Jesus' Birth

We are working through Telling God's Story Book 1 right now in our bible curriculum. This week's lesson was about Jesus' birth. Typically, this is usually taught during the Christmas holidays but we are following the book and this was our next lesson. We are also planning a different study for bible for the Advent season.

We started our lesson by J coloring her sheet while I read from the bible. We discussed it as well from the lesson notes.

One of the activities was to have a scavenger hunt with clues from the lesson. This was an easy prep activity as they had ideas for where to hide each slip. I just had to time it so J wouldn't notice what I was doing.

We looked at The Annunciation painting and discussed how Mary might have been feeling when the angel came to her.

We studied the words of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. This was interesting as it discussed the meaning behind each verse of the song. Then, we listened to several versions of the song but we could not find one that had all of the verses as printed on our sheet. It was somewhat early for Christmas songs but we managed:)

Lastly, we tried the cute printable star craft from Jesus Without Language (link below). There is no picture because it did not turn out for us. Not sure what we did wrong but it just didn't work out. Oh, well, you can't win them all. Hope you are having a great week.

Links

Jesus Without Language - has a free printable star craft that depicts Jesus' birth.

Tot Tuesday

If you know anything about my tot, you know that he hates to sleep. He loves people and loves to fall asleep in your arms. But if you try to move him to the crib, forget it. He will wake up at any slightest movement. So, imagine my surprise when, during school, I found this...

He was so tired, he just fell asleep while he was playing.

What a sweetie! He is getting so big. There is a first time for everything:)

Character Training - Devotion to the Word with free printable

This year, we are working through Telling God's Story as well as The Virtue Training Bible. I felt like character training was important this year and we have truly enjoyed this program. To go along with the Virtue Training Bible, I have created a few note booking pages. This week's virtue was Devotion to the Word.

We started our week out with J coloring her Devotion word ring page. She practices the key verse that I have on the back each day.

She added the Devotion to the Word header to her notebook page as well as the tab. She looked up the definition of devotion in her dictionary. She is definitely getting some practice using a dictionary this year.

Then, we discuss ways she can be devoted to the word and she writes them in her notebook. We add to this each day as we mark the scriptures in the bible.

Each day, she highlights the key scriptures for the virtue using the corresponding color. She also places a color tab on the page for each reference back to the verses.

J adds her word ring pages to her others and we will practice the verses as needed. I usually like to have a craft or such for each virtue but this week proved to be somewhat hard. So, we left it at just the lesson.

Here is J's notebook page. She wrote a few ways that she could be devoted to the word and she added her mini verse book. On the back of the page, she clued the checklist that I created. I love the way this notebook is turning out. She will have this for a while and be able to look back on each virtue as well as add her thoughts and prayers.

 If you would like to download the pages that I have created, the link is below. Let me know if you have any problems. I would also love to hear if you are using these in your bible study as well.

You can download the Devotion to the Word notebook pages HERE.

Great American Artists - Currier & Ives

This week, working through Great American Artists for Kids, our artists were Currier and Ives. An interesting fact about Currier and Ives is that their prints allowed American to own art. Before them, art was generally for the wealthy.

We learned about Currier and Ives by reading about them. J wrote a notebook page for the artists. We also added them to our timeline.

She wrote a notecard for our artist wall. She really liked the fact that they made art affordable for the common American. I thought the assembly line coloring of their prints was rather interesting.

The project suggested in the art book was to set up a coloring assembly line as they colored their prints. But I chose a project from Rainbow Skies and Fireflies(link below). It consisted of coloring a winter tree scene with markers.

Then she wet the bottom part of the paper and folded it over.

This created a neat reflection effect as if the trees were by the water.

The next project was a winter scene from Deep Space Sparkle (link below). J drew the tree using oil pastel and then added snow from white paint.

J's finished painting with her snowman and red person. (This strongly reminds me of Peter from the Snowy Day) Not a bad art day :) Hope you are having an awesome day.

Links

Deep Space Sparkle - has a winter scene art project that would be good for the Currier & Ives lesson.

Rainbow Skies and Fireflies - has a neat idea for a tree landscape using markers and water.

Deep Space Sparkle - has another project that I thought would be good for Currier & Ives, a barn scene to draw and paint.

Tot Tuesday

Riley is getting ready to turn one year old - I can't believe that he is already one! It was finally time to give him a haircut. I couldn't stand to see the hair in his eyes. So my DH took him to a friend of ours for a quick (sort of) haircut.

My poor guy didn't like the clippers!

He sort of looks like an old man :) I fixed it though, as much as you can fix hair on a tot. Have a great day!

You Can Ask God Anything

Our Bible curriculum for the school year is Telling God's Story Book 1. This week's lesson was about being able to ask God anything. It ended up with explaining how we should treat others the way we want to be treated (Golden Rule). This lesson wasn't particularly long and there wasn't much to do. I added what I could.

J practiced her books of the Bible and I added a few more for her to remember.

J listened to the lesson while she colored her sheet.

She looked for words that were in her lesson in the word search. I wrote the words on the board so she could find all of them.

I found this cute Golden Rule craft from Creative Sunday School Crafts (link below). I had some trouble printing but then took a screen shot and was able to print that.

