Thanksgiving 2011

For the last few days we have enjoyed spending time with the ones we love, eating wonderful food, and taking time to reflect on all that we are thankful for. I just love Thanksgiving so much! We took a break from our weekly letter themed Tot School, but we focused a lot on Thanksgiving.

Here's a look at some of our crafts...

We made a turkey using half of a small paper plate and a mini clothespin.

We practiced counting using numbered clothespins and the turkey place mat I made last year.

We made a turkey using a toilet paper roll and another small paper plate.

We did some Thanksgiving themed coloring.

We matched up the letters of Seth's name on turkey feathers to their spot on a turkey.
(Thanks, Beth.)

We played with turkey stickers.

We also used markers to color a turkey before we glued the pieces together.

Of course, we made some messes, too.

We even wore festive hats and...
clothing.

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

Since we are coming into the Christmas season and we have lots of fun things planned for Advent, we aren't going to resume our letter themed Tot School until the new year. We hope to share lots of fun Christmas related crafts and activities in the coming weeks though so stay tuned.

Tillery Tot School- Letter R

Last week we learned about the letter "R." We focused mostly on rainbows, robots, rockets, and roosters, but we had a few other "R" crafts in there, too. Here's a look at our Tot School Board:

We made rainbow r's for our Tot School Board.

We made a rabbit and

a rooster out of the letter "R."
We also loved reading
Rooster Can't Cock-a-Doodle-Doo
by Karen Rostoker-Gruber.

We made a rainbow out of a paper plate and cotton batting.

We made rainbow pictures using our new Crayola Paint Pens.
(These were 30% off at Hobby Lobby last week.)

We made a rocket ship using Seth's footprint and some shapes.

(You can see the finished rocket on the Tot School board above.)

We also loved reading A Rainbow All Around Me by Sandra Pickney. In the book there is a picture of pieces of ribbon wrapped around a dowel rod. I thought it would be fun to make Seth a rainbow wand, but I just used some rainbow ribbon instead of trying to buy a lot of colors. He loved waving it around the yard.

This week we are going to take a break from learning about a specific letter
and we are going to focus on Thanksgiving.

Skeleton Key Art

When we were recently going through my grandparent's estate, I found a few skeleton keys lying around in my Pepaw's workshop. By the end of the day, I had collected about 15 keys throughout the house and workshop . I knew exactly what I was going to do with them once I got home. I picked up a small frame at Hobby Lobby that was 50% off, picked out my favorite skeleton keys, and one of my Memaw's handkerchiefs and made a new piece of art for our living room. I used the handkerchief as the background in the frame and then hot glued the keys on to it. I love how it turned out and I think it's a perfectly sentimental addition to our living room.

A New Fall Wreath

I started making a fallish inspired wreath for my door several weeks ago during a late night crafting session with a friend. I have actually made a few wreaths in the last couple of years, but none that are wrapped in yarn. I was excited to try something new. So when the idea of using plumbing insulating foam as a wreath form started floating all around Pinterest, I thought it would be the perfect use for my frugal new wreath. I picked up my foam from Lowes, duct taped it together just like the instructions said to do, but then noticed it was in the shape of a tear drop instead of a perfectly round circle. I re-taped it several times, but it still had a slight bump where the two ends of the plumbing tube connected. I should have stopped there and just waited to buy a wreath form, but being the impatient person that I am when it comes to craft projects (and several other things) I went ahead and started wrapping my form with the golden yellow yarn that I chose. Thinking it might straighten out the lump once the yarn was on it was an idiotic thought, but I kept going with it. Lots of fun conversation and two and a half hours later of wrapping, the wreath still looked like a teardrop. So I didn't have anything to show for our late night craft session except for a misshapen yarn wrapped wreath.
The next day, determined to start over, I went to buy a straw wreath form like the original instructions had used. Everywhere I went, the store was sold out of them. So seeing this as another lesson in patience, I decided to wait. Another week passed and I finally found a new wreath form. Time slipped by and I would casually wrap the wreath with yarn if I had any extra time during the day. I took it with me on our most recent trip to Jackson and finally finished the wrapping, but I still needed to make my felt flowers and attach them.
Two days ago I realized that Thanksgiving is NEXT week! My first thought was not about gratitude, great food, traveling, or any of the typical things a person might think about. It was about my wreath. I HAD TO FINISH IT BECAUSE I ONLY HAD ONE WEEK TO ENJOY IT ON MY FRONT DOOR! So during nap time (thankfully both boys were asleep at the same time), I finished my wreath and placed it on the door. I absolutely love the yellow pop it gives our front door and maybe, just maybe next fall I can enjoy it a little longer.

