Hi, everyone! As I mentioned in this post, we are keeping our Thanksgiving countdown pretty simple this year. I love setting a mood of gratitude and purpose in our home throughout the month of November ... but the reality is, we're just as busy as ever, plus, we'll be hosting the holiday dinner at our house again this year! And I LOVE getting ready for that, but all the prep (which begins early in the month) does kind of elbow out any "extras" in the weeks leading up to the big day. Nevertheless, I am always determined to celebrate this special time of year in a meaningful - and manageable - way!
So here's what I decided to do: I chose one book for each day leading up to Thanksgiving and assigned a simple activity to that day as well. Most of these activities, and some of the books, tie in with our seasonal homeschooling - which is quite handy! Two birds, one stone! So I looked at my seasonal themes for November and then made note of any special days on the calendar - starting with these two guideposts, I was able to organize the books and activities in an order that made sense for us - and for the season itself!
I did most of this planning by scribbling in a spare notebook, but then I decided to keep these plans neatly filed in my spiral-bound, homemade planner, and make them into a PDF so I could share them here at my blog. And so, here it is!
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As you can see in my top photo I taped my printable plan in my spiral-bound planner for easy access. I only taped the right-hand side of the sheet, along the inner edge, so the page beneath would be accessible.
(True fact: the "Happy Thanksgiving" sticker, a recent purchase and part of a calendar pack, was meant for another project, but I found it - and a few others from the pack - torn out by somebody this morning. Ahem! So I decided to use it here to hold down that PDF!)
My book/activity list page is sandwiched between the "November Review" and a page titled, "Our Gratitude Project."
Did you catch my typo? 😉
I created this page for my planner so I'd have a place to brainstorm this year's gratitude project. (One of the big reasons I decided to make my own planner, was so it might contain pages for this kind of personalized planning! Have I mentioned how much I love my homemade planner?) I also decided to add some pictures of our project, along with a fitting page from my ME Page-a-Day Calendar. Finally, I wrote out my thinking behind this year's "Tree of Blessings."
This page is one of the extra planning pages in the back of my November section. Each month's planning section ends with a "review" page and then come the extras - like in November it's "Gratitude Project" (seen above) and then next is a "Martinmas Day" planning page. And finally, my "Thanksgiving Planner" finishes off the monthly section.
Speaking of which ...
Here is a link to my Thanksgiving Planner (PDF) if you're interested! It can take a while to download because it's several pages long and there are some pictures peppered throughout. (It takes about 10 seconds on my desktop computer.) I'd like to make this easier to access, so I'm going to try to break down the initial set of pages into a few PDFs instead of just this giant one. So please stay tuned and if you just can't get it to load at all, please let me know! We'll figure something out ... :)
As for the Books & Activities list, I'm trying to read each book at the start of the day - over breakfast or as lesson time begins. The corresponding activities occur at different times each day depending on our schedule and if the activity is meant for a specific time of day (for example, a lantern walk at dusk). Each morning, as I work in my Day Designer, I decide where the daily activity will work best ... then I do my best to make it happen!
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Well, my friends, I hope you've enjoyed this peek into our gratitude month plans! Please feel free to print the PDFs for your own personal use if you'd like, and please let me know if there are any wonky links. I'd love to hear about your own gratitude project and/or your Thanksgiving plans - drop me a note below if you have time! :)
In a day or two I'll have a post up with a look at all my November planning pages and then at the end of the week we'll have our next Autumn Tea (discussing Mitten Strings for God, chapter six,"TV") ...
I might even have a little giveaway to offer in that "TV" post! :)
So please stay tuned, and please take care ... I'll see you here again very soon!
