Our Owl Week October 25, 2009

What a fun week we had studying and learning the letter O and all that goes along with it! We did read a book this week but it’s not part of our curriculum list. It’s one I found in the library called “White Owl, Barn Owl” and just went along well with our O week.

The book gives a great explanation about barn owls, where they nest, what they eat, how they sound and feel. My son really liked it and asked almost first thing in the  morning for me to read it to him. There were some new words for him to learn – pellets, nesting box, vole – but I think he gleaned a lot from the story.

For our craft, we found a pre-printed pattern that used hearts to put together a heart-shaped owl. This correlated well to the story because the barn owl is described as having a heart-shaped face. My son mostly glued the owl together (he’s not real into crafts right now.)

We also live near a bird sanctuary at a local park and took a trip there for a our owl week . We got to see a few owls – a great barred owl and horned owl. They were pretty sleepy but a few had their eyes open. It wasn’t getting pictures through the cage but I managed.

Of course we had to have an owl snack so we made owl cookies! My friend made these with her daughter so I thought we’d try them. They were easy and turned out cute but didn’t taste all that sweet… next time I’ll change up the dough instead of following the recipe!

Our week wasn’t only about owls. Our O book included other O words – octopus, otters, ox, oatmeal, opal. We practiced counting, letter matching and cutting with scissors. We also had an “orange” day and searched for all the orange things we could find. We mixed red and yellow paint to make orange (a darker orange), and my son “practiced” painting the letter O!

I also chose to make our main word of the week “obey” and used fun flashcards to show the word to my son. I kept it at our kitchen table so he could always see it while eating. And we memorized a new verse, Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” My son already knows it, thanks to his Bible songs CD. We talked about what it means to obey and this will be a lifetime lesson I believe! We read Bible stories about obedience – the prodigal son, Noah and how Jesus calmed the storm…even the winds and waves obey Him!

All About the Numbers October 25, 2009

Our “N” week was a little different. I took a break from an organized set of activities focused on a book and instead inundated my son with numbers as part of our N studies. He often calls numbers ‘letters’ so I thought it would be good to do all we could with numbers.We looked for  numbers everywhere we went – on gas station signs, speed limits, books, etc.

Our activities for the week were simple but fun – we read our book 10 in the Bed and counted down using acorns my son found at the park. Every time one of the animals fell out of the bed, my son took away an acorn and we practiced subtraction.

My son practiced his numbers with glue and sand – we made the numbers using glue and my son poured sand over the glue to make the numbers appear. Pretty simple!

We also played two fun Mickey games – one is a board game where my son matches the numbers on the board with the small game pieces that have numbers on them. He matched them all with  no problem.

The other game uses his Thomas the Train flash cards and Mickey pieces on loan from my sister-in-law. We put one card on the floor and place the corresponding number of Mickey pieces on top of the card.

We read our N book, which included words such as nut, nutcracker, nightingale and the numbers nine, ninety and ninety-nine. He made the letter N out of beans (no specific reason for using beans – I considered using glitter but it’s not very popular at our house!)

Our Bible story for the week was about Nicodemus and we practiced John 3:16 together. We also listened to my son’s CD of Bible songs in the car and he asked repeatedly to hear the one about “a man named Nicodemus.” On to letter O!

Mike and Mary Anne October 21, 2009

I’m a bit behind on my blog posts but that’s what a baby and a preschooler will do to you! We did our M week a couple weeks ago and had a ton of fun! The book we focused on was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. This book is part of the Five in a Row reading list, which is designed for 5-8 year olds.

My son received this book as a gift from his uncle and since we have it we decided to do this one as it corresponds with M. It’s a fun story about how well Mike cares for his steam shovel, Mary Anne. My son actually has a miniature steam shovel pictured below and it happens to be read just like Mary Anne!

Our Bible lesson for M week was none other than Moses. We read the stories of Moses that are in my son’s Bible (Passover, the burning bush, the Ten Commandments) and designed our own burning bush. It’s my son’s hand traced onto construction paper with torn/cut pieces of orange and yellow tissue paper glued to the “bush.” Looks pretty good!

I also decided to focus our days around certain “subjects,” such as math, science, music/art, language arts and history/social studies. This has helped me do a few activities per day and gives me more order to what we do. Of course, some days activities overlap or happen on a different day but the guideline is there and helps! And music day was quite often as my son enjoys hitting his “drum” with his “drumsticks.”

