U Week

The most common U word I can think of is umbrella.  Umbrellas are so much fun, and kids always seem to love holding them while walking in the rain.  I was hoping for at least one rainy day during U week, but instead we had absolutely beautiful weather the whole week.  I can’t complain about that though!  We did pretend like it was raining and played with umbrellas outside anyway.  Brooklyn loved our Umbrella Song and poem, and we enjoyed pretending to be an umbrella while singing and dancing around.  Since the weather was so nice this week, we did our circle time activities and songs outside most days.  My girls love to swing and that always provides a great time to practice counting, spelling their names, and singing songs.

On Monday I introduced the letter U and Brooklyn did her U dot picture.  Of course her U picture was an umbrella, which she enjoyed gluing together.  

On Tuesday we talked about things that live underwater.  We talked about fish, seashells, whales, dolphins, seaweed, and other ocean creatures.  We watched a couple of youtube videos of underwater life.  I printed out a page of underwater creatures that Brooklyn colored with her do-a-dot markers.  Brooklyn also finger painted a light blue piece of paper with dark blue finger paint to make an ocean.  Once everything was dry, I cut out the underwater creatures, and she glued them into her ocean.  

Wednesday was our umbrella day.  I gave Brooklyn a coffee filter and some water color paints and let her cover the coffee filter with lots of beautiful colors.  Once it was dry, she folded it in half, glued it together, and glued on a handle to make an umbrella.  For snack, we made an umbrella using half of a Babybel cheese and a small piece of a bendy straw.  

Thursday was such a beautiful day outside!  We decided to spend the morning at the park, and we even packed a picnic lunch.  We never got around to doing school.

I had a hard time coming up with a Bible lesson for the letter U.  After much research, I found the story of King Uzziah who is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 26.  As I read about King Uzziah, I was challenged myself to always rely on God and give Him the glory for what He does in my life.  It is very easy to take credit for the things I accomplish in my life (especially when everything is going good).  I must remember that God is enabling me and empowering me with His strength - not my own - and always remember to thank Him for working through me.  I told Brooklyn about how King Uzziah loved God and how God blessed him.  King Uzziah had lots of things, did a lot of good things, and became very well liked and very powerful.  He started to become prideful and stopped being faithful to God.  Because of this, God gave him leprosy which caused him to have to live by himself and lose all of his power.  King Uzziah stopped relying on God and started relying on himself.  He started thinking he could do things on his own and stopped thanking God for helping him.  What a good lesson that we all can learn from.     

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