We are having a blast figuring out this thing we call preschool at home.  I’ll post more later on the things that have worked for us so far, but for now I wanted to share with you our Thanksgiving week.

This is the first year that Kade’s really been able to comprehend/remember big holidays and so I wanted to try to really introduce Thanksgiving to him.  I had three goals for the week:

1. Know that Thanksgiving is a time to GIVE THANKS
2. Learn about Pilgrims & Indians and why they’re important to Thanksgiving
3. Experience some of our Thanksgiving family traditions

I used my new Silhouette Cameo to cut out 60 or so fall leaves last Sunday night and then each morning and evening this week, I wrote down on the leaves the things we were thankful for.  Kade helped me decorate our vinyl trees with the leaves so we could be reminded throughout the week how blessed we are.

I found a great book at the library, Thanksgiving Day by Elaine Landau which gave an easy to understand history lesson and helped highlight some favorite traditions.  This made it easy to talk about the first Thanksgiving and what life was like for the Pilgrims and Indians.  I figured dressing up might help lodge the info into his memory, so we dug through the dress up box and found a headdress and then he made some Indian jewelry (a necklace out of wooden beads and macaroni) and then, of course, decorated a paper bag leather Indian vest.    And who could make a more adorable Pilgrim than Berlin?  Her costume was much easier (black dress and tights and two squares of white felt).

One of my family’s Thanksgiving traditions is homemade pumpkin pie.  It’s a family recipe and my mom has made it every year for as long as I can remember.  To give credit to my mom, the recipe says “Early in the day, prepare pie crusts”.  For me that meant “early in November buy refrigerated pie crusts from the grocery store and remember to thaw them that morning”.

Kade donned his apron/art smock and helped me whip up a couple pies.  His little fingers were just the right size for making the fluted pie crusts.

As expected, they turned out beautiful and delicious.  So delicious in fact, that Kyle and I had to sneak a piece late Wednesday night, which is why the pies are already cut into before our feast even began!

Notice the paper plate turkey in the corner – Kade was “in charge” of the table decorations which included more traditions, like hand crafted turkeys, homemade napkin rings and of course the hand print turkey.  He really like that one and went around tracing everyone’s hand and turning them into turkeys.  All except Berlin’s, although not for lack of trying to get her to keep her hand in one spot!

It was a wonderful week and I’m so THANKFUL for my little Thanksgiving helper.  He was a great sport about trying new things and it’s so fun to see what things spark his interest.  Like finger puppets…the part with mom is cutting, coloring, etc…then dad comes home and Squanto and the Chief start wrestling Mr. & Mrs. Pilgrim.  But he at least learned about Squanto!

We were also more than blessed to eat like kings.  Everything but the pumpkin pies and Stovetop stuffing was a new recipe.  I experimented with brining a turkey this year.  I used Alton Brown’s recipe and it was FANTASTIC!  Apparently there’s a reason it has over 3600 5 star reviews.

Here are my boys, wondering what will we ever do with all this delicious food!  Please ignore my husband’s trucker mustache but please do feel free to donate to Movember.  Hope you all had a fabulous holiday!