Thanksgiving

          This week we took a break from our normal letter of the week school time and focused on Thanksgiving.  We did several crafts and activities that I thought I would share.  The first thing we made was a thankful tree.  For this activity, we first walked around our yard and collected branches that had fallen.  We then placed them in a vase that I wrapped with a burlap ribbon tied with a beaded string.  Brooklyn enjoyed helping me put the beads on the string (which is also good fine motor skill practice).  I had cut several leaves out of cute fall colored scrapbook paper (you could also just use solid colored construction paper).  I traced the leaves and acorns with cookie cutters that I already had, but you could also either print off a picture of leaf to trace or trace a real leaf that you find outside.  We punched holes in the tops of our leaves and cut several pieces of string.  We reviewed a few of our previous verses – “Give freely” Deuteronomy 5:10 and “Be thankful in all things” 1 Thessalonians 5:18.   I then asked Brooklyn what she was thankful for.  The things she said were “my family, my friends, my bed, my nap, my house, my books, and my snack.”  I left some extra leaves beside our tree so we can add new things that we may think of later.  I hope to continue this tradition throughout the years so on each leaf, I wrote Brooklyn’s name and the year.  I am planning to add some thankful leaves of my own and encourage the rest of my family to do the same.  It will be cool to look back each year at the things each person wrote in the previous years. 

          Another craft that we made (which I have done for many years with lots of different children) was hand and footprint turkeys.  I traced both of my girl’s hands onto construction paper.  For Brooklyn, I traced both of her hands on red, orange, yellow, and green paper.  For Madelyn, I only used red, orange, and yellow (since her hands/turkey is smaller).  I also traced both of their feet on brown construction paper.  This works best with socks on since you don’t need to trace each toe. Once you have everything traced, cut them all out.  Older children can do this by themselves, but for my little ones, I did this for them.  Brooklyn helped me glue them together.  We glued the feet together by matching up the heals to make the turkey’s body, and then we arranged the hands around behind the feet to form the feathers. We taped them together, glued the feathers to the body, then added feet, a beak, and eyes.  This is the third turkey that I have made with Brooklyn, and I love getting out the old turkeys each year to see how her turkey (hands and feet) have grown.  Don’t forget to label you turkey with the year! 

          The last Thanksgiving craft that we made this year was a tepee.  Before we made this craft, I showed Brooklyn a short cartoon video that I found on youtube that explains (on a 2 year old level) the story of the first Thanksgiving.  She really enjoyed watching this, and it helped me explain why we celebrate Thanksgiving.  I showed her some pictures of Pilgrims and Indians enjoying the first Thanksgiving together, and we talked about how they prayed and thanked God for their food, friendships, and for taking care of all of their needs.  We also talked about how the Indians lived in tepees, and we made our own.  I printed out these tepees that I found here (you have to scroll down and click the link to print the tepee), let Brooklyn paint them, let them dry, cut them out, and taped them together. 

          I pray that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with their friends and families.  Don't forget to take some time and thank God for all that He has blessed you with this year.  

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 :)

G Week

My little giggler 

       
         We had a Great G Week filled with lots of Giggles!  Our poem for the week was called “The Giggles,” and I enjoyed watching Brooklyn giggle along every time I read it.  Our verse was “Give freely” Deuteronomy 15:10.  It was a very easy one to learn but is much harder to obey.  We practiced giving to others this week by sharing our toys with our friends (and baby sister) and baking bread to give to a neighbor.  As the Thanksgiving and Christmas season draws near, I hope to review this verse with Brooklyn and practice giving more to others just like God gives freely to us.

       

          Monday was guitar day.  We talked about the sound that the G makes and glued together our G guitar.  I had planned a guitar craft using an empty tissue box, rubber bands, and an empty paper towel roll, but instead, we just played Daddy’s guitar for a while and talked about the sounds that it made.  For snack, we shared some yummy green grapes. 

