M Week

I had planned to start back school time on January 6 and kick off the new year with the letter M.  I’m not sure what I was thinking with all of the stuff that we had going on throughout the month of January.  We finally started M week two weeks later but ended up spreading it over the last two weeks of January.  I do have to say, it was so nice getting back into this routine (even if it was a slow start).  During these two weeks, we were blessed with snow twice and Madelyn’s 1st birthday!  We spent Madelyn’s birthday talking about how M is for Madelyn and enjoying a special family day together.  I also added in some extra M activities on the days we didn’t have an official school time.  Brooklyn loves Mickey and Minnie Mouse so we played with her new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and she played with her Mickey sticker book.  She spent lots of hours taking stickers out of her sticker book and putting them on pictures for mommy, daddy, and Madelyn.  How thoughtful of her to share her favorite stickers!  We also enjoyed some of her Mickey Mouse chocolates that she got for Christmas.  Then there was the snow.  We discovered that Brooklyn absolutely loves snow.  Although it has snowed many times since she was born, this is the first time she was old enough to actually enjoy it.  We made snow angels, did lots of sledding, built a snowman, ate snow cream, and best of all had tons of fun building and sliding down a big snow slide.  I would say we took full advantage of the snow!  Now back to the letter M….

On the first day of M week, Brooklyn glued together her M mountains and did her M dot picture.  It worked out nicely that we glued snow caps on the tops of the mountains since it snowed this day!  I also taught her our letter M poem, song, and Bible verse.  She loves “Where is Thumbkin” so when I taught her “Where is Mousekin” she really enjoyed saying it while pretending to be a mouse.  “The Itsy Bitsy Monkey” was also really fun!

The second day, we talked about monkeys.  In addition to “The Itsy Bitsy Monkey” song, we also sang “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.”  While we sang, we made music with our instruments.  For our craft, I had cut out some shapes: a few circles in various sizes, a big oval, and a big heart.  Brooklyn enjoyed gluing them together to made a monkey.  When it was all glued together, she drew on eyes, a nose, and a big smile for the mouth.  

Making music

Day three was all about mouths.  I drew and cut out lips on a piece of red paper and also a red oval and lots of white rectangles.  I gave Brooklyn a piece of pink paper and let her glue on the lips, then the tongue, then the teeth.  As she glued on each piece, we talked about the purpose of that part of the mouth.  Brooklyn said she uses her mouth “to bite, to eat...to eat M’s, for talking, to drink milk.”  She said she uses her lips “for chapstick and to kiss.”  After her craft, it was time for snack.  I gave Brooklyn a graph and a fun sized pack of M&M’s.  She dumped out the M&M’s, and then she had a lesson in graphing.  I had printed off a graph that had the colors listed across the bottom and numbers down the side.  (I changed the numbers on the side to numbers 1-5).  I then used markers to color each word at the bottom of the graph in the coordinating color to help Brooklyn.  I instructed Brooklyn to place one M&M in each square above the correct color.  When all of the M&M’s were on the graph, we discovered that there were the most orange and blue M&M's (4 each) and the least amount of red (1).  Finally, Brooklyn colored in the squares that had M&M's in them as she removed them from the graph. Then we used our mouths to eat the M&Ms.  What a fun way to learn about graphs!  

Gluing the teeth in the mouth

Graphing her M&M's

Her final M&M Graph

On day four, we talked about money.  I let Brooklyn play with some pretend money, and we talked a little bit about the value of money.  We then decided to enjoy some time out in the snow.  I plan to teach her more about money while we are playing in the future.  

Sledding fun in the snow

Madelyn loved sledding too!

The last day I told Brooklyn the story of baby Moses.  She loves any story that has a baby in it.  She loved hearing about how Moses’ mother placed him in a basket in the river to protect him and was excited to do the same thing for our craft.  I printed out the picture of the baby Moses and the basket, let Brooklyn color them, then I cut them out.  I found some scraps of green paper that I let her cut strips into (for some cutting practice) to make grass.  She then glued the green grass onto a blue piece of paper followed by the basket.  As soon as I finished cutting out baby Moses, Brooklyn gently grabbed him from me, rocked him to sleep, kissed him, and then placed him in the basket.  She is such a nurturing little girl!  

Rocking the baby Moses to sleep before placing him in the basket

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

L Week

Learning about the letter L turned out to be quite long and drawn out.  My goal was to accomplish L week just before taking our Christmas break; however, we were so busy that we only did two days worth before we were completely taken over by the holiday craziness.  We finished up the last three days in the beginning of January and are thankfully back on track now!  Sometimes things just don’t go as you plan!  At least we finally did get through all of the planned letter L activities - even if it did take us several weeks!

The first day Brooklyn glued together her lighthouse.  We talked a little about what lighthouses do and used flashlights to shine light around a dark room.  We also talked about the sound that the letter L makes (which has always been tricky for Brooklyn).  

The second day we talked about ladybugs.  Brooklyn had fun making her ladybug craft; she especially enjoyed using a q-tip to make black dots on her ladybug’s back.  We played the ladybug math game from the letter I week (Tuesday) to practice counting and number recognition.  

The third day we talked more about light.  We sang “This Little Light of Mine” lots of times and even used a flashlight to wave around as we sang.  Since we did not do this lesson until after Christmas, we talked about all of the Christmas lights that we had seen and how they made light outside when it was dark.  We also talked about shadows and how they appear when things block the light.  For our craft, we made shadow drawings.  I held up a flashlight and random objects to make shadows on a piece of paper.  Brooklyn used a pencil to trace the outline of the objects.  

