Week 8: Abraham, Cookies, Squares, #4

This post is going to be a little weak. Mostly because I haven't gotten the new trays and new sensory tub ready as planned. A trip to the Dollar Tree is in order. I need some more fake leaves. I might just have to do a mid-week post (my million readers all cheer in anticipation lol).

We are going to be learning some about Abraham this week. I say some because as a patriarch of our faith we could never cover all the lessons to be learned from his faith story in a week. Not only that I think that it would go over the heads of my sweet little 4 and 2.5 year old. I am hoping that Annabelle will glean from the lessons that I have planned for her the importance of obedience (this is a weekly lesson lol) and trust in God. Also, that God keeps his promises. He will do what He said He would do! Our God is faithful to completion of His Word! No really fun pictures at the moment for those lessons. We do have some fun printouts from HennyPenny that we'll be using to hopefully help these lessons sink into her heart.

Square is the shape of the month. I thought that this would be a good time to introduce the number 4 as well. This is an easy game to learn about squares and #s 1-4. There are two different versions: Matching Color Clothespins, and Matching Number Clothespins.

C is for cookie....that's good enough for me! What preschooler doesn't like cookies? I have yet to meet one. So our letter theme for the week is Cookies. I have a couple of fun games that we will play. Also I hope to be able to let the kids decorate sugar cookies on either Friday or Saturday (when daddy is home to help). It would definitely be a fun end to the week.

Match the cookie game. Pretty self-explanatory.

Feed Cookie Monster. Kind of like pin the tail on the donkey, but I think that Cookie Monster's mouth is bigger than most donkey behinds that I've seen. Hoping that this will be something that Annabelle and Asa enjoy.

Here is a preview of our books for the next couple of weeks. Surprisingly, the only children's book that I could find on cookies at our library was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I was hoping that they would have a better selection. So I got a book about a cow and a cat. Annabelle enjoyed the dinosaurs so much that I got her a big picture book of dinosaurs to look at. I you look closely you will see what our letter theme for next week will be (hint...it says quack). Also, I got a book called Autumn. I thought that it would be appropriate seeing how tomorrow is the official first day of Autumn!

In addition to these activities I plan on starting another lapbook based on the book Angus the Dog. And if we have time and I'm feeling ambitious enough I will start the lapbook based on the book Are You My Mother. Oh, and we now have two carrot sprouts poking through the soil. I survived the first day without Zak being here this week. I'm very thankful that my parents made it back from vacation safely. Always nice to have an option of someplace to go in the evenings if we need to get out. One more hour until bedtime....should make it memorable. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Week 7 in Review

Here we are at the end of week 7. What a fun week we had. Our week here was much more unscheduled than normal due to Zak being on vacation. We did schooling here and there when daddy needed a break from all the attention the kids were giving him. On top of that Silas had to have tubes put in his ears Thursday morning which made for a day that was completely out of the norm for us (he did great!). I am pleased to say that my finger is healing nicely and can now use all my fingers to type again....yeah! :) Ok, on to the review.

Annabelle and I were able to finish the two lapbooks that have been taking a long time. I'm not including pictures of those or of our art board this week due to having so many other pictures. Rest assured that there are things hanging on it though.

Lets start out with what we did with dinosaurs this week. Annabelle and Asa got to 'excavate' them from the ice. They used warm water, salt, and hammers. They really both enjoyed this activity, and it kept them busy for quite a while. Her is Annabelle using salt to melt the ice faster.
Asa preferred the hammering method. lol

I was surprised at how much fun Silas had playing with these dinosaurs this week. He would make them roar at eachother. I must say it was quite cute.

Asa is obviously having a whole lot of fun making this crab craft. These remain unfinished as of right now, otherwise I would've included a picture. He is such a ham....all I said was, "Smile!". And this is what I got. He cracks me up.

I decided to take advantage of craft time this week while Zak was home. Annabelle and I made a stuffed fish. We each painted one side and then I stapled them together and stuffed it. Then we glued Jonah in the middle of the fish praying. We both had a good time painting.

Guess who's side this is.

A good friend picked up all these wooden spools for me at a Goodwill. There are probably close to 200 of them. All three kids have been having a blast building with them all week. I have a feeling I will be using these quite regularly in our rotation.

Just one of the many towers that were built with the spools.

The Jonah Toss game goes into the books as their favorite thing this week. Zak made it so much more fun that I had originally thought it could be. Here is the play by play. Annabelle, Asa, and Cheer Bear (Annabelle's new favorite) line up and wait with great anticipation.....