          

          Tuesday we talked about giraffes.  A few weeks ago, we got a cool book about giraffes in a Chick-fil-a kids meal, and I had been holding it hostage for G week ever since.  We started our school time by reading the book and learning all kinds of interesting facts about giraffes.  Afterwards, I traced Brooklyn’s hand and arm onto a piece of yellow paper and cut it out.  I then gave her a paint brush (a sponge would have probably worked better if I had planned ahead and bought one) and some brown paint and let her make brown spots on her giraffe.  Once it dried, she added an eye sticker, and I drew on some hair and a mouth.  We planted flower bulbs last weekend so we talked more about the things they need to help them grow.

          Wednesday was so much fun!  Before our school time started, I gathered 10 food items from Brooklyn’s play kitchen.  I labeled each food with a number (I used numbers 1-6 and repeated some of the numbers) and set them together to make a grocery store.  I filled one of Brooklyn’s purses with 28 coins – which was the total amount that she needed to purchase all of the items (we used play money – I used all different types of coins since it didn’t matter for this activity).  I then told her she got to go grocery shopping.  She was so excited and quickly grabbed her shopping cart, purse, a couple of baby dolls, and started shopping!  She chose the items one by one, read the number on the food, and counted out that amount of coins to give me to buy the food.  She was able to read each number correctly and count out the correct number of coins every single time all by herself.  She was so proud of herself and had the best time!  After we finished our grocery store game, I gave Brooklyn a picture of a grocery cart and some expired coupons (I had planned to use a magazine but forgot to ask to borrow one) and let her choose which items she wanted to put in it.  I let her cut out the grocery items and then glue them into her cart. 

Brooklyn and her babies ready to grocery shop

Counting out her money

          On Thursday, we went to a pumpkin patch in the morning.  Even though we missed our school time, we had a fun time going on a hay ride, picking out a pumpkin, bouncing in the bounce house, looking at the animals, and sliding down the big slide.  I was also able to incorporate a little teaching in our day; while we were there, we watched some little pigs, ducks, and some of the cutest little goats race.  We also got to see some other goats when looking at the animals.  On the way home, we talked about how goat starts with G.  After singing our “Climb Climb Little Goat” song all week, I think it was cool for Brooklyn to be able to see what a goat loots like in real life.  I had planned to do ghost crafts and activities on Thursday (since it was a week before Halloween) so later in the afternoon, we did our math game with hidden ghosts which was lots of fun!  We made our ghost banana snacks on Friday which were super cute! 

Finding the hidden ghosts

ghost bananas

          On Friday we talked about brave little David and the giant Goliath.  We talked about how David was not afraid of Goliath because he knew God was with him.  I asked Brooklyn what things make her scared, then we talked about how God is with her and can help her to not be afraid.  I printed out a David and Goliath craft which Brooklyn colored.  I then rolled and glued them together to make a short David and tall Goliath.  

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

          Just for fun...here are a couple of pictures from our pumpkin patch adventure.  

Brooklyn playing in the tunnel 

Checking out the goats

The big slide was so much fun! 

F Week

         We are so lucky to have a fish pond in our backyard.  We have spent so much time feeding and watching our fish since we moved into our house back in May.  We’ve also enjoyed watching our fish multiply – at least 8 new babies have been born in the last 3 months.  Brooklyn loves watching them swim around through the window while she eats her breakfast every morning and is even able to feed them all by herself.  We spent a lot of time this week talking about how F is for fish.  Brooklyn loved the “Four Little Fish” poem.  At the beginning of the week we pretended to be fish and did the actions that the fish do in the poem.  Later in the week, I printed out 4 fish and let Brooklyn color them.  We then glued each one to a popsicle stick, and we made those little fish swim around while we said our poem.  Our verse was a shortened version of John 3:16.  Brooklyn learned (with a little help) “For God so loved the world, that He gave Jesus.”  We talked about how Jesus is God’s Child just like she is my child, and how God loved us, and everybody else in the world, so much that He gave His Son to save us.

