November isn’t nearly so busy up in Canada… this American Thanksgiving thing takes getting used to and we have not gotten there yet. I am not a Black Friday shopping person… that is WAY too close to Christmas for my comfort. BUT we do try to cover something about it each year in our homeschool curriculum.

What is funny is that when I do these blog entries looking back at these months long gone I try to think about the month before I look at the pictures on the camera and our phone… November… well beyond Thanksgiving… well I drew a total blank… November, fall, I am pretty sure Nana and Baba took a trip… maybe… crochet, I know I did a lot of that (but when don’t I?)… we had to have homeschooled… crafted some I am sure… but concrete things… well darn you November, you just didn’t stick on the brain!

These flew off to Canada for a group of little girls to enjoy.

Oh wait! Remembrance Day… I mean Veteran’s Day… Though I wear my poppy and called it the former… don’t forget that. We did a mini unit on it that month. I do love the In Flander’s Fields poem (and not just because a Canadian wrote it).

Let’s see… we played in the snow… at the end of the month.

We did Home Depot.

We were thankful with our gratitude turkey feathers.

Echo got her inner artist going.

Trinity and Emanuel helped me make handmade Christmas cards.

We managed to make it to a craft at the Lakeshore educational store. 

We started our Christmas decorating with a mini tree in the basement. 

And put the large one up in the dining area for a lovely Christmas glow.

We made a trip to the Lego store at Mall of America. The kids love playing with the blocks they have out for use. 

Of course we set up our advent calendars. Echo got her very own paper chain countdown that she helped me put together.

We had company over. Cousin Robbie one night, the Schwartz family another.

We made a visit over to Robbie’s house too where Aunty Judy introduced us to their turtle.

And had a homeschool field trip to a newspaper for the twins! 

Of course we did some shopping and with decorations at Walmart and cute little ones at Sam’s.. I took pictures. I think all in all we did good last November!!

November 21-22

We had a rather special Thanksgiving… this was our FIRST American Thanksgiving… turkey and all! The preparation was quite extensive with a second table brought out of the garage, the good china and silver on the adult table and all. There was tons to do the night before and in the morning Nana and Baba were busy cooking quite early in the morning. We had TWO turkeys, two kinds of stuffing (one with sausage), mashed potatoes, a variety of olives, buns, corn… so much food!

The Johnson men carving one of the turkeys

We did DOUBLE our Gratitude turkey for Wednesday in order to fill out our tail a little more.

Gavin

Miss T

And the twins made their turkey centrepieces from the Art for Kids site! Simple and fun and 3D!!! You can find the how to on another site HERE.

So cute!

Really beyond getting ready for Thanksgiving… oh and Ken going in for an IMPORTANT meeting… well we spent time with Nana and Baba and did our basic school stuff. I am definitely going to have to get us back on track with our dinosaurs but we are taking a temporary hiatus on learning about new ones!

Thursday/Thanksgiving had us put our final two feathers on our Gratitude turkey. They LOVED this daily activity!

Zander

Emanuel

Joe, Faithe, Gabriella and Zachary were first ones here followed by Ken’s Aunty Judy, Uncle Jim and his cousins Robbie, Jessica and Angela with her boyfriend Stefan. We had a full house and the kids were over the moon!

Outside with Gabby and Zachary

Hanging out with Aunty Faithe and Nana

We used our very special Home Depot turkey napkin holders AND our Art for Kids turkey centrepieces. The kids were so proud of being able to help decorate the tables. Gabriella brought special paper napkin holders also with a turkey theme!

The kids’ table (sorry Robbie and Jessica! But thanks for supervising!)

Visiting

We ended the day with sitting around and relaxing and LOTS of visiting.

Post dinner rest

Quite the amazing first day of a FOUR day weekend!!!! AND our first day of true snow that STICKS! Though it did not come until the evening. Definitely time to get those boots for the boys!

Thanksgiving is a tiring holiday!

November 19-20

Mondays always feel a little hectic. And this Monday we felt doubly rushed as we really had a TRUE weekend with visits and errands AND a lazy Sunday morning. It was fun!

Trinity: Hello Kitty

Emanuel: fire trucks

Gavin: flowers

Zander: being able to read

Gratitude Turkey

Monday was Ken’s day to teach for once. We worked on a list of to do stuff for them the night before and set it all up so they could work together without me. So I actually got to SLEEP IN properly on a WEEKDAY! It was so nice! And as an added bonus, they did pulleys together! Note the amazing drawings in their journals.

Fun with pulleys

We watched a Wild Kratts episode on Geckos so the boys drew pictures and we recounted what we learned on a special page. The boys are talking about making a poster of random animals of interest. I am all for that!

Geckos

I got a package in the mail that included some special Halloween craft supplies for the kids! I am doing an exchange with my Christian cross stitch group and am almost to the point where my gifts are ready to go! 

Thank you!

With ink in Nana and Baba’s printer (though colour is eluding us) Tuesday was a Thanksgiving print out frenzy! Of course first we had to decide what we were thankful for!

Zander: for Thanksgiving

Gavin: the earth

Emanuel: Echo

Trinity: dolls

Zander and our turkey

We also taped our poem… it took FOUR tries with Echo definitely not in the mood to perform and some miss starts to get it going. This poem was a lengthy holiday one I found in one of my saved resources and a lot of fun as we came up with various gestures to go with it!

Thanksgiving Poem

After worksheets and a dinosaur and some cleaning it was time for GUESTS! Bree and Quinn came to play… and to make us real honest to goodness homemade lasagna. (So amazing!) This also meant that Bree and I got a chance to run out kid free to Target to get supplies, wander a bit and talk about girly things (I am still on the fence as to what colour I should colour my hair!).

With Aunty Bree

The kids played indoors and outdoors but mostly trains!

Playing trains

Their outside creation

Teaching Quinn about Minecraft

And then Echo decided to see how big of a bump she could get with tipping a kitchen stool onto her head!

And trust me, it looked worse later… check back to see!

Thankfully she has terrific big brothers who are willing to hold the cold cloth and ice to the bump for a while while they watched Jake and the Never Land Pirates!

Poor baby

With an AMAZING lasagna for dinner already there for me to warm and serve my evening was mainly crafting and dealing with an injured infant. Time to welcome the Nana and Baba home! Those 3 weeks sped by.

Thank you so much for the supper Bree!