Early Thanks

I thought I was done with homework.

I mean, I was prepared, and still am prepared, to do my part in researching DNA and reacquainting myself with algebraic equations once my children are grown, I am thankful already for the blessed internet. And I consider myself not too shabby when it comes to reading flashcards and bringing in the right show-and-tell item that begins with the correct letter-of-the-week. But homework in preschool should be simple.

I have three Thanksgiving homework assignments. All three are, individually, fairly simple and heartfelt. But collectively, they are torture.

Once homework assignment consists in writing a "Thankful Book" about the things we are thankful for. We are, as a family, to come up with three things to be thankful for, write a sentence about each one, and illustrate. The second assignment consists of making a Thanksgiving collage, one that might include photos of our family, or of any happy family, or of pilgrims or turkeys or cornucopias. We are to glue these photos to a sheet of brown construction paper so that they can laminate them and make them into place mats, which will be used on the day of the thanksgiving feast (which we will not be there for.) The final assignment consists of finding photographs or images of a favorite food, a favorite toy a favorite pet or animal, and a place we are thankful for.

I thought I had it under control. I put all the assignments in one place, and this afternoon I sat the boys down and announced we were going to have a special homework time.

And then I realized I needed some thanksgiving pictures. And food pictures. And a few of pilgrims. Where the heck do I go to get pilgrim pictures? I started flipping through the magazines we had sitting around, but unless I could convince the preschool teachers that our family valued and were extremely thankful for running pants, plastic Santa ornaments, and raw steak, we were out of luck.

So... class dismissed.

I am banking on two things. 1 - that we will be getting more mail in the next few days with photos of thanksgiving items on them. 2 - well.... ok, really I just have the first thing. But at least it's something.

The point is, I feel as though I have a lot of homework. Not hard homework, but busy homework.

The one bright side is, we did have a short conversation about things that we were thankful for. After being thankful for each other, individually and in detail, and then our extended family and our pets, and then for our house and our schools and our church, we talked about "if someone needs help then you help them" and how "things that make us laugh are really funny."