Homeschool Highlights – Pilgrim Week

We continued with our Thanksgiving theme. This week I decided to give Nicholas a basic understanding of the first Thanksgiving. He knows the pilgrims came over on a boat. He always asks me the name of the boat. I tell him and he always says, “Yeah, yeah. Mayflower.”


We read three books on Pilgrims:

Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims (Picture Puffin Books) by B.G. Hennessy

The First Thanksgiving Day by Laura Krauss Melmed



We studied I and J sounds in phonics. I actually saw smiles on his face when we practiced handwriting because these letters were “easy”.

We colored and glued a pilgrim.

We acted out a story with our pilgrim and Wampanoag children.

We also added some new sight words. For some reason, “it” was the hardest word for him to get. I could get him to sound it out, but he still couldn’t figure out the word. Strange. But, these sight words make reading more fun for him. Because we practice them several times a week, he can pick them out of the books we read. He likes to “teach” them to me, so I decided to make a video of him saying them. I am showing this video for two reasons: 1) I am proud of him. We work hard and he has enjoyed memorizing them. 2) To show that it just takes repetition and three-year-olds can soak up words like a sponge. You can find all our sight words here: http://www.apples4theteacher.com/languagearts/dolch-sight-words/pre-primer/dolch-preprimer-assessment.pdf

Our study of Thanksgiving continues this week. Unfortunately, I had a pretty busy weekend, so after I put Nicholas to bed tonight I’ll have to get everything ready.