Day #22 Thanksgiving Feast

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! For Joyschool, Thanksgiving came one week early! It was only Lucy, Mason and London today and my husband took Levi, so it was really mellow!

First we learned about being Kind for Letter K.

I had each child think of ways to be Kind and then we wrote it on a feather and made our Kindness Turkey look pretty.


Then I read the book, that I meant to take a picture of, but you can kind of see it behind the turkey. It is called "3 young pilgrims" and talks about some pilgrim children on their journey from England all the way to the first Thanksgiving.

I showed them some pumpkins, squash and Indian Corn, which they all got very attached to and brought with them the rest of the day.


Then we pretended we were the pilgrims and we had to pack food and get on a boat. We sailed to America (the park) and found Native Americans (which we turned into). We snuck around the playground barefoot (hope you all don't mind, Lucy really equates barefoot with Indian).


Then we pretended to meet and the Native Americans showed us how to plant crops and grow things. Once they grew we had a feast!

Then we had some free play. They pretended they were Indians the whole time and brought their corn with them everywhere. It was funny to me how into it they were!



When we got back to the house, I taught them about hieroglyphics and how the Native Americans wrote stories. We made our own story. Each child got to think of part of it...Here is how the story goes (sorry you will have to crane your neck, I am too lazy to rotate)


"There was a horse who galloped over the mountains. Then we went home. Later he found a feather and then he found the bird and gave it back to him. The end"

What a happy story!

We finished by making hand turkeys. I traced each child's hand and then they colored the fingers for feathers. I was so into my art that I forgot to take any pictures of them! We are probably all better off for that, because my artistic abilities are about equal to the children. This way we can imagine they looked really good. Fun fun fun!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sound of Music Field Trip

Everyone came on a field trip to the Star Theatre on November 16, 2011 to watch me perform as "Maria" in Sound of Music. Thank you all so much for coming! It meant the world to me to know you were all in the audience! Thank you, Thank you Thank you!

Here's a shot with the Moms!

Day # 21 Performing!!!!

Today, I taught about performing, since the Sound of Music Field trip was the next day!

I got out the microphone at circle time and let everyone have a try being loud!



First We learned about the letter K. K is for King, kiss, kitten, kangaroo, keys, kick, and kind. I described the words and then let the children guess them and come put them up on the board.


Then we talked about Kings and how they are in charge and get to boss people around, kind of like a director. We all took turns being the director and telling the actors what to do (plus we played follow the leader).

Then we practiced being a good audience. Sometimes you have to be really quiet and other times you get to be really loud!

Next we dressed up and walked to the park to have a snack and perform on stage.
We all sat down and took turns getting on "stage" and singing. The kids were so cute and creative. The audience was good at cheering too!

Here's Mason...looks like a cowboy breaking hearts up there!

And Ethan, our proud fireman giving us a note!
Then they had some free play at the park, while I painted each kid's face. Should have took pictures of each of them, but I was too busy having fun I guess! Ethan got spiderman, Mason got a dinosaur, Lucy and London got princess masks and Jack was content just to be Jack!

When we returned we made masks with feathers and beads, to wear next time we perform!
What a fun day! Everyone was really well behaved and we had a great time!

Day # 20: Preparing for Winter/Getting Dressed

We dressed the snowman. The children loved it.

Reading a story.

After school snack.

Craft we made. 

The first half of class we read a few books and discussed our topics, the letter J, joy, and dressing for cold weather. We dressed the snowman and then had snack time.

The second half of the class was a bit of a blur... We made the craft, read a few books and then had some playtime at the end.

Days #19 Autumn Harvest

Yesterday we talked about J, the letter of the week. The theme was joy. Neither London nor Mason were there due to illness. We had observers so I wasn't able to take as many pictures and we had some drama that took over both yesterday and today...

We discussed wheat and how it is part of harvest time. We also talked about what we can do with wheat. The children liked it when I crushed wheat with a rock to show them how easily flour can be made.

Proper nutrition was also part of the lesson. I played some cute music about eating right. The kids enjoyed dancing to it.

After the observer left, I think most of us were feeling claustrophobic with it being such a gorgeous day outside. We decided to read our last book under the tree behind the house.

November 1, 2011 Indians and Intellengence

We had a special friend come play with us today. Andrew Jones. All the
kids introduced themselves to him and he told his name to them. They
all became friends fast! We learned the letter I today.
Also learned the words Indian and Intellengence.
They loved saying intelligence. They also went around the room and told us two things that they were intelligent about. Such cute silly answers. It's was really cute.
We made indian headbands with the different feathers to choose from.
We ate pumpkin chip cookies (from my mom). Very yummy. They had a lot
of free play today but had the time of their lives. I had a couple
more activites planned for the day but the kids were playing so well i didn't have the heart to stop them and continue. They made a fortress under the piano. No one could touch them under there. They kept playing that they would only kill the "good" people and it was ok that they did that. Lol. They explained to me that that was ok. Strange. They also said that they would only "eat" the good people. Kids.....haha! Anyways...The boys also like playing with Gunner during craft time. Gunner also kept giving Mason huge hugs. Great day and a good way to start November out.