Worlds of Learning - November

We started and ended November with colds and germs abounding but still managed to fit in some fun.

The first book of the month was Ox Cart Man which Lucy had read before but absolutely loves. We made candles just they did in the book.

I loved watching Lucy make these, she was concentrating so hard her little tongue was sticking out the whole time. Adorable!

A half sheet candle was just right for putting in our leaf lanterns. Dinner time candles are going to be a regular feature here. The evenings we used them just seemed a bit calmer. I still have to get up half a dozen times to refill glass or get the ketchup or clean up something that got spilled but every little bit helps.

We also made "wintergreen peppermint candies." I first made these in high school but it had been a while and this time I realized that these are basically really thick chunks of frosting that you let dry. But I love that they aren't baked so I don't have to worry about the sizes being similar. Lucy started out cutting big ones and they got smaller and smaller as she kept cutting.

She loves getting to use a real (butter) knife so perhaps she didn't want it to end. She also decided they didn't look pretty enough so she started rolling them afterwards. I think this was the first time she was able to successfully roll a ball so our playdough options are about to burst open!

Craig took over for part of the month (I was taking Jonah to a doctor's appointment) and he and Lucy made cranberry bread to go along with Cranberry Thanksgiving. We used the one in the book and to be honest, it wasn't a very good recipe - too crumble and dry. Then we made dye out of cranberries and dyed some linen to be a table runner. Lucy thought the dye was magic because it was dark pink as a liquid and we thought it would dye the fabric pinkish but as it dried it went from pink to purple to blue and eventually ended up a weird blueish gray. Even I was surprised with the final color but she loved it.

We also did some cranberry painting to decorate the front of note cards which we were going to send to relatives but instead they sat in the armoire while I stayed in bed trying not to die while the kids ransacked the house and/or watched too much Daniel Tiger. This was probably one of the worst colds I've ever had so I'm just happy we made it through.

So we didn't write notes to our relatives but we did read The Relatives Came and made a family tree on the wall.

 

 The family tree was then converted to a Thanksgiving tree. Here are her first three "leaves" which read God, home and princesses.

 I was expecting her to draw the things she was thankful for but she insisted on writing them so I used her magnet letters to spell them and she copied them down. I think this is the first thing she wrote that is actually legible! (Well, Craig and I can read her name but I don't think the average person on the street could).

I'm not really sure what to do with her and writing. She loves to write but I worry about it being such a fine motor skill and her learning bad habits. We try doing salt writing, or making letters from play dough or air writing and she'll do that and seems to enjoy it but she really wants to write with a pen. About half the time she wants to do art she ends up just filling a page with "writing." It used to be just lines and scribbles and has gradually become actually letters but she writes a lot of letters bottom to top or willy nilly. I don't care if she can't write well but I don't want her to have to unlearn things either. And that's my overly worrisome parent dilemma of the month.  And now Jonah is obsessed with pens too - and he knows when you try to cheat and hand him a closed pen. No fooling this guy.

Anyway, back to thankfulness. She was also thankful for bunnies, cheese, pots and pans and light switches. My leaves were a little more traditional with things like family members, friends, daddy's job, etc.

We didn't get to Little Babaji and not just because of the sick week. Our library says they don't have it anymore. I know they used to because we've checked it out before. It might just be the website. I don't think I'm an idiot but I really have trouble with it sometimes. I normally search for each book by title as well as author because sometimes it will only work on one of the two but both times came up with nothing. I have a hard time believing they got rid of it in the last two months though  so I might go in person and hunt. I can't do that with Jonah though, his new favorite game is take every book of the shelf as fast as I can and if you try and stop me I'll screech and scream. I'm loving the hold shelf right now!

And that's about it for November. First semester down!