J Week

          Life is getting a little bit crazy these days.  As the holidays are approaching, I have been struggling with finding time to do lesson plans, craft prep, and carrying out school time.  Because of this (and traveling) I decided to take my time (rather than stress) and spread the five lessons of the letter J out over the course of two weeks.  I have also decided to take some time off from teaching around the holidays and just have fun doing holiday crafts.  Sometimes I get so wrapped up in following through on these lessons and crafts that I plan, that I miss out on the teachable moments that happen in everyday life.  Instead of adding the stresses of planning and teaching to the already crazy holiday season, I am going to try to take a deep breath, relax, have fun playing with my kids, sing Christmas songs with them, bake Christmas cookies, teach my girls about the true meaning of Christmas, give to others, make Christmas ornaments, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy these sweet moments.  Sometimes it’s nice to slow down when the busyness of life is speeding up all around you…and when everything else in life slows down again, then I can spend more time teaching!  Now on to the letter J….

          Day 1 – We talked about the letter J and the sound it makes.  Brooklyn immediately knew that J is for jump and wanted to jump around the room for a while.  We also practiced writing the letter J on the chalkboard, and Brooklyn did her J dot worksheet. 

          Day 2 – We talked about jellyfish and where they live.  I had originally planned to use watercolor to paint a coffee filter to make a jellyfish but decided to make it a different way.  I used some contact paper (leftover from our Jonah craft) cut into 2 half circles.  I taped one circle down to the table and let Brooklyn sprinkle glitter on it.  Afterwards, she placed pink squares of tissue paper on top of the glitter, and we added legs made out of streamers to the flat side of the half circle.  Once she had her jellyfish decorated, I laid the other half circle on top – attaching the 2 sticky sides.  Note:  try to keep the glitter away from the edges of the jellyfish so that you are able to seal it.   I skipped the jellyfish math game because we were busy packing for our trip to Asheville the next day. 

          Day 3 – We had such a fun day talking about the jungle.  I printed out pictures of jungle animals (since we don’t have many jungle stuffed animals), cut them out, and let Brooklyn name each one.  We then made binoculars by rubber banding 2 empty toilet paper rolls together.  I had her leave the room and then hid all of the animals.  When she came back in, she looked through the binoculars into the “jungle” to find the animals.  She loves hiding/finding games so this was a big hit!    We played several times, and I had lots of fun finding new tricky places to hide the animals each time.  She even hid them for me to find a couple of times.  Next, I gave Brooklyn a piece of green paper and let her glued green strips of tissue paper onto it to make her jungle.  She then painted each of her animals (the same ones we used for the jungle hunt).  Once they were dry, she glued them onto her jungle paper.  For snack, she enjoyed animal crackers.

Searching for the jungle animals

She found a giraffe 

Brooklyn's jungle before adding the animals

Painting the jungle animals

          Day 4 – We started the day with a fun game.  I had printed out 7 clip art pictures – 4 that started with the letter J and 3 that did not.  I had her color the pictures, then I cut them out.  I held each one up to make sure that she knew what they all were, and then I placed them in a circle around the room.  I had her start by standing in front of one of the pictures.  She had to tell me what the picture was of and then tell me if it started with the letter J.  If it did start with a J, she jumped over the picture, if not, she walked around it.  She really enjoyed this game, and she went around the circle several times.  Later, she made her craft.  She started by using markers to color a popsicle stick (she used red, green, and yellow).  I then glued on 2 bells to the top of the stick (hot glue works best).  Once it was dry, she used it to make music while we sang “Jingle Bells.”

Jumping over J words

jingle bells

          Day 5 -  We read the story of Jesus birth and sang “Away in a Manger.” Then we made our craft which was baby Jesus in the manger.  Once Brooklyn finished gluing all the pieces on to make her craft, we sang “Away in a Manger” again.  After singing the song again, Brooklyn told me that we needed to add stars in the sky of our picture.  I gave her some star stickers that she added which was the perfect touch! 

         I hope everyone is enjoying the fun, exciting, busy month of Christmas lights, cozy fires, hot chocolate, parties, Christmas songs, and spending time with friends and family.  Don’t let the busyness of this season distract you from focusing on the true meaning of Christmas.

