What a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday we had. This year we did something totally different and off the cuff.
Take a look

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Tags: Thanksgiving

Some fun art and a little learning for your Thanksgiving holiday

One thing that goes well with kids and school is arts and crafts. Kids love arts and crafts no matter how creative they are. As long as the craft is simple, kids want to do it.

I have always liked combining my arts and crafts with school and giving purpose to what we are doing. One way of doing this is with a bulletin board. Bulletin boards have always been a friend of mine. I love how they not only can brighten up your schoolroom walls, but they constantly reinforce what it is you are teaching. Until your students have the skill pretty mastered, a bulletin board should be around.

Thanksgiving bulletin boards are a great way to teach several things. First, they could actually teach students about geography. Plan out a course that the pilgrims took and have the students make a map charting the course. The younger students could have a very basic map and the older the children are the more details they could add. If you wanted to study mapping skills this would be optimum.

Perhaps the students could make a giant cardboard ship with the different levels of the ship. They could add supplies made from construction paper or raw materials that could depict what would be needed to make the journey. Different mediums could add a 3D effect to the project. This could be adapted to each grade level by offering pre made things to add to the ship and help from the teacher to the students making the project all themselves.

Another thing you could do is study the pilgrims themselves. What did they do that first year and how were they helped, making a big collage to depict that. Again, this could be very rudimentary or detailed depending on the grade and ability of your student.

You could teach art by going on line and looking at various artists and how they portrayed thanksgiving. Study about how Thanksgiving was portrayed in the 1600’s as compared to now. Look at greeting cards and see if students can notice how art has changed from then to now. Then, the students could design their own art pieces depicting what thanksgiving is to them.

It would be fun to study clothing of the period and find out when the black and white came in and when it went out or did they really wear black and white at all.

The possibilities are endless! So, while you are teaching your kids about this important holiday why not add in some fun by offering an art and craft to go with all that learning. It is like getting fries with your hamburger.

Tags: Art, Art and Crafts, home school, homeschool, kids, parents looking for help, resources, school help, school projects, school tips, teaching, teaching art, teaching methods, Teaching tip, Thanksgiving

Sweet potatoes are a common addition to most Thanksgiving meals. My favorite way to eat them is sweetened with pineapple. It gives a tangy, sweet and scrumptious addition to Thanksgiving. Here is how to make it.

Take 3 large cans of yams and drain
add one can of crushed pineapple with Juice
add 1/3 to 1/2 cup of brown sugar
mix or blend until there are no lumps.
spoon in 1/2 pack of mini marshmallow
Bake at 350 for 35 minutes or until all the marshmallow’s are melted.
Sprinkle the remaining marshmallow’s and bake for 10 more minutes.
Enjoy!

Tags: Sweet potatoes, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving recipes

Autumn is majestic with its falling leaves, warm days and crisp nights. October brings the bustle of the house. We, like many families, like to celebrate Halloween, so we decorate the house, start costumes and rejoice at all the pumpkin birthdays link to my site our family celebrates. It seems shortly after that the hustle and bustle of Christmas comes so fast, that we have no time to sit and reflect the coming holiday. Sure, we celebrate Thanksgiving but how often did we actually take the time to reflect on what it means in our life.

It is time to celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday of family and food. Besides studying the history of  Thanksgiving and the reason for all the special traditions, there is one special tradition we have on Thanksgiving Day. The first part of our day is spending time with our family playing games and riding bikes. Then we indulge in a traditional Thanksgiving meal.  Finally, everyone takes a turn sharing why he or she is thankful. Thanksgiving is a time of reflection for the whole month, not one day. Remembering our gratitude to the Lord for all the heaps of blessings, He has poured out to our undeserving favor.

We struggle to be grateful every day, not just in the month of November or on Thanksgiving Day. However, it seems as if our gratitude is consistently clouded by unforeseen events. I so often hear from people the negative with the positive in one sort or another. Either the sunny side follows the negative of a situation or, the sunny side is great but it could be better if the negative only remedied it. It is funny that I can hear the negative of others, but I am sure I rarely catch the negative of my own voice. I am not being a bragger or believing that I am so perfect I never have negativity. I am sure that I can tend to see the downside with the upside which is dangerous because there is always an upside so who cares about the down side. Move on! Therefore, it is time to catch the negative.

I hear that a habit is made in 30 days and everything is a habit. Bad habits are the same as good habits because they are still habits. Also, learn how to do it once and you will never have to do it again. Finally, gratitude is everything and the more you are grateful the more meaningful life is.

This year not only are we going to do something wonderful and fantastic for our Thanksgiving holiday,  but I am going to write down daily in a gratitude journal all the things that I am grateful for throughout the month of November. With that, I will have created a habit and I will continue my gratitude book throughout the months of the year. Next Thanksgiving, I can spend time in contemplation over the heaps of blessings the Lord has poured out for my family and me.

What will you do this Thanksgiving season? How will you celebrate? Why are you thankful? For what are you thankful? What can you do this year to ensure that you remain on the positive and avoid the negative? Perhaps just thinking of what we are grateful of on a daily basis will help us to understand just how lucky we are.

Tags: Gratitude, Gratitude books, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Activites, Thanksgiving day

Normally for Thanksgiving my family keeps it quite. We stay home with our four children playing games, riding bikes and hang out just talking. I serve the traditional Thanksgiving meal and it is a day of rest and relaxation. Every now and again we do something different. In years past we have had parties and once we had Grandma and Grandpa over and we spent the day playing Nancy Drew. The kids actually remember that as a favorite.
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This year we have the opportunity to do something very unique. We are planning on staying at the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park. It is a ghost town with a boarding house. We are staying in the boarding house with all of our other family members. We will have the whole ghost town to ourselves. It will be like taking a trip back in time. I am going to set a long table and fill it with all kinds of nuts, berries, dried fruit, pumpkins and gourds. I think I will see if everyone will dress up in black and white like pilgrims. I think we will smoke game hen instead of having turkey. There is plenty of grass and they have no phone or TV. I think this will be a Thanksgiving to remember…..

Tags: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving plans, Things to do for Thanksgiving