue hair! Tomorrow we will be talking about Squanto and making some Native American crafts.

This week instead of our regularly scheduled schooling the middles (namely Jathan and Ryland) and I are studying about Thanksgiving. Jathan and I have already been reading a great historical fiction series about the Pilgrims called The American Adventure. Book one tells about life in England and Holland as well as the treacherous journey to America. Book two is centered around the experiences of the two main characters, siblings John and Sarah, in their new home, Plymouth.  Today we used the Abeka book Thanksgiving flash-a-cards to talk about how the Thanksgiving story began focusing on the Mayflower. After reading we got crafty! I had taken an empty orange juice container and cut off one side. Jathan cut strips of brown construction paper then glued the "boards" into place on his ship.  Later we cut sails from white construction paper and hole punched them at the tops and bottoms. We slid them onto a dowel rod and secured it to the inside of the boat using a piece of clay. T...

Today the Zoo Mobile came to campus! A friend (thanks Ashley!) watched Ryland and Piper for me so Jathan and I got to go, just the two of us. Plus, you know, the other 20 little kids. = ) Jathan loves animals and we'd just watched a Magic School Bus episode about reptiles so today's little field trip was such fun for us! We got to see a red-tailed hawk then a snake. Here Jathan is checking out how many ribs a snake has. I think it was thrilling to all the kids to get to pet the animals. Each time Jathan would whip around and tell me what it felt like. I think he was pretty proud of himself for petting the spiny-tailed lizard. Doesn't he look like such a big boy in this shot?! I can't believe he's already 4 and going to educational field trips and everything! On the mammalian side, we got to see a bunny and a tiny little opossum! We learned that the opossum is a cousin to the kangaroo. Most of them have little pouches for their babies but this one doe...

Here are some ideas I had for preschool in case you're looking for fun learning opportunities... Jathan and I have been learning through the life of Christ this year. We started with Christmas (all sorts of possibilities there!), of course, then did some King's Day projects (we made a shape and color crown). We talked about John the Baptist and his locust and honey-eating ways and how he wore camel's hair clothes...it "just so happened" that Jathan got a camel toy later that very day! This past week we read the story of the first disciples and the miracle of the filled fishing nets. I up-cycled an orange bag that I'd saved into a fishing net which Jathan filled with fish from the Dollar Tree. We acted our our Bible story with the fish, "net", and a toy boat and man that Jathan already had then we counted how many fish we'd caught using his counting chart. We also talked opposites--the net was empty and then it was SO FULL! Opposite is something w...