The Holidays are here!!! I enjoy this time. It is so fun but it is also so busy. We try to fit too much in sometimes and I just want to remind you that it’s not all about the things you manage to do, but enjoy it with the people who matter. I will say that this year we never made it to a pumpkin patch or carved a pumpkin for Halloween, but we still had fun together and we carved our pumpkin later. Here are some ideas if you want to do them on Thanksgiving, or just for fall or save them for next year!
For the pre-thanksgiving weeks we read the Thanksgiving story. This is a great story to understand the meaning of the start of thanksgiving and teach some history in an entertaining way. It helped the children place themselves in that time of history.
Turkeys
Turkeys are what I think about when thanksgiving comes around. I do not even enjoy turkey in the meal, but I think they are symbolic. Every year we seem to make different turkeys, one day I should compile them all, but this year we had two painted turkeys. First, we took the typical hand print craft to make one. Isla used her hand prints to make multiple feathers and then her footprint for the body. After they dried we cut them out and she glued them into a turkey. Evie did not have as much time because she did it after school work so she stamped her hand prints directly onto the paper and cut out her traced foot for the body. Both of them make super cute decor for our wall this season.
Isla made another much larger turkey on butcher paper on the wall. One of her favorite activities is when I tape paper to our sliding glass door to paint. I try to prep it in different ways, sometimes with letters or numbers or something she follows my instructions and other times it is free paint. This time I did a tape resist turkey. Make sure you don’t make my mistake and use tape that is removable. I ended up tearing the bottom of the turkey when I went to take the tape off, so I just matched the other side and matched it. She did a really good job painting inside the tape shapes, so the tape just looks like a really cool outline. You could also tape directly to the outside of a window and add a little dawn to some washable paint and paint this turkey directly onto the window!!
Placemats
Another simple craft we did that is easy to prep, and the kids could make them before dinner, are placemats. Fold a sheet of brown construction paper hot-dog style (fold the short side so it’s long like a hot-dog). Cut slits about an inch apart along the fold and stop an inch before the edge. Cut long strips of thanksgiving color construction paper and begin the weave. Glue down the ends when you are all done.
Pumpkins
Pumpkins are also very Thanksgiving-centric and since we did not carve our pumpkin for Halloween we did it after and turned it into a science lesson. We discussed the weight, and if it would float or sink. There are lots of other things you could do such as guess the measurements, but we went right to carving! We did estimate how many seeds were in it. The girls drew on a simple face to carve out, because our main goal was to make it throw up!!! We did the elephant toothpaste for this!
How to make an Elephant Toothpaste Pumpkin:
- Place a container inside the pumpkin. I used a tall vase, but you can use a plastic bottle and a funnel and collect these materials for the throw up!
- ½ cup 6% Hydrogen Peroxide *
- 3 Tablespoons Dry Yeast
- 3 tablespoons warm water
- 1 Tablespoon Dish Soap
- Optional: Food Coloring (We used green for throw up)
*We used 3% hydrogen peroxide for this every time because it is what we have and I never remember to look for 6%. It’s not available in stores that I visit regularly. It still works but I use extra and I used a little extra yeast. The girls mixed the yeast and hot water together first. I added the hydrogen peroxide to the container. An adult should do this part. Then they each added some dish soap. When everything was in the jar, I poured the yeast water and the reactions occurred. Be aware that it makes a mess, so do this outside or on a plastic sheet!! It really looks like our jack-o-lantern was frosting at the mouth.
Kindness Bags
The best part about Thanksgiving is that we get to spend it with friends and family. We’ve had multiple thanksgiving feasts and we haven’t even had our family one yet. We have been blessed with such an awesome home school family to celebrate with. It also happens to fall by Evie’s birthday so we throw her into the mix. It has been an annual tradition to make blessing bags and it would be such a fun thing to incorporate into a family thanksgiving as well. We collect toiletries, snacks and other necessities in a ziplock bag and add a little card. This year we had a donation of drawstring bags which was amazing. We still added the ziplock because it’s good for storage. We keep these bags in the car and hand them out when we see someone who looks like they need it. It’s resulted in some really grateful smiles and the girls feel like they did something helpful.
