Christmas has always been my favorite season: baking cookies, surprises, extra time with friends and family, and traditions that have lasted for years. But I must admit that Thanksgiving is steadily gaining in my rankings of favorite holidays. We're still more than a month away from Thanksgiving, yet I find myself so thankful for so many things. I feel my heart moving towards this holiday that calls us to recall and give thanks and I see how beautiful the timing is that thankfulness should lead us into Advent.
Prior to fall break, A and I had been in a bit of a slump with home schooling. The four day week of fall break found me attempting to teach a student who clearly wanted no part of our lessons. Math? Ick. Grammar? Actual tears over it. Even beloved history? Going through the motions. I decided by Monday afternoon that we would push through that short week as planned to finish up some things and then take a break from our routine. So when we resume next week, we're going to focus our efforts on a unit study on Thanksgiving. I found a great study that's already laid out (I'll caution you that the embedded link leads you to an 8 MB pdf - only open if you're truly interested). Even this study doesn't have everything I want to learn and want A to learn, so I found another idea that we're doing together as a family: a Thankful Tree.
I told the girls about the idea of the tree and it was greeted with enthusiasm all around. So I bought some heavy drawing paper and heavier water color paper, found the perfect tree limb and we started looking for leaves to trace. Every stage of this project has brought joy and thankfulness.
Today the weather was gorgeous (if a bit warmer than I'd like), so we hauled the watercolors, colored pencils, ink pads, stamps, oil pastels and paper outside. There we perched, laid, sat and created together. It was lovely. And it left me so very thankful.
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