FIAR-Cranberry Thanksgiving

We have been using a different curriculum this year for Lily's Kindergarten year. Moving Beyond the Page. It's a literature based one, and we have been having fun with it, but I just haven't taken much time out to blog about it. I have found myself kind of missing FIAR, sometimes. SO, when Thanksgiving rolled around, I decided to take a break, and do a FIAR book-Cranberry Thanksgiving. We are SO excited to be back with FIAR for this week. We will be coming back to it for the Summer, as well. :)

We read the book for the first time in the evening. Lily was very interested in the story. We talked about how Mr. Horace smelled like lavender, but that didn't make him a better person than Mr. Whiskers, who smelled of clams and seaweed. It was bath time right after we read the book, so I put lavender oil in her bath water, and put lavender lotion on her skin right after the bath. She said she didn't want to smell like Mr. Horace, because he wasn't nice. 

Fresh from the tub, and smelling of lavender. Should we trust her? :)

For our Geography, we located the New England area on our map. We have rowed a couple of other books that take place in that area, so Lily was familiar with it. She said she wanted the disk to be in Massachusetts, so we placed it there.

 We discussed the six states that make up the New England area. I outlined them on the map, and Lily colored them in.

We talked a LOT about cranberries this week. We tasted cranberry juice.

 Lily approved! Yum!

We worked on this cranberry worksheet. I got it from the lapbook for Cranberry Thanksgiving at www.homeschoolshare.com

To complete the worksheet, we had to guess the amount of cranberries in the bag. Lily guessed 100-she was off by a few. :)  The one on the right is 100. The bowl on the left is the rest of the bag.

We bounced cranberries in the kitchen. Lily was keeping track of how high they went so we could measure.

 Lily worked hard on filling out her sheet.

Our sensory bin for this unit was cranberries and water-Lily LOVED this, and played with it for hours. She flooded the bog, strained the berries, transferred them, and just kept doing it over and over again.

Lily watched the show "How It's Made: Cranberries"  on YouTube. She found it very interesting.

For some math fun, Lily measured cranberries.

We discussed why cranberries float. We cut one open, and saw that there are air pockets inside.

We cooked a wonderful dinner one night. We decided to fix all the dishes for this book that are in the FIAR cookbook: Roast turkey, corn pudding and a pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream.

I wasn't sure how Lily would like the corn pudding-she can be a little picky-Lily approved!

Lily adores science. There were a couple of fun science experiments that we did with this unit. We talked about leavening and the chemical reaction that happens when baking soda and vinegar mix.

We also talked about starch. Then, we got some iodine and a selection of different foods, and put iodine on the different foods to see which ones contained starch. The ones that turned black had starch in them.

 

The book talked about Mr. Whiskers being a clam digger. We tried some clam chowder. Lily did NOT approve! 

 We discussed how people used to decorate for the holidays a long time ago. We popped some popcorn and made a garland of cranberries and popcorn. We talked about patterns and when we were finished, we put this outside to feed the birds. (This was a fantastic activity to help build fine motor skills)

 

 For art, we discussed silhouettes and profiles, and we traced Lily's profile and cut it out on black paper.

 The book was also painted in warm colors, so Lily drew a Fall picture to go along with that theme, and this also led to a discussion of the different seasons.

We couldn't do this book without actually making Grandma's Famous Cranberry Bread! The recipe is in the back of the book. So, we closed the blinds, and got to work. (Grandmother always pulled the curtains tight before she made her bread)

We talked about how the Pilgrims would use berries as a natural  dye. We boiled some cranberries, then smashed them, strained them, and kept the dye that was left.

Lily took a white wash cloth and put it in the dye. We made sure it was covered well, then we washed it out.

The final product!

There were so many great activities and discussions that came from this row. We talked about Thanksgiving, and families. We talked about traditions, and about our own traditions. It was a great book!
Happy Thanksgiving!