Mystery' book called "Thanksgiving on Thursday". The story was about a brother and sister who get transported back in time to the first Thanksgiving and get to meet the Pilgrims (including Governor Bradford, Capt. Miles Standish and others), and Squanto and help prepare for that first Thanksgiving feast. It was just enough 'fiction' adventure mixed in with historical fact to keep all of them interested for the entire book, which was about 75 pages. (Well, Lukey fell asleep, but that's because he was tired out from crying over a boo-boo and it was almost nap time...).Then we went at gathered a few branches to decorate our Thanksgiving Tree. We put the branches in a vase and filled it with sand to keep it upright. Then the kids took colorful leaves (that I had cut out of construction paper ahead of time) and wrote things they were thankful for, and we hung them on the branches. It was a lot of fun, and the kids had so many things they were thankful for I had to cut out more leaves! Of course, no project in our family goes completely smoothly, so there was a bit of bickering over who thought of it first to write thankful for 'brothers' and 'sister' - which made for quite an amusing irony - fighting over being thankful for each other! :)
Included on the leaves of our tree (in no particular order other than what I can see from where I'm sitting right now...) are grandparents, brothers, sister, cousins, aunts & uncles, God, electricity, toys, Glick's new house, mom, dad, Jesus, the cross, our dog, food, water, ice cream, house, the USA, Christmas, books, Pottstown & Stowe, clothes, Nanny, Kelsey, PS2, music and Elley. (While Luke was writing Elley, he was explaining how he loved her and was going to be nice to her now - which is actually why he didn't want to share his scissors with her...because he didn't want her to get hurt. Uh-huh. That one should probably win the award for 'most creativity of the day'!)
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Awwww!! Ok, seeing my house on the list of stuff your kids are thankful for made me teary - then Lukey being thankful for Elley (and his creativity included) totally made me cry! I love it and we will be making our thankfulness tree today!!!
Love it. I was just about to look for some family activities to do w/ the kiddos next week and for a book to read to them or get on CD for our car ride to Grandma's. Would this be a good book for my 4 yr. olds...mind you, they're typically pretty attentive w/ books (they're unusual 4 yr. olds like that). :)
Bri, your boys might enjoy it...it's a pretty typical short 'chapter' book for kids...it talks about the different jobs they had to do, how they got/prepared the food, etc. The other thing is that you could break it up...we read it straight through which took an hour and a half or so. There are very few pictures though, and the ones that are included are just black and white sketch types. I was a little leery in the beginning when it talks about the journey to find a 'special magic', so I gave a disclaimer to the kids that if anything got weird we wouldn't be finishing it. However, as it turns out the special magic referred to was the 'magic of community', so it wasn't anything I had a problem with. There's several good lessons throughout the book too. The kids in the book are 7 and 8, and that's about the age I would guess it's geared for, but you could just explain anything they don't get. It's hard to say for sure w/out knowing where your boys are at, but I think it would at least be worth a try. I got it from the library...
I looked it up at the library to do as an audiobook for our 2 hr. trip to Grandma's next week. It said it was to read to ages 4-8, so I think I'm going to give it a try. LA wants me to proofread it first, but I'll run your brief summary of it by him and see if that's good enough.
And, I'm also "stealing" your Thanksgiving tree idea to do w/ our extended family but going to change it up a bit as a way to honor my parents this Thanksgiving.
See you at Grammy's?
Hey, Bri...don't know if you'll even get to read this before I see you, but yep, we'll be at Grammy's for dinner Sat. Look forward to seeing you then. Hope the Thanksgiving book works for your trip, and have great fun with the tree idea. I stole it from someone else, so it wasn't really mine to begin with!! What a great way to use it to honor your mom & dad.
See you soon!
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