Tot Tuesday

My little one has taken to trying on other people's shoes, no matter how big they are! Here, he is in his daddy's boots.

Not only does he try them on, he walks through the house with them.

A little bit of cuteness here....he is working on getting his big sis's shoes on to take them for a spin. Have an awesome day.

It Was Not His Time

We are still working through our Bible curriculum Telling God's Story Book 1 and this week's lesson was titled "It Wasn't Jesus' Time." The lesson discussed the angry mob coming for Jesus but it wasn't his time.

Kaleb decided to join us for this week's lesson. I never ask him if he wants to work on school, I let him decide that he is ready. He colored the sheet while listening to the lesson. We discussed how angry the people were on the sheet and who he thought was Jesus.

The lesson included a fun activity about secret codes. J was working through the secret code from the book.

The code was to hard and long for Kaleb so I wrote "It wasn't Jesus' time" on a piece of paper and had him make up his own code.

Then they both painted a message with lemon juice for a hidden message.

When the lemon juice was dry, J warmed it up over a lamp to read it. She didn't think it would work but it did. How cool was that? Love it. See you soon.

Tall Tales - Pecos Bill

While working through Sonlight D - American History part 1, it only felt fitting that we should do a unit on Tall Tales. I wasn't exactly sure where I wanted to go with this but I knew that I wanted a unit that we could do without a ton of work or planning. After some research, I bought Evan-Moor's Tall Tales Literature Pockets. It has nine different pockets complete with the stories of each tall tale and activities to go along. I wanted J to read and enjoy the stories of these bigger than life Americans.

Our first Tall Tale was Pecos Bill. We read the story in the text but we also read several books from the library. It was interesting that each story had some of the same story elements but they weren't completely identical.

After discussing the elements of a Tall Tale, we worked through the bigger than life worksheet about Pecos Bill.

We talked about how some of the items in the story could have happened and some just couldn't. She chose 2 elements of each and wrote them onto sticky notes.

After she wrote them onto sticky notes, she added them to our chart. We will add elements to this chart after each story that we read.

We discussed several of the vocabulary from the stories and she wrote the definitions in the mini book. This was a great activity for using context clues to derive the meaning of the words.

One activity I added to our study was to create a Tall Tales banner. Each character we learn about will get his/her own flag and we will hang them together when we are done. I gave J several options for this study - create a lap book, make a banner, make a notebook...she chose the banner. She is ever the artist:)

She drew a picture of Pecos Bill riding the tornado and being raised by wolves.

Next was the art project for Pecos Bill. She is creating a moon from a coffee filter colored with markers and a water dropper. The water will make the colors of the markers combine.

This is J's completed art work for Pecos Bill. She made a picture where Bill and two wolves are howling at the moon. She is super creative, she added Pecos Bill in a cave and two rock ledges for the wolves. Now, on to our next tale - Slue Foot Sue. Have a great weekend.

B4FIAR - The Little Rabbit with free printable

Our Before Five in a Row selection this week was The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn. I had planned to do this study as a welcome to a new pet rabbit but the rabbit didn't come like expected :( I decided to work with the book anyway.

I had found carrot shaped eggs around Easter time and bought them.  I knew that we would eventually be working with The Little Rabbit and The Carrot Seed. I thought they would come in handy. For this activity, I added black beans and alphabet beads in each carrot. He had to shake the egg to see what letters were in each one. He then traced the letters on the chart. This idea and free printable chart came from Mrs. Jones Creation Station (link below).

We read about rabbits and discovered what they needed to be happy and live long lives. I wrote all of the items that Kaleb mentioned about what bunnies do onto the carrot (printable below). He even had me write "got lost" because Buttercup the rabbit got lost in our story.

We also discussed what rabbits need, have, can, and are using this free printable organizer from Beach Bummed Teacher (link below).

We read about how to  handle a bunny correctly. He practiced using a stuffed bunny of J's. This will come in handy if we ever get a bunny of our own.

He decided what pets he would get if he could using this free printable from Homeschool Share. Needless to say the tarantula did not make his list (happy for that) but he did mention that he would like a mouse:(

I made some carrot bean bags and gave him two baskets. Each one was programmed with the letter R and the letter V. He had to determine of the picture/word began with the letter R or V and then throw the bean bag into the correct basket.

One of Kaleb's favorite games was parking the cars. Here, you roll the dice and park the car in the correct space. We played this game together - I was red and he was yellow. He won, though:)

I also had a package of rabbit and carrot erasers that I found. We used these several ways this week. Here, they were markers for another number game using dice. We tried to see who would cover the board first.