For language arts, we practiced our letter M by finding objects that begin with the letter. My son is not interested in writing yet but we can practice how a letter is constructed by making it out of shapes! He made the letter M with macaroni and he played with the leftover macaroni in a bowl of water. He found that dried macaroni quickly turns soggy if left in water.

Other fun things we did this week: we made edible mud with yummy gummy worms! The ingredients: crushed Oreos, chocolate pudding and gummy worms. Tastes great and once you’re done eating, you can put a bulldozer in the goop and have a ball!

Our final M project was what I call fun folders – we created a folder collage of Mexico, the country where my husband is from. We found some pictures that represent Mexico and some other 3D items to put in the folder. My son calls it his Mexico Book and he looks at it often

My Little Lamb October 12, 2009

The Letter L week was a fun one for me and my son! We read The Little Lamb, which isn’t part of our Before Five in a Row curriculum exactly…the same author/photographer wrote The Little Bunny, which is on the list but since I don’t have the bunny book and just the lamb one, I decided to do lessons for my son about The Little Lamb. We also read My “l” Book in our ABC series and that included lambs in it so it worked out well.

The Little Lamb takes readers to the Weatherbee farm where new lambs have been born. One lamb, Timothy, wanders from the flock into the arms of a young girl who is allowed to care for him for a short time. My son loved reading the story and looking at the photographs, which we discussed have been different than the illustrated pictures in his other books. He has a white Beanie Baby lamb that we kept with us while reading the story and we named him Timothy.

We had a fun time acting out the scene in the book where Timothy knocked down a bushel of apples that went tumbling down the steps. I blew up balloons and we pretended they were apples. We put them in a laundry basket and my son knocked it over. He loves balloons! We also have a wooden birthday cake that we made a mess of to act out the scene where Timothy knocks over  a table at a birthday party and spills the cake.

We also began talking about Jesus being the Lamb of God and started memorizing John 1:29, which says, “The next day John saw Jesus coming and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” We put it to song and my son has mostly all of it memorized. We made a cute lamb craft out of white buttons.

We also practiced letters and numbers this week, and talked about other animals that start with the letter L including lizards! It was a fun science lesson to watch lizards stuck to the outside of our bathroom window as they waited quietly for moths! The light from our window would attract the moths, which were gobbled up by the lizards! We’ve seen this several times and my son thinks it’s so fun…probably not for the moths! You can see three lizards below:

Most of all, this week’s lesson has reminded me that I am called to care for my son, my little lamb! Jesus asks Peter in John 21 to feed His sheep, care for His sheep – His people. The Lord is my son’s Shepherd and mine too, and for the time being I am responsible for caring for my son, and my baby girl, too. I pray that God gives me the strength to do this most awesome job!

Plenty of Pockets for Katy October 6, 2009

The other week my son and I focused on Letter K. We continued with his alphabet books and read My K Book and also read Katy No-Pocket, which is included in our Before Five in a Row curriculum. Fun story: I actually found the book below in a stash of old books my parents had kept. And this book belonged to my uncle! It’s in great condition for being at least 30 years old.

There are so many animals listed in Katy No-Pocket, the most obvious one being a kangaroo! My son and I went through the book counting the different types of animals, and used animal cards to match the pictures in the book. My son knew most of the animals on the cards. He was fond of the lizard for a reason I’ll explain in another blog post.

One of our crafts for the week was to paste pictures of animals onto a felt tree. The animals, including a koala, owl, squirrel and monkey, are ones that were found in Katy No-Pocket and/or live/climb in trees. Here’s his handiwork:

Katy No-Pocket also has a page devoted to tools – the man who gave Katy her “pockets” has an apron full of tools. My son loves tools so we used flash cards with pictures of tools to match with the pictures in the book. And I even made him his own “pockets” – a tool belt! It was a fun sewing project even though my son wasn’t interested in wearing the belt all that much until his daddy began working with tools.

Another fun activity we did was have a K snack – kiwi! My son loves kiwi so we made kiwi-shaped seaweed and white chocolate covered pretzel Goldfish. Very yummy!

We also spent time talking about kindness and being kind, and reading the story of Zacchaeus and how Jesus was kind to him when no one else was. We shared examples of how we can be kind to others and he remembered his previous Bible verse, “A friend loves at all times.” He recites his Bible verses with me every night before he goes to bed – and he does it on his own because he wants to! Praise God!

