i know an old lady who swallowed a pie.

As I've mentioned before...Parker goes to a hybrid school where she actually attends school 2 days a week and then I homeschool 2 days a week.  Yes- we are in kindergarten...but various times throughout the year, I have gotten a little worried that I'm not doing a good job with her.  That maybe she's not learning enough?  We do follow the teacher's lesson plans and complete all of our work...but sometimes...a new concept will come up and I feel like maybe I'm not explaining things in a good way for her to understand.  I struggle with knowing if it's 'normal' for her to not know something quite yet...or if she's actually having trouble with the concept.

Anyways.....over the past few weeks I've been thinking that I need to step up my game a bit in the reading and writing department.  She is doing a great job learning how to read...but still has issues from time to time with blending sounds.  This could all be normal, but I just feel like she's almost there and if I could show her in a different way, or maybe even just more practice...she could get over that little bump in her path.  And since Nolan was born (6 months ago!)....we rarely read aloud to the girls anymore...as this was something we used to do before bedtime, but now with having to put him to bed, as well, reading has been pushed to the wayside.  As far as writing...I think I lack confidence to teach her this...and I've discovered...she also lacks the confidence to step out and try to write new words (namely- writing the letters of the sounds she hears...afraid she will spell it wrong).

So now for the reason of this post.  :)

I was introduced to this blog The First Grade Parade a couple of months ago...and wow!  Her ideas blow me away.  And a few days ago...I came across this post with lots of ideas for Thanksgiving.  Lots of reading and writing.  I am taking it and running with it.

So here we are today.  Payton, my niece, was here visiting...so we just made it a fun little afternoon of reading the book, "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie," followed by a few activities.

Grace, Payton, & Parker gathered 'round for story time. (And yes- we stayed in our jammies all day.)

Love Grace's face here.  She's really listening.  Ha!

Taped to the front of this cereal box is a little old ladies head...with a hole cut out for her mouth.  As we read...we placed the items (picture cards) the old lady ate in her 'mouth'.  These printables are FREE found here.

First- we went through each card and named the item.

This is a great little story...and they ALL listened so well.  It was so fun to watch them get so excited (although they do not look excited here) and the old lady kept getting bigger and bigger!

They really liked feeding the old lady.

After the story was over....I emptied all of the cards out of the box...and we tried to retell the story on our own and put the cards in her mouth again.

They did a color by number and an alphabet dot-to-dot also found here.

This next activity was fun for all, but I mostly did this for Parker to practice her writing.  I just copied the idea from here on The First Grade Parade.

I pre-cut the little old lady...and I told the girls to draw a picture of what they would eat if they were the little old lady, and then they cut it out.  I wrote out the answers for Payton and Grace, but made Parker write out her items.

Payton chose "apple cider."  Then wrote her name on her paper.

This little guy napped for most of our festivities...then woke up in a grumpy mood (yet he halfway smiled for the camera, sweet boy).

If Grace were the old lady- she would have swallowed a cake.

And Parker couldn't narrow it down to one thing....so she chose a few things.

I initially wrote the prompt with the intention of her only writing the words of the items.  But she decided to copy the prompt first...which was fine, too.

Her items were: snow cone, apple cider, pie, rainbow, cake

And the best part....how excited they were to tell Geoff all about the story and the activities they did.

We have a few more books and activities to do before Thanksgiving!