Lesson Ideas for all these holidays...

So, what are they trying to do??  Kill this new homeschooling mom by putting Labor Day, September 11th, and Grandparent's Day all in the same week???  And in the first month of school???  Seriously! 

Here is how we will be doing school during this week and what activities we have planned to celebrate and remember so many people this special week...

Labor Day
Well, for starters, we will be taking the day off to enjoy time with our family.  When we return to school on Tuesday morning we will talk about why we were able to have a day off of school on Monday and what exactly Labor Day means.  I have pulled some resources from here , and we'll just take a few minutes to explain how important our jobs are and how some workers aren't able to have the day off because we need them around the clock like policemen, firefighters, nurses, and doctors.  We will also talk just a little bit about how Labor Day began which can be found here and link it to Samantha:  An American Girl when Sam's friend Nellie had to work even though she was a child to help her family.  We've only seen that movie 147 times so that connection should be an easy one to make.  Finally, we will talk about what we want to be when we grow up and how that career would fit into the Labor Day holiday.

September 11th
Because September 11th falls on a Saturday this year, we will talk about the tragedy on Monday, September 13th.  Kayce, at Pastorette's Progress, reminded me yesterday that it may be a good idea to go ahead and get all of the library books for the day now because she clued me in that by the end of the week all of the public and private school teachers will have gotten them all.  Thank you Kayce my overachiever friend!!  I would so be the mom in the library on September 10th!!!  I have found some resources here and will be talking about where we were on that morning, how it felt, where my kids were {Kamryn was the only one born and she wasn't even quite 1}.  We will watch the attacks on youtube, talk about the passengers of Flight 93 and their bravery and discuss what President Bush did to try to fight back.  We may even listen to the Alan Jackson song...I do love that song!  I think it is so important for our kids to know this part of their history and we will spend some time discussing it on Monday morning.

Grandparent's Day {September 12, 2010}
I have been trying to figure out how to incorporate Grandparent's Day into our school year all summer.  The girls always had Grandparent's Day at their old school, so I want this day to be special for the grandparents, but how??  We have decided to invite each set of grandparents over separately on Friday {lunch and supper} where we will present them with the latest pictures of our family that we just had taken over the summer and invite them up to our school room to see where we learn everyday.  We will, of course, have a little show off time to prove that we do actually have school each day and that we are actually learning some good stuff over here!

I think it would be fun to include the grandparents into our day and show them around.  Hopefully it will work out nicely!!

I just wanted to share these ideas with you in case, like me, you would forget that there were so many special days in this upcoming week!!

Happy Homeschooling!!