November Plans
Okay, guys, we just wrapped up our ancient history studies and it was so good! Moving into the holidays I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to pivot and focus on for our family studies. Just science? Thanksgiving? Move right into Christmas? Ultimately, I decided to do a little bit of everything. Christmas and Thanksgiving are so close this year so I thought why not just have a lighter November and pick some fun things to carry us through Christmas break. So, today I’m going to share a little more about Thanksgiving and our science plans. And, don’t worry, I’ll be sharing our Christmas plans very soon!
This time of year I always crave a really good read-aloud and some simple activities so when I came across this Cornucopia study I knew this would be the perfect fit to kick us off for November.
If you haven’t seen Art Makes Me Smart, it is one of our favorite art resources and we have pulled from it for years now! If you’re already a subscriber, this particular unit is housed in their Mighty Networks group under Unit Studies > Seasons & Holidays. If you aren’t you can join monthly, quarterly, annually, or lifetime memberships here. We have the lifetime membership because we use it so much!
With Art Makes Me Smart there is always an art lesson (PDF & video tutorial) and then lots of extension activities and books to learn more. So, we’ll be doing the art project of the cornucopia and then learning about the history and symbolism behind it. Just browsing through the unit, it’s funny how I didn’t realize that the cornucopia is associated with so much more than Thanksgiving time. It is even in things like the Christmas Carol and Hunger Games!
I snagged two of the book recommendations to go along with this study: We Are Grateful: Ostaliheliga and The Ickabog.
We Are Grateful is a picture book story about the Cherokee Nation. Ostaliheliga is the word they use to express their gratitude. I found this website that pronounces all the Cherokee words in the book (and links a YouTube video of the book) so I think the kids will enjoy hearing the correct pronunciations of some words in their language. I would love to learn a little more about the Cherokee Nation so I am sure I’ll be pulling in a few more resources over the month. I’d love any recommendations if you have!
I know very little about The Ickabog, but after our studies of Harry Potter last year I am excited to read another book by JK Rowling. The story takes place in the town of Cornucopia. From the reviews I read online it does sound like there are some darker themes, but nothing darker than Harry Potter or Wingfeather so we’re going to give it a shot and I guess we’ll see how we like it. I’ll keep you guys updated.
We try to do our family read alouds right before bed and so I think we’ll be able to work on the parts of this unit 1-2x week through the month of November. There are also a few poems, an art study, and recipes that we’ll be exploring so we’ll see where the unit takes us!
In other news, this month we will be wrapping up our Music Appreciation study which we have LOVED. I would highly recommend the course! And, then we’ll also be starting our engineer unit from Harbor & Sprout. We’re just going to jump right in and see how far we get through the holidays. I am hoping we can get to it 2x a week. I’m planning to combine a few lessons, add some videos, and I got us this fun Simple Machines Kit to kick us off! In the curriculum there are lots of notebooking and report suggestions (which look awesome), but I think we’ll skip those and see what we can do to make it more play based especially with my boys in mind.
And, last but not least, we have some family favorite picture books I am sure we’ll be reading. If you’re looking for some of our favorites for this time of year, be sure to check out my Favorite Books to Read in November list.
And, of course, we’ll be continuing on with our tradition of our Thankful Tree.
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