Saying the "Four Little Fish Poem" using her little fish puppets

 

          Brooklyn enjoyed learning a few fun new songs on Monday.  I taught her “Five Green and Speckled Frogs.”  She loved sticking out her tongue to eat the “delicious bugs,” and quickly caught on to say the “yum yum” part in the song.  We also acted out the “Four Little Fish” poem quite a few times.  We talked about the letter F, and since she already knows the sound that the F says, I tried to help her say the sound and try to come up with words beginning with the F sound.  We read Fox in Socks, Brooklyn glued together her Fox F craft, and she picked one of her favorite fruits for snack – pineapple.

          Tuesday was fish day.  We started off by painting our fishbowl blue (I cut a big circle out of an empty cereal box, but the craft instructions say to use a paper plate – either would work).  We also painted our fish with finger paint – Brooklyn chose to paint hers red and yellow.  While the paint was drying, we acted out our “Four Little Fish” poem, and then we read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.  We had goldfish for snack and while Brooklyn was eating them, we used a few for our math game.  I cut a pond out of blue paper and had Brooklyn count out 10 goldfish to put in the pond.  We then did a little subtraction; I would say “two fish jumped out of the pond,” and Brooklyn would take 2 fish out.  Then I would ask her how many were left in the pond.  Once all of the fish were out of the pond, we had the fish jump back in the pond, a few at a time, and practiced some addition until we had all 10 in the pond again.  Brooklyn enjoyed the game but was excited when she could finally eat the goldfish.  After our snack and math game, we went outside to feed our fish and tried to count how many are in our pond now – I counted 13!  Later in the day, we finished our fishbowl craft by gluing dried beans to the bottom of our fishbowl, attaching strips of green paper, and then gluing on our fish.  I loved how this craft turned out! 

Gluing on the beans

Painting water in her fishbowl 

The finished fishbowl craft

     























          Wednesday we talked about faces.  We reviewed from last week that we use our eyes to see and ears to hear.  Then we talked about how our mouths are used to eat and our nose is used to smell.  I then gave Brooklyn lots of random objects – scrap paper, string, popsicle sticks, dried beans (leftover from our fishbowl craft), craft foam, eye stickers, pom poms, tissue paper scraps, and streamers along with her scissors and glue.  I gave her a white piece of paper and told her to

make a face.  She chose green paper for her face and told me that she needed a circle.  I helped her cut out a “circle” (she is still learning how to use her training scissors, although she was able to cut out her face almost by herself).  I then guided her through the craft by asking her what parts she saw on my face.  The first thing she said was “cheeks.”  She chose the 2 pom poms to use for the cheeks and chose to glue them on the sides of the face.  Other than asking her which part she wanted to do next, she did this entire face all by herself!  I was so impressed!!  She used eye stickers for the eyes, beans for the hair, a triangular piece of foam for the nose, another piece of foam for the mouth, 2 rectangles (that she cut) for the ears, a popsicle stick for the chin, a piece of white streamer that she tore for the neck, and some pink tissue paper for the hair bow.  I love her creativity!!

          Thursday was flower day.  It was rainy in the morning so we looked out the window at the different flowers in our yard.  We talked about the things that flowers need to grow.  We are planning to plant some tulip bulbs this weekend and will continue our discussion then. J  For our craft we used watercolor to paint 3 cupcake liners.  (The watercolor may have not been the best option since the cupcake liner seemed to be a little water resistant, but we went with it anyway.)  We then used a green marker to color 3 popsicle sticks.  After the paint had dried, we glued the cupcake liners to the tops of the popsicle sticks, and then glued a pom pom to the center.  We displayed them in a little “vase” that we made out of half of an empty toilet paper roll, but you could also glue these to a piece of paper.

          I was so looking forward to Friday’s craft, and it was just as fun as I had hoped!  We talked about Jonah and the big fish.  I told Brooklyn that God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people to stop doing bad things and instead of being a good listener, Jonah ran away from God.  We talked about the storm that God sent and how Jonah felt bad about not listening to God so he told the other people on the ship to throw him into the ocean.  I know the concept of getting eaten by a big fish and living in the fish’s tummy must seem a little bit scary to a 2 year old, but I tried to focus on the fact that while Jonah was in the fish’s tummy, he prayed to God and said he was sorry for not listening.  We counted out the 3 days that he stayed in the fish’s tummy, and how God made the fish spit Jonah out on land.  Then we talked about how Jonah was a good listener and obeyed God this time and went to Nineveh.  After our Bible story, we made our craft.  I found this craft idea from this website. You can click on the link to see the instructions.  (This required a little prep work that I did ahead of time.)  I found that taping the corners of the contact paper down to keep it in place made it easier for Brooklyn.  She really enjoyed sticking the orange tissue paper onto the “sticky paper” and also sticking her fingers onto the sticky paper to make funny noises. 