A Child’s Prayer September 27, 2009

The next book on our Before Five in a Row list was Prayer for a Child, a sweet story about a little girl’s prayer before bedtime. I wasn’t sure that my son was going to relate to the story since a little girl is the narrator but he liked it and focused more on the items prayed for rather than the one praying. He liked looking at the page that includes a picture of children from around the world illustrating the little girl’s prayer for other children.

We traced my son’s hands and made a set of “praying hands” out of construction paper. Inside, we wrote people to pray for and my son added some stickers. He’s already prayed a few times on his own, mostly before meals and he sounds really cute! I pray with him throughout the day while we’re together – I want him to know he can pray anytime for any reason and it’s definitely a reminder for me.

The most amazing thing was that while we were out in the backyard one day we found a praying mantis hanging on to our patio table! I took several pictures but only a few turned out well. I told my son it was “the coolest bug” and he kept saying, “I want to see the coolest bug!” We confirmed with my husband that it was a praying mantis after he saw the pictures (the bug is upside down in the pic below.) God sent us the bug to see up close and personal during our lesson on prayer!

This week was also our Letter J week so we talked about how Jesus prayed and the Lord’s Prayer. My son has most of it memorized. We read the story of Joseph, which my son really enjoys. We talked about how Joseph was probably afraid while in jail but God was with Him. We talked about how Joseph probably prayed to God, just like the little girl in our story did, and just like we do and can. We also read about Joshua and the story of Jericho.

Other J lessons included J animals – jaguar, jackal, jellyfish – and we did some jungle pictures. We also made a rain stick using rice and paper towel roll but my son wasn’t too interested in that. He preferred looking at the jungle book we checked out from the library. In it, we discovered that a Central American lizard is known as the Jesus Christ lizard for its ability to glide across water making it appear that it’s walking on water. Learning has been so much fun for us! Next week is Letter K and Katy No-Pocket!

Follow that Bunny! September 19, 2009

Reading together has been such a joy for me and my son! And we especially enjoyed The Runaway Bunny, a classic that shows the love of a mama bunny as she follows her baby bunny wherever he decides to run away to. It’s a sweet story full of fun pictures.

The story itself has a message that is easy to share with my son – wherever he decides to go I will go with him! At least that’s the case at this young age. I know one day he will be on his own. But I did share with him how Psalm 139 in the Bible tells us something similar – that we cannot escape from God. If we go up into the heavens, He is there. If we make our way to the remotest part of the sea, He is there still. Psalm 139 has always been a favorite of mine and I’m glad to share it with my son.

Some of our activities this week focused on talking about the pictures in the book and looking at how some pages are black and white while others are in color. We searched for carrots in the book following up on our Carrot Seed lessons last week. This led to lessons about 3D shapes including cone, sphere, cylinder and cube. My son learned hands-on the shapes with candles, carrots, balls and and cheese cubes at home. We’ll continue to reinforce these but he does know them if asked. We played a number game of count the bunnies – he had match the number with the bunnies and he recognized the numbers 5 – 9.

The other fun thing we did (that took a little bit longer) was make a 3D box garden! There’s a page in the book that tells of the bunny becoming a crocus in the garden so we made a little garden with construction paper, felt, real rocks and acorns and other props. My son did a lot of the gluing while I did most of the cutting and placing. He was proud of it.

This week also focused on the Letter I so we talked about insects, instruments and iguanas. He has a fun book called Manana Iguana and we read that together. We spent time outside looking for insects and he was fascinated with using the word ‘insect’ rather than bug. It’s fun to watch him learn!

Planting Carrot Seeds! September 14, 2009

We’re just trekking along with our little homeschool preschool and last week read The Carrot Seed, which is part of our book list. This was such a simple book about a young boy who has faith that his carrot seed will sprout while everyone around him tells him it won’t. My son loved it! I found it at the library and it’s an oldie – check out the pics below!

Of course, we spent time outside “gardening” and planting seeds. We did actually plant a few carrot seeds in a large pot I have but these take a while to grow. We’ll see if anything pops up. My son did choose to plant some flower seeds as well – he chose poppies. Funny story – after he planted the flower seeds in one pot, he decided all of that soil with the seeds belonged in the large pot that had the carrot seeds! Yikes! So, now we have little sprouts in the large carrot seed pot and I have a feeling those are the flowers. We’ll see in a few weeks.

