Advent Study - God's Names

Last year, I gave J a choice of advent bible studies. I asked her if she wanted to learn about the Genealogy of Jesus, God's Names, or a simple Christmas devotional. She chose God's names.  Because of computer issues, I wasn't able to share what we did during the holiday season but I wanted to post this in case your family would like to learn about God's Names during the next advent season or any other time. It is not just for advent!

The first reading of the book talks about just how many names God has. It is amazing how many  names he has. The book suggested that J discover how many names she has - she came up with 11.

For every  name of God, we tried to come up with an ornament. Since this was the first lesson on how many names J had, she made a crystal J (borax experiment). This was easy to do with great results. It just takes a few days to dry.

Also, she colored each name for her poster and a mini ornament for the window display.

Here is her ornament for Elhohim. She made a coffee filter world and placed it in her hand.

Here is her Yahweh ornament - burning bush and her name for the poster.

The beginning of her poster. Each day, she added each name she learned. It was full by the time we finished.

Another ornament. Many times, I would ask her what she would like to make for the tree to represent the name and she would come up with some great ones. Here's a fish.

A magnifying glass ornament.

Our window display - God's names. She colored a new one each day. I love how this turned out. Our tree was also a success. I wish I would have taken a picture of it. We learned so much from this book - it definitely doesn't have to be an advent study. Have a great day.

Outside Fun

Recently, we had a break in our weather. It was actually nice, not too hot, but nice. We took our school outside. We brought our blanket,  a tray full of snacks, and a few toys for some outside school. It was nice while it lasted.

J brought her little house to play while I read from our chapter books.

We let our rabbit Oreo run around the yard while we were working on school stuff. She was a sweetie. J recently lost her to old age (we believe). She is sorely missed by my sweet little girl. IT is fun to deviate from school at the table to school outside. I hope we will be able to do it again soon. Enjoy your day.

Jesus Outsmarts the Religious Leaders

We are still working through Jesus' last week of life as we are coming to an end of Telling God's Story Book 1. This week's lesson was about Jesus outsmarting the religious leaders in the temple.

J started the lesson by coloring the sheet and listening, as always.

I showed her the idea in the lesson about making a locust to eat. She was grossed out so I found a simple locust (grasshopper) to make using a clothespin.

You can see her locust on the table. It was definitely a better craft than the other option, at least for her. Only a few more lessons and we will be finished with Book 1. I have decided to wait until next school year to start Book 2. For the rest of the school year, we will focus on our character studies.

Links

Crafting the Word of God - has a few crafts for John the Baptist including free templates.

Steadfast Family - has a cute idea for a John the Baptist craft using yarn and a coloring page.

Tall Tales - Slue Foot Sue

As an extra part of our American History studies, I added a mini unit on American Tall Tales to complete our school year. This week's Tall Tale was Slue-Foot Sue. She was a tough one to add extra books or projects so we basically stuck with the book. As the backbone to our unit study (and to make it easier on me), we are using Evan-Moor Literature Pockets Tall Tales e-book. It has a variety of projects for each Tall Tale and it made it easier for my planning this unit:)

After reading about Slue-Foot Slue, she wrote about the ways that it was a tall tale. We discussed the exaggerations and she wrote 2 items that could happen and 2 that couldn't on our Tale Tale chart.

I had to include this photo of J working because of our visitor in the background. He is always busy:)

J made a section for her Tall Tale banner. She drew Slue-Foot Sue riding the catfish that was as big as a whale.

Another project was to make a comic strip of Sue's life. She actually decided to add to Sue's life. So her comic strip was full of more exaggerations.

An art project for Slue-Foot Sue was to create a file folder diorama about Widow Maker bucking Sue off toward the moon.

This is her finished project. She used a pipe cleaner to raise Sue into the sky. Cute and then it folds down to fit into the literature pocket. J is definitely enjoying the Tall Tales unit and we are on to Paul Bunyan. Hope you have an awesome weekend.

Sewing School

J and I had to take a break from sewing because of our big move. It took some time to finally get back into school and such, to pack and unpack the boxes, and to arrange the rooms of our house. But, we are finally ready to resume our crafting - yay! We finally cleared out our sewing room (my DH calls it the utility room since his tools and stuff are sharing the space), scrubbed the floor, and set our machines up so we can just sit down and sew when the mood hits us.

