A lesson on Thanksgiving

My oldest son is reading books for his History and English parts of school. One of the books he read was The Landing of the Pilgrims by James Daugherty. So for a “break” today, I asked him to come up with a lesson from the book for Livy & Gabe. He read a chapter from the book then had them re-enact it. With props. It was great.

I don’t think you can see it, but they are harvesting and shucking paper corn. (Please ignore the vacuum in the other room.)

Davy is explaining the animals and how to kill them with the beads he provided.

“Stay there, bear. Let them kill you.”

He made all of the props himself out of construction paper. He tapped the creative portion of his gene pool.

Livy is aiming and throwing the beads to kill the paper animals.

Look at the rack on that deer. Can you tell the boy loves hunting? I think that’s his dream deer.

“Let us give thanks for our paper meal.”

“Now, dig in!”

They rounded out the lesson by telling things they are thankful for. Family, food and dog were in the top 3.

I’m thankful for 3 things as well. Can you guess what they are?

Crime Scene Photos

This picture causes me great pain. If you're squeemish, look away!

Stupid squirrels...grrr...

Ten Ways to Write a Collge Essay

1. Know about the assignment for weeks, even begin research, but wait until the day before it’s due to actually start writing it.

2. Choose a day when not only all four of your children are out of school, but also invite adorable 3-year-old niece and 9-year-old nephew to join the party. Also at different times during the day, open your home to your other nieces and nephews (too numerous to mention & yes, they’re all adorable too) who live in the neighborhood.

3. Make sure your 5 year old is definitely still feeling the effects of a busy Halloween weekend and is generally just a grumpy tale.

4. Add a house that is honestly a WRECK and the fact it took over an hour just to clean the ‘work area’ (which of course had to be moved to a different area due to all the distractions).

5. Catch up on emails, facebook, and twitter to just be sure you’re not missing anything while you’re slaving away on your research paper.

6. Set a time to start essay and stick to it, then change the time due to lunch, almost done cleaning the kitchen, and finally due to another out-of-town niece’s visit (she’s 23 and I loved spending a couple hours catching up on what’s going on with her).

7. Volunteer to bake goodies for the school’s Election Day bake sale. Don’t just volunteer cookies or brownies, offer to make those AND some hot dinner rolls and challah bread for the second shift.

8. Drink a Mountain Dew and eat French fries and nuggets w/ the kids at lunch. Cover your fries in cheddar cheese, sprinkle the fairy dust of the food world on top (if you don’t watch Jim Gaffigan—you should), and then liberally douse with some ranch dressing.

9. Feel miserable about your lunch choice and eat salad for dinner (although go ahead and add all the aforementioned toppings…it helps my mind stay creative).

10. Drink a cup of coffee at 5:30 while soaking in the tub, have a hot chocolate around nineish, and finally another Dew at 11:15. Finish some semblance of the required 750 words at around 12:30, stumble into living room, make son go to bed (he fell asleep watching the Series), watch Jimmy Fallon’s monologue, go to bed. Get up at 7 a.m. and try to figure out what in the world I was scribbling at midnight….oh and have another cup of coffee.

How’s that for an endorsement for going back to school?

Awww..who am I kidding? I am loving it (except the research paper part and the fact I may gain 20 lbs from high calorie beverages...hee hee).

Want more Top Tens head to Oh Amanda's! The list on coffee inspired me this morning.