Zak makes the whale 'throw-up'. (This was the kids favorite part)

They are allowed to only pick up one at a time and bring them back to the can and put them into the whale.

Annabelle having a good time running....trying to get more balls than Asa. This game lasted a good 30 minutes for two nights in a row. I have a feeling it will get pulled out again tonight before bedtime.

Well, that pretty much sums up this week. We all had a lot of fun and will all definitely miss Zak (daddy) when he goes back to work. He really makes the days more fun around here! Happy blogging!

jess_hak

OOOHHHHH P.S. Our first little carrot seed has popped through the soil. Annabelle and I are both really, very excited! I actually might have been more excited than her. lol

Week 7: Jonah and the Big Fish, Dinosaurs

Here we are a day in which means a day late. Sorry. We did do school yesterday though...and I already have some great pictures for the review post. The last few times I've posted I've just been explaining between pictures. I like that so I'm going to continue that!

Our Bible theme this week is Jonah and the Big Fish. Annabelle likes to call it a whale-fish, because she has heard this lesson both ways (with a whale and a fish). lol There are very important lessons to be learned from this piece of history. The obvious lesson is obedience, and with disobedience there are consequences. So we will be talking about obedience. But the other lesson that I want her to take from this is that God forgives. Even when we are wrong, or do something that grieves Him, He longs for us to repent and return to Him....all we have to do is ask. This is evidenced in this lesson through the second chance God gave Jonah who deliberately went against God, AND in God's forgiveness of a repentant country who didn't know they were doing wrong until Jonah told them.

Anyway, there are so many fun activities that can be done with this! This first picture is just a quantifying with whale erasers (from the Dollar Tree). Annabelle and Asa both like to do this, although it is really easy for Annabelle.

What did the whale eat? A fun little game where you put your hand in, pull out a card and see what the whale ate. The goal is to find Jonah. This is made with paper plates, and some laminated clipart....easy to make (there is one of my favorite words). Should be fun! The idea for this was found at www.daniellesplace.com it was one of the free sample lessons.
Toss Jonah game. Jonah's consequence for his disobedience was being thrown into the water and swallowed by a whale. In this game the kiddos will be throwing bean bag balls into the can (symbolizing throwing Jonah into a whale). We are also going to watch the Veggie Tales Jonah movie.
DINOSAURS. This is our Dd theme of the week. This letter will be introduced through dinosaurs. Really fun. I have a few books from the library. This picture is a couple activities that I printed off from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com There are two piece dinosaur color matching puzzles (for Asa) and number matching (for Annabelle).
This is some of our dinosaur collection that I recently purchased at Target and the Dollar Tree. So far Annabelle and Silas have been having the most fun with these guys. We've also been watching Land Before Time and Dinosaur Train (both available instantly through Netflix...amazing what you can watch without cable!).

So these are the big new plans for the week. We are also going to be finishing a couple lapbooks this week and hopefully I will be able to post those for our week in review. And STILL waiting for that little carrot to pop its head up. :) Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Week 6 in Review

Sorry it is late. Which means this weeks focus will be a day late too. Zak is home this week on vacation so that is really exciting and distracting. I also got a much needed girls overnight with great friends this last weekend which also caused the delay. To top it all off I sliced through my finger (my right index one at that!) and am attempting to type this up still without it. I didn't get any pictures if Asa this week....sad, but there are some of the other two. So without further adieu, here are the pictures of our week.

C is for caterpillar (and cotton balls). We made fun Cc's that look like caterpillars. Annabelle picked black for her construction paper color, very different for her. Asa, on the other hand, picked a bright cheery yellow. :) Then we have the number 3s each with 3 circles, squares, and triangles on them. We also did a collage of things you can find in your home and talked a lot about family.

This little idea, though great in theory proved to be difficult for Annabelle and Asa. They had a hard time manipulating the yarn to follow the number 3. I probably won't repeat this for my kids when they are this age again. But here it is completed on the wall mostly done by me while they watched.
Here are the cute baskets with the fish and bread in them to assist with teaching the feeding of the 5,000. Asa's is on the left and Annabelle's is on the right. I must say that Asa was much more into school this week than Annabelle was. So his is more decorative than Annabelle's. I was pleased with how much Annabelle took away from this lesson. We were able to talk a lot about sharing and giving. And how important it is to give no matter how much or how little we have. I'm praying that this will become instilled in her little heart, and will be evidenced in the upcoming months.

