November

In November, we raked leaves.  A lot of leaves.  The good news is that my little helpers are actually starting to help sometimes!  

 At other times, they fought over the rakes and whined at me until I let them use mine!

 We also had a little Martinmas procession for the feast of St. Martin, who gave a poor man half of his cloak on a cold winter's night, only to find out in a dream later that the poor man was Jesus.  In many European countries, this is like a Halloween of sorts.  You go door to door carrying lanterns and singing songs, and people give out treats.  We just walked around outside with friends and then came back to our house for treats.

 There are many ways to make a lantern, but we decided to go all out and make paper mache lanterns!  It was very fun, though messy and a lot of work.  They certainly looked pretty at night though!

In November, we also learned a lot of Native Americans and Pilgrims.  We took a field trip to the National Museum of the American Indian, which has an awesome kid's area.

Here is Lucy practicing her basket weaving.

Charlie is trying to hear the bird calls.

A little bench that really captured Charlie's attention.

Buffalo skin!

Lucy just about lost her mind when she saw that they had an adobe house and a teepee.  She was very interested in all of the different houses when we read about them.

Trying to build an igloo

Here we are back at home learning about the Pilgrims.  After we learned a lot about the Mayflower, we built a little model.  

I took so many pictures because Lucy was just so tickled to death.  It's the little things!

Lucy wrote this very sweet note to her friend Zoe.  

Dear Zoe,

Will you come over to play someday?  Do you like to play house?  Well if you like to play house we can play house by putting my blanket over my desk and filling it with things like a book and a ball.  I hope you have a good fall.  Love, Lucy

Lucy's Thanksgiving Turkey 

(she says the dashes at the top are feathers flying around)

Another Thanksgiving Turkey

I hope all of your Thanksgiving turkeys were are big as houses :-)