Sending Off Our Shoeboxes

This week is Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child. We packed our boxes when we went to a Thanksgiving party earlier this month, but we wanted to make sure to add a special message to the children that will be receiving these. So a couple nights ago we made cards to go in each of our four boxes. We placed the notes inside and attached our shipping labels. We can't wait to find out what part of the world these boxes are delivered to and we pray that these boxes of trinkets, candy, and a few necessities can brighten a few lives this Christmas season. Yesterday we dropped our boxes off at one of the local churches and just like we have done every year, we waved goodbye and told them that we would see them again next year.

Tillery Tot School- Letter L

Last week we learned about the letter "L"! We focused on lions, leaves, and ladybugs mostly. Here's a look at our Tot School board:

I have a few books about ladybugs so we read plenty of those.
Seth liked The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle.

We made ladybugs using construction paper.

We made a lion using a paper plate, some construction paper, and noodles.

I made a special lunch for Seth.
He seems to eat a lot better when his food is made into
something related to what we are learning about.

His first glance at his lion sandwich was so humorous to me.
I am not too sure he knew what it was at first.
But he did eat really well after we talked about it being a lion.

I found these number window clings at Mighty Dollar recently.

So we practiced our counting using them on the front door.

We played in the leaves.

Then we brought a few inside to hang on our board and to also use for some leaf rubbings.

We also made lobsters by tracing our hands and one foot.

The hands are the claws and the foot is the body.

(I would have also liked to have watched The Lion King,
but we just couldn't find a copy and we weren't willing to pay $24.99 for it.
So hopefully we can watch it as soon as we can borrow it or get a cheaper copy.)

This week we are learning about the letter "R"!

"Give Thanks" Board

When our office went from one look to another last year before transforming into Seth's big boy room, our cute bulletin board got stashed in the basement until I could come up with another use for it. Well it has a new home and for this month it has a new purpose. Our big hallway has been turned into an office area. So on one of the walls I hung the frame I love so dearly. Because turquoise wasn't jiving too well in the hallway, I spray painted the frame brown and replaced the fabric covered cork with chicken wire. Most of the time it serves as a message board, but for this month I thought it would be fun for it to be a "Give Thanks" board.

I found a leaf template that I liked and printed it out.

Then using some fall colored paper, I traced and cut out enough leaves for each day of the month. I attached all of the leaves along with a "Give Thanks" sign using mini clothespins. Each night we each say something we are thankful for and add it to one leaf. At the end of the month I am going to put all the leaves in an envelope and add it to our memory box.
Hopefully our "Give Thanks" board can become a tradition. I just think it will be so neat to look back on all the things we were thankful for each year.

Tillery Tot School- Letter I

Last week we learned all about the letter "I." We focused mainly on just a few "I" words like inchworm, iguana, insects, and ice cream. Here's the Tot School board:

A few people have mentioned to me that they have noticed all the Beanie Babies hanging on our boards that correspond with the letter that we are studying. Yes, I do have a lot of them. During my classroom teaching days, I bought a huge bag of used Beanie Babies from a lady to use with the Beanie Babies Reading Strategies. I almost sold them all on Ebay a couple of years ago. Now I am glad I kept them because they really come in handy each week. We have two baskets full of them under Seth's bed. We pull them out each week and find the ones that start with the letter we are studying and then display them on our board.

Note: We didn't have one specific Bible verse this week.

Here are some of the "I" activities:
We played with insect stickers. Seth loves stickers of any kind!

We made an iguana out of the letter I.

We went to Chaney's Dairy Barn one evening to have some ice cream.
Seth even told the girl working behind the counter what letter we were studying!

One day for lunch I made a grilled cheese sandwich in the waffle maker.
Then I made it look like an ice cream cone and added sliced bananas and a grape to look like the ice cream and a cherry on top.

Seth loved it and ate every single bite of it!

I picked up this shape sticker book at Mighty Dollar (last week) and Seth did an amazing job matching up the shape and color sticker that matched each dot on the page.

One of my favorite activities of the week was ice cube painting.

I found the idea and template for the ice cream cone here.

I turned on the flip video while we were working. Here's an unedited peek into our learning:



This is what happens when you try to lick an ice cube that has blue food coloring in it. Luckily it washed off pretty easily.

We worked some more on our numbers by reading and working with our new
Lift-the-flap Counting Book from Usborne Books.

We also read (and by read I mean we mostly looked at the pictures since this book was a little too complicated for him but it was one I already had) Inchworm and a Half.

Then we made an "I is for Inchworm" craft.

I found some foam insect pieces the other day (also Mighty Dollar).

We made an insect picture using them.

The most repeated activity of the week was picking up plastic insects with tongs and placing them in an ice cube tray. We read an interactive Insect book first and then Seth did this activity almost every day because he loved it so much.

It was a super fun week!

This week we are focusing on the letter "L"!