These little handprints are what we made for their grandparents (they even painted the stems themselves). They are supposed to look like flowers. I'm not sure if they do or not, but they're cute either way. Annabelle was really excited to send these out in the mail. So any grandparents if you're reading this you should be getting these hopefully in the next couple days.
Also not pictured is Annabelle's first 'letter' that we sent out to her pen pal, Jasmine. She even received her first 'letter' from her today. Annabelle really enjoyed getting something in the mail.

Here is Silas 'sorting' erasers. He really just enjoyed picking them up off the floor and putting them in the little tray.

I would say that planting these carrot seeds were the highlight of Annabelle's week. She really enjoyed it. I just hope that she has more of a green thumb than me. lol Here she is putting the dirt into the pot.

Sprinkling the seeds into the dirt. Then we watered it.

Every morning the first thing she wants to do is check on her carrots, and sprinkle them with water. Nothing has popped up yet, and she is being very patient about it. Me on the other hand am very impatient and just hope I didn't kill the poor little things. lol

Week 6: Feeding of the 5,000, Families, #3, Cc

Woohoo....September. Goodness, time is speeding by (for the most part). This week we are going to be having some fun. We are going to be talking about families, and all the people that make up a family. Grandparents Day is coming up so all of you who read this who are grandparents to Annabelle pretend to be surprised when you have a made with love card/craft handed to you. Annabelle has already started making things for her grandparents and is enjoying it

There are so many fun things that you can do while learning about the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. With goldfish crackers and bread many things are possible. :) This is a picture of a craft/Bible activity that will be used to re-tell the lesson. I try give Annabelle a craft to do that will be able to be used to re-tell the story for every lesson. This way one or more of the mornings when we are going over the lesson she can 'teach' the lesson to me. This is a fun way to know that she understands and remembers what is going on in her lessons. So this is a picture of what that craft is this week (she is going to be decorating the basket...that is what will make it a craft).
Our shape of the month is the square. Again, Annabelle is familiar with these shapes, but these activities will benefit Asa. This is a fun shape game that I made. I cut out these shapes from foam. They will be put on the floor and we'll play a version of musical shapes. Turn on the music and when it stops find a square. I could also do a "Stand on a green square" type of game. Possibilities are endless and it was quick, cheap, and easy to make!

We are also learning about the number 3 the next couple of weeks. This is a fun feltboard game that introduces the concept of 3. Three circles make a snowman. A little early for snow, but another fun, cheap, easy idea. (Those three words make my day...fun, cheap, easy :))

While we will be finishing up our Feathers for lunch lapbook this week, we will also be starting a new one. This one is based off the book called The Carrot Seed. Carrot starts with c so it goes along with one of our letters for the month. I'm really excited about planting the carrot seeds and watching them grow with Annabelle. This project will last a while. She has a little book where she will draw a picture of what the plant looks like every 10 days. Seeing this is the first time Annabelle has ever planted and taken care of something it should hopefully be a fun, rewarding experience. (I really hope this goes well....I'm kind of notorious for killing plants. lol) You can find everything you need for this lapbook at HomeschoolShare.com

Also, we are going to be talking about caterpillars this week. I have a lot of fun caterpillar activities planned. I will post more about that at the end of the week since I will still be putting most of those together tonight after the kids are in bed.

Lastly there are a couple new things in the busy trays right now. This first one is sorting paperclips by color. They are getting sorted into these cute little baskets. I thought that the baskets went well with the feeding of the 5000 story....wish I had some cute little fish to sort instead of paperclips....I'll have to find those another time (after my spending freeze is lifted). SIDENOTE: If any of you ever go thrifting and find some great sorting materials I would be more than happy to pay you back for them! Anything that can be sorted by color, size, or type would work great!

This is also in the busy trays right now. It goes along with the Feathers for Lunch lapbook. It is a fun bird bingo type game. I've been really amazed with how many different types of birds Annabelle has been able to identify by looking at the pictures since playing this game. Bonus: She really has fun playing these kinds of games. What is better than playing and learning at the same time? Not much!