I will be working on curtains, pillows, and things for the house but J has a few projects she would like to do. Most of them involve making items for her new room. But, I wanted to share a mini project that she put the finishing touches on - a dog pillow for Riley. It is super cute and now sits inside the crib unless my monkey throws it out to the floor:)

This project was found from Craft Tuts Plus (link below). It had a free downloadable full size pattern which I love. I hate trying to reinvent the wheel. She sewed everything using her machine. Have I mentioned how much she loves her machine? (Thanks Mom!)

It was a rainy, yucky day and we decided to sew (after J played with the legos:). I helped J find a new project to try and she chose a mini messenger bag from Crazy Little Projects (link below). I was somewhat nervous that it was going to be frustrating for her but she was determined to try it.

J worked with fabrics that were in our stash. I smile overtime I say that I have a fabric stash now:) That would also be thanks to my mom:) She ironed all of her pieces herself.

She cut out all of her pattern pieces as well. I just directed how to place the pattern on the fold.

Here she is sewing her strap. She used the heart fabric from the dust ruffle pockets that I made her.

She sewed this messenger bag all by herself. I am so proud of her. She even didn't fuss when I suggested that she rip out some of the stitches to correct her mistake:)

Isn't it cute? She is going to sew velcro to the flap to keep it closed. She loved it so much that she took it to Friday School with her lunch in it. Nice job, J!

Links

Craft Tuts Plus - has a cute dog pillow with a free printable pattern.

Crazy Little Projects - has the pattern and tutorial for the mini messenger bag.

Jesus Entered Jerusalem as a King

Our next lesson from Telling God's Story Book 1 was about Jesus entering the city as a king. We are working through Jesus' last week of life as we come to an end in this Bible curriculum. This lesson was about the Triumphal Entry.

Again, Kaleb asked to participate in our Bible lesson. I always have sheets ready for him but I let him tell me when he is ready. The kids colored the sheet while I read through the lesson. We read first from the Bible and then we read the lesson text.

I found a simple craft from Mommy's Adventures (link below) to go along with the lesson. It required a printable leaf pattern and green/yellow tissue paper.

They tore up tissue paper and glued it onto the leaf pattern to create palm branches like the ones that were lain before Jesus as he entered the city. Kaleb surprised me by seeing this project all the way through to the end. He wasn't about to be out done by his sister. Because of repairs and such on the house, we left the lesson at that. But the text offered more to do if you wanted. See you soon.

Links

A Mommy's Adventures - has the free printable leaf pattern and tissue paper craft idea.

State Study - Florida

Every week (well, almost every week), we learn about a state. While learning about the state, J is working on a state notebook as well. This week's state was Florida. As you will see from the pictures, this state study went over to the new house because we couldn't finish it in time:)

J read about the state of Florida. You can see the bewildered look on her face about some of the silly laws of Florida.

J matched the states and capitals using the cards I found from The Dollar Store.

She drew an orange tree for her notebook since you can't have Florida without oranges:) I love my pretty girl. I was hoping to have 25 states done by the end of the school year. Not sure we will but we will eventually finish our state notebook. Next year, in fourth grade, we will do an in-depth study of our home state. This time, it was just an overview.

Character Training - Forgiveness with free printable

As part of our Bible curriculum, J and I are working through the Virtue Training Bible. Each week, we learn about a new virtue and this week's virtue was forgiveness.

We start the lesson by discussing what forgiveness is and she looks up the definition in the dictionary. She adds that to her virtue notebook page (printable link below).

I found a cute coloring page on forgiveness from His Sunflower (link below). J loves to color while I am reading.

We then discussed ways she could forgive, especially her brothers:) She wrote them down in her notebook.

This time around, J asked to find the passage in the Bible and read it. She looked up each verse, read stout loud, and highlighted it. Her reading has come so far! I am a proud momma:)

Here is a view of what her virtue notebook looks like as well as her forgiveness word ring. If you would like the free printables that I created to go-along with the virtue study, please feel free to download. Enjoy. If you have any questions, let me know. I would also love to know if you are using the printables for your own notebook. Thanks.

Download Forgiveness Notebook Printable HERE.

Links

Kids of Integrity - has a free lesson plan, game ideas, and printable for forgiveness.

His Sunflower - a free coloring page and mini bible lesson on forgiveness.

Meaningful Mama - lessons on forgiveness.

Character First - has free printables and videos for forgiveness.

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.