Tot Tuesday

My baby is getting so big....sometimes I wish I could slow down time. I am just trying to enjoy him every day. What a sweetie!

Love that smile!

Jesus Means Business

This week's Bible lesson was about how Jesus meant business. It discussed how He had no place to lay His head. The lesson related how birds and foxes have nests/homes but Jesus was only here for a short time.

We started with the lesson coloring sheet. I read her the lesson and she colors while we discuss it.

One of the activities was to make a bird's nest using mud. J insisted on wearing her dress that day so we improvised. (And Kaleb was with his Daddy so no mud making :( )

Here is the bird's nest that she created. Isn't it cute?

J wanted to make a clay bird nest complete with eggs and a pom pom bird mom. Here she is making her nest. This project will be completed later this week since we had to wait for the clay to dry before she could paint and such. I will add the final project pic when it is finished. We are still enjoying our Bible lessons - a few more lessons then we will be learning about the Sermon on the Mount.

Geography Unit - Chapter One and Two

Recently, I decided to add a mini unit on geography for J. I found an awesome inflatable globe (life size) and a core book - My World by Ira Wolfman. I found the book at a Goodwill so it did not have the included globe. I found the huge globe at Hobby Lobby. It was the same price as the smaller globes, so I said - why not? It does take up a lot of space but it is super fun.

We started the week out by reading the first chapter of My World. J made a flip book for vocabulary words that we come across during this mini unit. She started by defining the word Geography.

She read the book Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney. 

After that, she created her own map of her room, labels and all. She then turned the map of her room to a map that denoted the best hiding places in her room. She drew a map key and marked all of the great places to hide in her room so she can hide from her brother. 

We borrowed a ton of map books from the library and looked at several different maps.

We read about neighborhoods and landmarks in our neighborhoods. Then she began on her 3-d map of her street.

She made the houses from cardboard (fronts only). We talked about how the street was numbered and any landmarks that we could add to our neighborhood map. This idea came from Teach Preschool (link below).

She labeled where she lives on the globe (not sure the sticker will stay). We discussed where other family members lived as well as the country we lived in. 

She created this before during her Space Unit but we brought it out again for review - Me on the Map printable book (link below). It helped her visualize that she could be in several places at once....in the kitchen, in our house, on our street, in our city, in our state, in our country, on the continent, in our world, in our place in space.

In Chapter Two of our core book, landmarks were mentioned. So, to add to our study, I purchased the World Landmark Toob and printed some 3 part cards. J inspected each landmark and matched the cards to them

Then, she added them to our world map.

We also added a special person that we know who is going to Qatar soon. We will be learning about that country in her honor.

We brought out the landmarks all week while she learned the names of each.

And we researched them for a notebook page. We read about each one and wrote a fact or two on a plain notebook page. This page will go into her Geography notebook at the end of her unit. It was a good week, we learned a lot. Next week, we will continue our research about the landmarks and move onto chapter 3.

Links 

Inspiring Teaching Design - her TPT store has the great free printable that we used for our Me on the Map project.

Teach Preschool - super cute idea for making a 3D map of your street.

Suzie's HomeEducation Ideas - has the free printable 3 part cards for World Landmarks toob.

Space Unit - Space Stations and Wrap-Up Party

We finally finished our Space Unit - Yay! Our last week was spent learning about Space travel and the International Space Station.

J made her own Space Station using recyclables such as boxes, 2 liter bottles, gallon jugs and lots of paint. DH helped with this process - he's more adept for this.

She wanted her Space Station to be purple and she even made red astronauts from felt.

For our last week, J worked on several final projects to bring all of her learning together. She made an ABC book about Space. She included all the information that she learned throughout the unit. She wrote the facts for each letter and then illustrated them. This project was included in her Space Notebook.

She made a Solar System necklace from air drying clay. She formed the planets and the sun from the clay. She poked a hole through the beads and waited patiently for them to dry so she could paint them.

She painted each home made planet bead and laced them onto a necklace. She added pony beads in between each planet. J really wanted to make a bracelet but it was too large so I convinced her to make a necklace.

J was very proud of her creation. The only problem we had with it was the rings on Saturn and Uranus broke off.

Another final project was to make planet cookies - for our Space Party. We used different sized circle cookie cutters and we added a cookie ring for Saturn and Uranus. I gave her several colors of icing and let her create her planets.

J made the sun through Pluto. (Yes, I know that Pluto isn't a planet anymore but J wanted to include it.) She even included the red spot on Jupiter.

The last project we did was to create a review game for the unit. We used a game template and made our own question cards. Then, we had a Space Party! J made decorations. We ate homemade chicken nuggets, tater tots, Alien punch (lime sherbet and sprite), and our planet cookies (which didn't last long). We played our space game and J beat us all with her knowledge of Space :) It was a great Science unit. We had fun and, for once, I didn't stress out over my lesson plans. Our next unit is the Human Body - J is less than excited but I think I will be able to hook her into it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day (better late than never)

I just had to post this pic of my cutie! Love the hat! Have an awesome day.

Tot Tuesday

Riley is still amazing me every day. I so enjoy his smiles and laughs. But, mostly, his cute little smile eludes me when I bring out my big camera. Today was slightly different....Riley the pirate smiled for me.

He's a cute little pirate, isn't he?

Even when he''s swinging!

Jesus - The Light of the World

We are in Week 12 - Jesus is the Light of the World. It seems to be getting harder and harder to find extra activities with each of these last lessons but I am sure that will end soon. We will be learning about the sermon on the mount which should be good.

We started our lesson with the coloring sheet while I read the Bible.

She practiced her New Testament Bible Books. One game we like to play is that she closes her eyes and I remove several books from the line-up. Then she has to tell me which ones aren't there.

She made the stop light project that I found from Bible Fun for Kids (link below).

We made Jesus lanterns. First, I purchased some glass candle holders from he dollar store. Then I used block letters to spell Jesus which I taped on the inside of the glass. J mode-podged dark tissue paper around the letters. After it was dry, I removed the letters and added a battery operated candle. So, the name Jesus would be lit up.

TO make this project easier for Kaleb, I cut Jesus letters from yellow tissue paper and glued them down on the candle holder. Then all he had to do was glue down the blue tissue paper and not really worry about the letters.

A simple Bible lesson with a great message - Jesus is the Light of the World. See you soon.

Links

Learn Play Imagine - has a cute and super easy sun craft for this lesson.

Apples and ABCs - has a simple candle craft to use with the song "This Little Light of Mine."

Bible Fun For Kids - has the stoplight craft idea with free printable.