We also cut off the top of a carrot that has a little sprout on top and put it cut side down in a bowl of water and watched the sprout grow – and it did!

Another fun activity was making letters out of carrot matchsticks! I wasn’t expecting my son to actually eat the skinny carrot sticks but after he made a few letters he did eat them and thought they were yummy! Fun food!

We’re still focusing on memorizing John 3:16 and we’ve created a catchy jingle to go along with it. My son has several of the words memorized already so I’m thinking within a month he’ll know the whole verse.  This week was also letter H week and we read our book about Little H and all the H words we could find – hair, hands, hat, hippo and of course helicopter. Anything the drives or flies and makes lots of noise is my son’s best friend! See you next week!

Deciding What Jesse Bear Will Wear September 3, 2009

Last week, my son and I spent our days reading the next book in our curriculum, “Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?” The cute rhyme follows a little bear named Jesse throughout his day as his mother asks him what he will wear.

Some of our projects corresponding to the book included dressing up a cardboard Jesse Bear – I cut out his shape from a Pepsi 12-pack carton and then cut out one dimensional “outfits” from squares of random fabric purchased at the store for $1 each. These were not fancy and it took about 15 minutes to get the outfits prepared. My son had fun picking out which shirts and shorts Jesse would wear and at times, put several shirts on him at once.

Another lesson we talked about was order and how Jesse Bear kept his room and toys tidy once it was time to go to bed. My son knows that it’s time to clean up before bedtime and he’s usually agreeable to putting all his bulldozers where they belong.

We looked through the beautifully-colored pages in the story to find different shapes, colors and objects that started with the letter ‘G’ since that was our letter last week. One of our ‘G’ words was of course God and we talked about God’s Greatest Gift being Jesus and we started memorizing John 3:16.

My son especially loved the picture of Jesse Bear playing in the sandbox with his dump trucks because my son loves playing in HIS sandbox with HIS dump trucks! We also spent some time Friday night outside in the backyard looking at the stars since the book ends with Jesse Bear asleep on his bed with the stars in the sky. My son loved this – probably because he stayed up a little later and was outside in the dark!

And one of our fun fun fun crafts of the week was making Jesse Bear Bread! I found a recipe for homemade bread that shapes the dough into animals so we made a bear. It was pretty simple to shape after kneading the dough and tasted SO good with real butter. We decorated the bear with raisins for the eyes and mouth but the bear didn’t look too nice once they baked so I would advise against baking the raisins and just adding them to the face after baking for picture purposes!

This week we’re reading The Carrot Seed and Runaway Bunny so another post will be on its way soon!

Find a Friend in Corduroy August 23, 2009

The first week of using the preschool curriculum Before Five in a Row proved to be a great one for my son. We spent the week reading Corduroy, a sweet story about a lovable bear who spends a night in a department store searching for his missing button and in the end finds a friend. My son and I also focused on the letter F this week as we chug along in our weekly ABC lessons so the letter F tied in perfectly with Corduroy as we discussed friends!

Some of our activities this week that centered around the book included counting buttons since Corduroy has a missing button on his overalls that he desperately wants to find. We bought a cheap pack of multicolored buttons at the store and my son was ecstatic to count them and put them in piles. At 3 years old, he was able to count the buttons individually up to 20. We named the colors in English and Spanish and he knew them all.

We also covered Corduroy in buttons! We made an image of Corduroy out of construction paper with green cardstock overalls and my son glued on all the buttons he wanted. So Corduroy would never be without buttons again. Here’s his handiwork below:

The other great thing about the Before Five in a Row curriculum is that it gives a Bible verse that corresponds with each story. So for Corduroy, we memorized the first part of Proverbs 17:17, “A friend loves at all times.” And my son has memorized it. We talked about friends, how they treat each other, the names of my son’s friends, how Corduroy now had a friend too.

When we were out and about, we were able to talk about lessons we learned in the story as they related to everyday life. In the story, the young girl, Lisa, uses kind words and obeys her mother. These were great lessons to discuss with my son, showing him how life works best. And when my son choose to disobey this week, we went back to Corduroy and talked about how Lisa obeyed her mother in the store and how God wants us to obey. Our obedience to God and His commands in the Bible show that we love Him.

Next week’s book is Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? Should be fun!