Ok, that is all I have time for today. Time to plant some carrot seeds. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Week 5 Review

What a crazy week. This week I was feeling a little gloomy. It might have been something to do with the 88 degree house we were sitting in or it could've been something completely different altogether. I'm still not sure, but the world has decided to cool off for a couple days....and my mood is slowly coming around (although some would beg to differ lol). Anyway, the kids and I hit a different second hand shop everyday which produced some exciting new manipulatives for the kids and quite a few good ideas for me to work on. The next few weeks my free time will be spent working on those!

Ok, onto the pictures, and what we did this week. Well, first lets talk about what we didn't do. Despite Annabelle's apparent enthusiasm about the shoe closet it still looks the same as when I posted it earlier this week. We also didn't get our lapbook finished. We did work on it and had fun with it. It will be finished in week 6.

We have boats. With this craft we worked on folding. We talked about how fisherman work on boats, and a few of Jesus' friends were fishermen. Which led us into a conversation of what it means exactly to be a 'fisher of men'. Then we made collages of friends. They had fun with this. Then we have our letter A buddy. Asa's is the Picasso-esque one. :) I like how Annabelle made her pigeon toed (she does this with all her buddies). We did much more, but it wouldn't fit on our board. Annabelle also wrote (well, dictated) her first ever letter to a pen-pal. Her name is Jasmine (Annabelle calls her Princess Jasmine lol).

Annabelle and Asa both really enjoyed these dot pics. They had to put a dot in each circle. Poor Asa looks like he's about to melt in this pic. :/
Working on hand eye coordination. We ruined the table because mommy didn't have the foresight to put something underneath the styrofoam before the hammering started. Bummed out about that one (so was daddy). :/
These cool, cheap things were Silas' favorite of the week. Although the other two littles enjoyed it a lot too. The plastic containers I already had and the pom poms and colored popsicle sticks I found at my new favorite store....the Dollar Tree!
Here is is working to get that popsicle stick into the hole. This literally kept him entertained for 45 min. straight for 3 days!
Asa sorting the popsicle sticks by colors into cups.
Another favorite the last couple weeks has been these play-doh mats that I found here:
http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2010/03/preschool-corner-playdough-mats.html

Another hand eye coordination/maneuvering activity. Putting spaghetti into a parmesan cheese shaker (also found at the Dollar Tree). SIDENOTE: In these last few pictures the kids are in their pajamas. This is because they are literally so excited when they wake up that 'school' is the second thing that they want to do (after breakfast). :)
Ok. I'm so excited about this next picture. lol I made play-doh!! It was so easy. I was really nervous, because I'm not a craftsy person. I was so proud of myself that it turned out that Zak was making fun of me. lol It feels and smells much better than that nasty store bought stuff. I left it the plain color, but added cinnamon (which made it smell fantastic). This gave it the wonderful look of apple pie crust. Which the kids had fun pretending to make.....well actually they made cookies. :) So this is the beautiful dough recipe link: http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/2008/10/homemade-playdo.html





Annabelle and Asa have both been constantly asking me, "What's next?" these past couple of weeks. I only planned on doing so many activites a day and when we're done, we're done. The littles were not happy with that approach. So this week with the help of my thrift store shopping I've been able to make up some 'busy trays' that they can play with and work on all by themselves any time they want to. A lot of these ideas came from one of my new favorite sites: http://www.countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/

This is a 'busy workbook'. Annabelle can use it any time she wants as many times as she wants. It is just worksheets that I printed off or took out of workbooks and put in page protectors. I put in some dry erase markers and viola....she has reusable worksheets that keep her entertained! This week she has the letters ABCD, some same and different worksheets, mazes, and circles. The really cute alphabet worksheets that I used can be found here: http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

These are the trays I was talking about. These activities will be rotated a couple times a week, and these are the things that I really need to work on the next couple of weeks. There will always be blank paper and drawing utensils, and puzzles available for the kids. There are also lacing cards in there at the moment.....
here is what is in the rest of them. Pattern cards and cylinders to match the pattern with. The silver tray with two different animal erasers to sort. The infamous hammering activity (which is now forever engraved on our table). And lastly a game that I found at Goodwill. It's like a tipsy game, but we just use it for stacking purposes (ex: roll the dice and stack the number that it says).


Holy cow that was a lot to post. I probably should've left the trays and book for next weeks post, but it took up a lot of time this week and so I thought I should include it. Hopefully my need for retail therapy is over....especially since I've been put on a spending freeze after all the money I donated to various charitable organizations this week via thrift stores. lol I should have enough to keep me busy. Looking forward to sharing with you what next week holds. Have a great holiday! Happy blogging.

jess_hak