This is her finished Golden Rule project. It turned out cute and we hung it on our wall. It was a simple lesson but good - ask God anything:) Hope you have a wonderful week.

Links

Creative Sunday School Crafts - has free printable Golden Rule project.

Doodle Art Gallery - has a free printable coloring page with the Golden Rule on it with a bunch of other quote pages.

Moomah Magazine - has a cute idea for teaching the Golden Rule and making it real for kids. I love the visual with the hearts.

Science - Week 9

Our Science curriculum for the year is Considering God's Creation. This week, we learned more about plants.

J worked through the vocabulary using the flip books that I made for each lesson.

We discussed the parts of a plant while she worked on her flower notebook page.

The page turned out super cute. I love these notebook pages.

We discussed different parts of a plant that we eat. J worked through a plant sort, deciding if we were eating the root, the stem, the fruit, or the seed. I found this free printable at Corinne St. Angelo's TPT store (link below).

J labeled a piece of bread for a mold experiment and we placed it under or bathroom sink. She will check it every day and draw what she will see.

We planted this cute little grass kit and J loves to check it everyday to see how much it has grown. I think she will have to give it a haircut soon! Have a great weekend.

Links

Corinne St. Angelo TPT store - free printable parts of plants we eat.

Social Studies - Life in the Plymouth Colony (week 1)

We are taking a quick break from our unit on explorers and are studying about life in the Plymouth Colony. This unit is timely since it is all most Thanksgiving. I felt like it would be a good use of our time to learn more about the Pilgrims and their struggles. We have been reading about them in our day-to-day homeschooling with Sonlight.

As our spine, we will be using History Pockets - Life in the Plymouth Colony. This book has 8 different aspects of Plymouth Colony and a neat way to learn it. Along with this book, we will be reading several different books from the Library as well as books from our collection. We worked on two pockets per week so we started in late October in order to finish in time for Thanksgiving.

The first pocket we worked on was about why the Pilgrims left their home country to voyage to the New World. J mapped their voyage on a mini map.

She wrote about what she would take on the trip - she had to make sure it fit into the trunk.

The, she drew the items to see if they would all fit.

We learned about the Mayflower and how little room the Pilgrims actually had on the ship!

Pocket one contains a model of the Mayflower, the map of their voyage, her trunk with all of her items, and some basic vocabulary.

The second pocket was about the New World. There wasn't too many activities for this pocket. J worked on the vocabulary. I had her put the words in alphabetical order and then she wrote the definitions of each word.

There was a word search. Not too much planning for this pocket. We read a ton of books about the Pilgrims. After a while, they started to sound the same! (but we still read them:) This Life in the Plymouth Colony has definitely reinforced what we have been reading about with Sonlight. Love that! Hope your week is going great.

American Artists - Harriet Powers

We are currently working through Great American Artists for Kids while we are studying American History this year. Each week we take one artist and learn about his/her life, works of art, and then try to create our own art work. This week's artist was Harriet Powers - a quilter of picture quilts. Her quilts told a story. I love quilting so this artist was definitely one of my favorites!

I found a book about Harriet Powers from the library. We read about her life and her quilts. J loved looking at all of them. I kept emphasizing the simplicity of her patterns.

J wrote a notebook page for Harriet Powers and added it to her art notebook.

She wrote an artist card for our artist wall. It seems our composer wall is lacking but our artists are doing well.

Here is a picture of our artist wall. We had to move it out of baby's reach. He was bending all of our cards and such. We couldn't have that!

J added Harriet Powers to our timeline.

The project suggested in the book was somewhat different. I thought it would be good for J to create her own quilt square based on a Bible story. Here, J is working on her plan. We discussed simplicity (again). I didn't want her to create a plan for something she was going to loose steam over quilting!

We went shopping for fabric. The very day we learned about Harriet Powers, I received a coupon on my phone for JoAnn's. Yay! We went shopping and I allowed her to pick out all of her fabrics and such. The next day, J ironed out the creases int he fabric. (Now, typically, if you are a quilter, you would wash the fabrics before all of this. But I decided this square wasn't going to be washed regularly so we skipped this step.)

This is the finished square (rectangle) with all of her pieces fused on. She will be sewing the pieces as well as quilting in the same step. Again, I didn't want her to get bored of the project so I simplified it. Her Bible quilt is the story of David and Goliath, in case you can't tell. She will add a button as a rock onto the top of it.

J is sewing her Bible story quilt. I love how she chose with fabric for David and Blacks for Goliath. Pretty cool. She worked on this quilt all week as well as other projects. She made a snowman for me. She asked her friend what they wanted her to make. I may have unleashed a sewing monster :)

Links

Georgia Encyclopedia - has some basic information on Harriet Powers as well as a great photo of one of her quilts.

Museum of Fine Arts Boston - great picture of another of Harriet Powers bible quilts.

My Hero - Harriet Powers, my hero project, another site with some information about her and her quilts,

Art Threads - more information and more pictures of her inspiring quilts.

Tolerance Website - has a lesson idea called Stitching It Together complete with mini unit to download.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History - has a few more pictures of her quilts and some information.