He put carrots programmed with numbers 1 through 25 in order. Rather than overwhelm him with all of the numbers, I gave him the first ten numbers to put in order etc...

I found this cute printable carrot subtracting printable. There were five carrots in the ground and he "took away" two, then counted how many carrots were left. This came from Frog Spot (link below).

I used the erasers for another game. I cut some alphabet stickers to fit the backside of the erasers and added them to a container of blackens. He had to use the tweezers to choose a carrot or bunny and then find the letter match on the chart. He covered the letter with the eraser. He liked doing this as well. We reused the alphabet mat from the Mrs. Jones Creation Station (link below).

Our letter of the week was V. He made a V into a volcano. We also watched several videos of erupting volcanoes on youtube.

J had a play hutch and we found some bunnies to play with during the day. I gave him some yarn for hay and he used the erasers for Buttercup's babies.

Then, we made a makeshift hutch from one of our bookshelf cubbies. We added a towel, a bowl for food, and Buttercup with one of her babies. He fed her daily and made sure the hutch was clean. I wasn't sure he would be interested in doing this but he surprised me.

We worked with numbers that added to five and numbers the added to ten. We used this ten chart and the erasers. He chose a number and added that many carrot erasers to the chart. Then he added bunny erasers for the other addend. By doing this activity, he was able to visualize addends of ten. This is part of my free printable (link below).

One last activity that we did with the carrot and bunny erasers was work with patterns. I started a pattern and he had to finish it. He was pretty good at this, taking the patterns further than I expected. We had fun with The Little Rabbit even though the outcome wasn't how I wanted it to be - no rabbit joining our family. But, I will say that this sparked a curiosity in my daughter J and she is researching rabbits as well. We have started a chore program in our house and she is working towards purchasing her own bunny. She has started a notebook for her research and is reading every book that she can find on the subject. So, eventually, we may have a pet rabbit after all.

Download Rabbit Printables HERE.

Links

Mrs. Jones Creation Station - has the free printable alphabet garden sheet and idea using the carrot shaped eggs.

Frog Spot - has the free printable carrot subtraction game.

Lil Country Kindergarten - has the free printable bunny finger puppets and rhyme that we used this week.

A Girl and a Glue Gun - had the idea to make rabbit cinnamon rolls. We did this but no picture - sorry.

Homeschool Creations - has the idea for the mini sensory bin using the hutch and bunnies. We just happened to own the hutch already.

Beach Bummed Teacher - has the free rabbit printable organizer in her TPT store.

The Measured Mom - has a whole bunch of ideas for the letter V including the parking lot game and making the V into a volcano.

Pledge of Allegiance

We are working through the final weeks of Sonlight Core D - American History part 1. As part of J's history program, I added a state study which she will complete over the next school year. I also felt that it was important for her to learn the Star Spangled Banner as well as The Pledge of Allegiance. These were two items that J hadn't had the chance to experience since we lived overseas. No better time than the present, right?

Learning the Pledge came at a really good time - it was her literature selection for her language arts program for the week. So it worked out. I thought that I would share a mini project that J created to learn it. (This was her idea:)

We began by reading about the flag and the pledge. We discussed the meaning of the words and talked about the elements of our flag. Then she created her own flag using card stock.

She added the words to the Pledge on the stripes of the flag. She decided she wanted to create this flag so she could practice the Pledge each day.

Her finished project - cute. It is hanging on our wall so she can memorize it. It was a simple art project with a great outcome. J's idea was pretty great. I love it.

Tot Tuesday

Little bit of Taco Stew and a lot of sour cream....it is what tastes best:)

I love that face! Enjoy your food today:)

Greater than Jonah and Solomon

We are still working through Telling God's Story Book 1 for our school year. It is coming to a end though and we will be moving on to Book 2 (next school year). This week's lesson was titled "Greater than Jonah and Solomon."

J colored her sheet while listening to the lesson. I wasn't sure that she would like these coloring sheets each week, but she surprised me. She always loves to have something to do while she is listening to my reading.

J worked on some mapping. This was part of the lesson. I love when we can actually see where Jesus walked.

One craft that I found was Jonah in the whale. Jonah hangs from a string in the whale's stomach. This free printable was found at Sunday School Resources (link below).

J also tried an origami whale. This one was somewhat easier than the star that we made sone months back. I love the variety of activities that this curriculum provides. We are definitely learning a lot:)

Links

Artistic Hands of Faith - has a cute Jonah craft using a ziplock bag with free template.

Crafting the Word of God - has a free template for a Jonah craft.

Sunday School Resources - has a cute craft with Jonah "hanging out" in the whale.