The fourth day was focused on leaves.  The Little Leaf Song was fun to sing and a great way to practice subtracting!  Brooklyn really enjoyed our craft.  I cut some leaves from one of our bushes which she used as a paintbrush to paint a picture.  

On the last day we learned about Daniel in the lion’s den.  After reading the story from the Bible, Brooklyn made her craft.  She started by drawing Daniel on a piece of brown construction paper.  (She has recently started drawing people - mostly faces.)  Then she used an orange marker to color three yellow cupcake liners to make lions.  I helped her by drawing lion faces in each cupcake liner.  She then glued each one onto the paper around Daniel.  The story of Daniel really demonstrates the verse for the week.  Although he wasn’t suppose to pray to God, Daniel continued to let his light shine!

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

K Week

         It sure has been a while since I have updated this blog!  We have had the busiest last six weeks.  There were Christmas parties, family get-togethers, church events, wedding showers, baby showers, the birth of a new nephew, Christmas, New Years, my brother's wedding, the birth of a new niece, and my sweet Madelyn's first birthday (among other crazy things).  I feel like I have been going non-stop, and the very few times I have gotten a free second to start updating this blog, I remember 10 things that need to be done.  I am hoping the next few months will be filled with boring days of the normal routine of life.  I also want to add that throughout all of the craziness, I have not done much structured school time with Brooklyn.  We have spent our time baking, playing, painting, and working on shower/party decorations (aka "crafts" that Brooklyn loves to help with :)  This week we have started back with the letter M and have really enjoyed getting back into the routine of school time!  I wrote the following "K Week" blog entry as we were doing the K week activities, but just finally got around to editing/posting it.

         It is always hard to get back into the swing of things after a break for the holidays! We did our K week the week after Thanksgiving (even though I’m posting this in January – I like to stay a couple of weeks ahead). Either way, it takes extra discipline to plan and follow through with school time after having time off. I have to admit I was somewhat dreading doing school this week (I was just so overwhelmed with all the busyness of Christmas); however, I am so glad that we did. We had such a fun time learning about the letter K, and Brooklyn looked forward to our craft each day (I think she had missed the structured school time!) This week, as Brooklyn practiced writing her K’s, I taught her a cute trick that seemed to help her remember how to write them better. We talked about how K is for kiss. I first told her to write a straight line down, then draw a line to the middle of the K, let it kiss the K, and come back. We even made a kissing noise every time we drew a K. Our verse was Proverbs 12:25 “A kind word cheers up.” Brooklyn learned this verse quickly and was even able to explain it by saying “saying nice words makes people happy.”

          On Monday we had fun saying our Kangaroo poem and hopping all around the room. We talked about kangaroos and how they carry their babies, who are named joeys, in their pouch. We then glued together our kangaroo K.

          Tuesday we talked about kites. Brooklyn’s favorite movie is “Mary Poppins” (which she calls “Mary Hoppins”). She LOVES singing all of the songs from the movie so of course we had to sing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” on kite day! I had planned to use contact paper and tissue paper to make a kite; however, Brooklyn wanted to paint so I decided to draw a diamond on a piece of white paper and let her use watercolor to paint it. The next day, once it dried, I cut it out, taped popsicle sticks to the back for support, taped on a tail, tied a string to the popsicle sticks, and let Brooklyn fly it around. She was beyond excited when she realized she could sing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” while actually flying a kite (instead of using her usual clothing, towel, or washcloth props for the song). For our math activity, I had cut out several triangles. We played around with the triangles to make different shapes including diamonds (which she called “kites” at first) and hexagons. I also made a maze for some extra fun. I drew four kites onto a piece of paper and labeled them with the numbers 1-4. I drew loopy lines to the bottom of the page where I put insect stickers (because that’s all I had) which were grouped in groups of 1-4. I found these reusable dry erase pockets on clearance a few weeks ago which came in handy with this activity. I placed the picture in the pocket, gave Brooklyn a dry erase marker, and let her trace the lines to find out where each kite tail ended. The lines were a little confusing for her, but she enjoyed it and did a good job.

          We started our day on Wednesday by playing in Brooklyn’s little kitchen together. She was able to tell me that kitchen starts with the letter K while we were baking cookies and making soup together. I printed out a place mat that shows how to set the table. I gave Brooklyn a plate, napkin, fork, spoon, and cup and guided her as she set each item where it belonged. Once we did it together once (with the help of the place mat), I removed the place mat and asked her to set the table again all by herself. I was so impressed that she put everything in the right spot without any help! She then asked to color her place mat. Later in the day, we talked about things that can be found in a kitchen. I pointed out different appliances and told her what they are (she already knew most things).

          Thursday we played with keys. Brooklyn loves sneaking keys whenever she can get her hands on them. She always pretends to unlock doors and go “bye bye.” She was shocked when I told her that we were going to play with lots of keys! We first made our craft. We put several keys onto the table, put a piece of paper on top, and colored over the keys to make their imprints. This was a little tricky for Brooklyn so she mostly scribbled while I colored over a few keys – she had fun though. After that, I let her practice putting the keys in the right doors.

          We have been reading the Christmas story a lot through the month of December so the story of the three kings going to visit baby Jesus fit in perfectly. After we read the story, we began our craft. Brooklyn first painted some green grass at the bottom of the page. Next, I painted her hand brown and stamped it three times to make three camels. I then painted her fingers different colors and stamped them on top of the camels to represent the three kings. Once they were dry, I added faces, and put glue in the shape of crowns on top of each king’s head. Brooklyn sprinkled gold glitter on top of the glue. We finished by making a star in the sky.

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

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!!