H Week

          Coincidentally, H week fell on Halloween.  We had such a fun time enjoying a fall festival, a couple of trunk-or-treats, and a little trick-or-treating along with our Halloween themed day on Thursday.  Once again, Brooklyn really enjoyed our song which was “Put Your Hat on Your Head.”  We enjoyed collecting different hats to use as props while singing the song each day.  We also had fun singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and we even made it more fun by doing fast and slow versions of the song.  Our verse was “Honor your mommy and daddy.” Deuteronomy 5:16.  Since honor is a big word that’s a little hard to explain, we talked about ways to honor mommy and daddy.  Now when I ask her what her verse means she says “be a good listener to mommy and daddy.” 

          We read The Napping House on Monday (one of our favorites), and then glued together our house H.  She added flowers to the window box with a flower stamp, and I drew on leaves and stems. 

          Tuesday was heart day.  We started off the day with finger painting.  I drew a big heart on a piece of white paper, put a few globs of red finger paint in the middle, and let Brooklyn paint away.  I told her to try to keep the paint inside of the heart, and she did such a good job!  We then played our math game.  In preparation, I had cut out 5 white hearts and numbered them 1-5 with a white crayon.  To start the game, I gave her a red dot marker and let her color the heart to reveal the hidden number.  Once she found the numbers, I had her put the hearts in order from 1 to 5.  I was so surprised that she was able to do this all by herself.  For snack, we used a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out a piece of bread.  I added peanut butter, and she decorated her heart with raisins. 

          We skipped school time on Wednesday because of our busy week.

          Thursday was Halloween!!  We talked about how Happy and Halloween both start with an H.  We made a jack-o-lantern by gluing orange tissue paper squares onto a pumpkin that I drew with a white crayon onto a piece of black paper.  I spread glue inside the pumpkin, and Brooklyn put the squares on the glue.  While working on this craft, she kept getting glue on her fingers; once we were finished, she told me “I like clean fingers.” J  She’s not a big fan of messy gluing.  I had cut out several black triangles and shapes that she picked from to add on eyes, a nose, and a mouth.  Since there were triangles left over, she decided to add ears on her jack-o-lantern too.  For snack, we made tiny pumpkins by peeling a small nectarine and adding a little piece of celery for the stem.  We also made Halloween trail mix.  I just found some things in the pantry that we already had (that I thought would taste good with candy corn) and mixed them all together.  We ended up using Honey Chex cereal, raisins, sunflower seeds, and candy corn.  Brooklyn seemed to really enjoy it!  After our snack, we decided to do one of the activities that we had missed on Wednesday.  I gave Brooklyn the animals and their homes worksheet to color.  I then cut out each animal and home, lined them up, and had her match them up.  She was able to match most of them on her own (the bat in the cave and rabbit in the burrow were a little tricky for her).  We then glued them to a piece of paper.  It was fun talking about where different animals make their homes while she was gluing!  

 

    We had such a crazy whirlwind of a week with Halloween, fall festivals, and lots of other fun stuff all crammed in.  We also ended the week on Friday with a play date with Brooklyn’s friend, Ally.  I decided that we would just enjoy playing and skip school time again (twice in one week!!)  I had planned to talk about heaven and do a cool craft about Jesus ascending into heaven.  Here is the link to the craft idea that I had found.

          Throughout the week, we worked on writing the letter H.  We practiced on the chalkboard, on a worksheet that I printed out to help her trace the letter H, and with pencils, pens, and markers on different colored papers.  Each time, I would tell her to draw a line down, and then another line down, and a line across.  By Wednesday, I noticed her drawing H’s on her chalkboard all by herself without any help!  It’s so exciting and rewarding to see all of the things that she is learning!

          For details and instructions of these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans.  If you have more ideas for the letter H, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!

          Just for fun, here are a couple of Halloween pictures of my little bugs :)