A MUST for Your Thanksgiving Reading List

Read Aloud Thursday is coming a little early this week... so you have some time to possibly find and use this wonderful book before the day gets here.  Sorry I'm so late, but that's been my life lately - lots of winging it and trusting God to put the right materials in my path at the right time.  This week, HE surely has taken care of me!  

One of the few books we haven't rowed in Five In A Row's first volume is Cranberry Thanksgiving.   Last year I looked for the book and the library didn't have it, and it the cheapest I could find it for was $47.   Needless to say, we skipped that one.


This year, however, I'm very plugged into our local homeschool group and I sent out an email asking for the book.   A very sweet woman replied to me offering to let me borrow the book, and, in addition, the other FOUR Cranberry books.   I now have in my possession Cranberry Thanksgiving, Cranberry Autumn, Cranberry Birthday, Cranberry Easter, Cranberry Summer, and Cranberry Valentine.    


These are the CUTEST BOOKS!  Written by Wende and Harry Devlin, the books take place in Cranberryport and chronicle the adventures of Maggie, her grandmother, Mr. Whiskers, and assorted other characters.


Today, while tweeting about this book (I often do this to get ideas for lessons), I was chatting with Stacey (from BrainIn Trainin) because I know she loves to row books, too.  I asked if she had blogged about this book and she said

Sometimes I just like to row a book without having to blog about it! 

 Ahhh... How true!  The same applies to us with this book; we are enjoying the book and are slowly working our way through the lapbook and other elements, but I'm just going to scratch the surface with this post... with the holiday and other things looming there just isn't TIME to record this row!


After reading Cranberry Thanksgiving and Cranberry Autumn, we were inspired to try one of the recipes at the end of the book (each book has one recipe).  The signature recipe for Thanksgiving is the Cranberry Bread (which will be tried soon!) but tonight we tried the Cranberry Autumn Crisp from Cranberry Autumn.   It was DELICIOUS!  You can find the whole recipe here.  Serve it warm with ice cream and everyone will LOVE you!

While we were eating the dessert, I read to the kids a little bit about cranberries from the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' website.  We learned that cranberries grow in BOGS, have excellent nutritional value, and their name is derived from Native Americans.   I'm sure as we complete the lapbook we will learn even more about the northeast, cranberries, Thanksgiving, and all those other wonderful tidbits Five in a Row ties up so neatly into one book!  


I get most of my Five in A Row resources from the manual (of course), but then also through Homeschool Share.  This is probably my FAVORITE resource on the web.   AND, they have just started a new blog.  Are you a follower??  

Happiest of Thanksgivings to you all --- I hope you get a chance to read Cranberry Thanksgiving at some point in your homeschool journey.  It is one of those books that makes memories!  

Comments

[Amy @ Hope Is the Word]

We loved this one, too, when we read it a few years ago. We also made cranberry bread. Fortunately, our library has the Thanksgiving one!