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

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!

Looking for tricks to tame toddlers August 14, 2007

Since hundreds upon hundreds of moms are also bloggers and therefore read blogs, I’m hoping to get some response to this one! I am looking for fun, educational and inexpensive activities for my 19-month-old son. He is a fireball of activity but lately the more than 100-degree weather has kept us indoors. Naturally, he gets bored with all his usual toys and tired of making blueberries out of Playdoh. And when he gets bored, he becomes destructive. Not good.

So, I’m wondering if any mommies of toddlers have ideas for activities or games that have worked well for their kids. I’ve done some research online but haven’t found much. My son really isn’t into crafts yet but I can certainly give them a try. He likes listening to music (the same Bible songs CD is usually played six times a day) so we do some singing along. Mostly, I’d like to find creative things for him to do that won’t cost me an arm and a leg, or my sanity.

Any ideas?

Sew what July 23, 2007

I have to admit that I don’t know how to sew using a sewing machine. I can sew a button onto a shirt if needed but that’s as far as I go. I told my husband the other day that I feel like less of a woman because I don’t know how to use a sewing machine. I was half-joking. I even showed him a verse in the Bible about the Proverbs 31 woman making her own clothes. Can I ever be her without a sewing machine?

But I am willing to learn and am looking to buy a sewing machine. My goal? To make my own clothes and some for my son. I saw some really cool patterns at Wal-Mart and want to try them out. I’m always up for a challenge!

Anyone with sewing experience…how long does it usually take to sew together clothes, like a shirt, for example? Is this a difficult and time-consuming task? Can I get by with purchasing a less-than-$100 Singer sewing machine? Any tips?