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

I Week

          The first song Brooklyn learned when she was a baby was “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”  We use to sing it all of the time as we did the motions together, but as she’s learned new songs, it has been forgotten.  This week it was our theme song.  We enjoyed singing it and doing the motions together again.  We talked about how I is for insect and a spider is an insect.  I printed out the Insect Action Game cards (for Thursday’s activity) and laid out the grasshopper, ant, butterfly, and bee that are described in the “Who’s Who Insect Poem.”  Each day as I read the poem, I told Brooklyn to choose the correct insect as I read each verse.  Brooklyn was able to choose the correct insect every time!  We also ended up playing the Insect Action Game every day before our craft.  You can follow this link to print out the cards for this game.   To play the game, I turned all of the action cards upside down, let Brooklyn draw one out of the pile, and then we followed the instructions on the card.  Brooklyn loved pretending to be all of the different insects.  This also helped get some of her energy out before we sat down for learning and craft time. 

Choosing her insect action card

Buzzing around like a bumblebee 

          As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve added a new activity to our Monday school time.  I printed out the entire alphabet from this website.  I purchased dot markers which Brooklyn uses to stamp in the circles to form the letter of the week.  This is one of Brooklyn’s favorite things that we do each week.  It also helps her see how to form the letters.  Since starting this activity, Brooklyn has started trying to write her letters all by herself.  Last week, she was able to write H’s, and this week she was able to write I’s.  I am so proud of her!  In addition to her dot letter I worksheet, Brooklyn also made her Iguana I on Monday. 

          On Tuesday, we talked about insects.  We, of course, did our Insect poem and action game, and then took some time to talk about different insects and what they do.  We then played our math game.  This website (the same one that I got the insect action cards from) has a whole curriculum based on insects filled with many great learning activities.  Included in this curriculum is a math game where the child matches numbers to the ladybug with that same number of dots on his back.  I thought this was a cute idea but didn’t want to use up that much printer ink to print all of the cute, colorful ladybugs so I made my own.  I used red construction paper and a black marker – not too hard at all!  We have number cards already that we used for our game.  I laid out all of the numbers, let Brooklyn pick a ladybug, count the number of dots on its back, and select the correct number to match it up with.  For our craft, we made insect fingerprints.  I found some colorful ink (you could also use paint if you don’t have ink) and stamped Brooklyn’s fingers onto a piece of paper.  Later, once they dried, I added legs, antennas, stripes, dots, and bodies to make them look more like bugs. 

Counting the dots on the ladybug 

Insect fingerprints

          I had planned to talk about Indians on Wednesday since it was getting close to Thanksgiving.  Instead, we went to MOPS and had a busy afternoon so we never got around to doing school.  (If you read last week’s Thanksgiving post, you can see that we did our Indian lesson and tepees that were planned for this Wednesday.)

          Thursday was all about ice.  I read the “Ice Cream Poem” a few times to start our day.  For our math game, I cut out 10 brown triangles and wrote numbers 1-10 on them.  I then cut out 10 circles in various colors.  I had Brooklyn choose an ice cream cone, read the number on that cone, then stack that many scoops of ice cream on top.  Brooklyn only wanted to do this two times, and then she was done.  Oh well, we’ll try this game again another time.  We made an ice cycle collage for our craft.  I collected blue (you could also use white or silver) construction paper, tissue paper, and wrapping paper along with aluminum foil.  We cut and tore the paper into strips.  Brooklyn painted Elmer’s glue all over a piece of blue paper and then laid down the strips vertically all over the paper.  (We also talked about what the word “vertical” means).   The aluminum foil really makes this craft pretty.  We made ice cream for our snack.  I included the recipe in the lesson plans.  This is a quick and easy way for kids to get involved, and it’s fun to see how the milk, sugar, and vanilla you put in the bag turns into ice cream as you squeeze the big bag of ice.  You can also use this activity to teach a little science lesson about ice and salt or liquid and solids.  The ice cream was very yummy too! 

Ready for the ice cream cone math game

Six scoops of ice cream 

Painting her paper blue for her ice cycle craft

The final ice cycle craft

She's saying "cooold" while squeezing the ice cream bag. 

Enjoying her yummy ice cream

                      On Friday, I read the story of how Abraham and Sarah wanted a  baby but thought they were too old.  We talked about how with God anything is possible.  Brooklyn was so happy when I told her that God gave them a little baby boy named Isaac.  We then colored a picture of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. 

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