         

Watching the little frog on our window
(just above Brooklyn's hair bow)

          On Thursday night, as we were finishing up dinner, a little frog hopped onto our kitchen window.  He stayed there for a while, and we were able to watch him breath.  Then all of a sudden, a little bug landed on the window near him.  We watched him quickly hop over to the bug, stick out his tongue, and eat the bug up!!  It was the coolest thing ever, and how awesome that it happened during F week when we’ve been talking about frogs.  We watched him for a little while, and were able to see him eat two other bugs.  I love those surprise teachable moments, and they are even better when the go along with our theme for the week!

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

E Week

          What a fun E week we had!  We had a lot going on this week and were a little rushed some of the days, but we did end up accomplishing all of our planned activities.  The highlight of the week was Thursday when we learned that E is for eyes.  We took our first “field trip” to Daddy’s work to get a quick little eye exam and learn more about our eyes.  Brooklyn was able to look at books about eyes, get a picture taken of her eye, and even look through the slit lamp at my eyes.  She had such a good time!

 

          Monday we talked about the letter E and the sound that it makes, then we made our Elephant E.  Later, we played our math game and worked on color patterns with eggs.  I realized that my Easter eggs are still packed up somewhere (I really need to finish unpacking one of these days!) so I cut out lots of Easter eggs in different colors.  I then made a pattern that Brooklyn had to finish.  We started with “green, pink, green, pink, green…” and I let Brooklyn tell me what should come next.  This was a little difficult for her at first, but after a few tries she caught on and was able to do a few on her own.  After that, I laid down 3 eggs and had her try to put down the same 3 color eggs in the same order as me.  She was able to do this much more easily. 

        

   
       Tuesday was our elephant day.  Brooklyn loved singing “The Elephant Song” each day and pretending to be an elephant with a swinging trunk, flapping ears, stomping feet, and a swinging tail.  All of our moving worked up an appetite, so next Brooklyn enjoyed peanuts for snack.  After snack we made our craft – elephant hand prints.

          We had MOPS on Wednesday, but we were able to squeeze in a quick discussion about the earth and where we live on the earth.  We also made our earth craft which was so cool!  Brooklyn loves coloring with markers and thought it was so cool to spray water onto her drawing and watch the green and blue blend together to make something that looked a lot like the earth all by herself.

          Thursday was our fun eye day!  We started out the day by coloring our eyes with markers (these were circles that I cut out of paper towels).  We talked about the different colors that eyes can be and what color eyes we have.  Brooklyn colored one set of eyeballs blue, one set green, and the third set brown.  We then took one of Daddy’s empty eye drop bottles, filled it with water, and put “eye drops” into our eyes.  (This was similar to the earth craft.  When the water dropped on the marker scribbles, it spread the marker to make a uniform color across the eye/circle.)  We then set our eyeballs aside to dry.  While they were drying, we had our eyeball snack.  I sliced bananas, put on a little peanut butter in the center to act as the glue, and let Brooklyn add raisins on the peanut butter to make her eyeballs.  Later, after our field trip, we finished our eye craft.  I had cut 6 eye shapes out of white paper and 6 little black circles.  Brooklyn glued them all together, matching up each color eye with its pair.

          On Friday, we read the story of Elijah and how God took care of him when he had no food.  Brooklyn colored a coloring page of the raven bringing food to Elijah that I printed off.  We then made a raven that had a piece of bread in its mouth to bring to Elijah.  We talked about how God always takes care of His children. 

          Our verse for the week was James 1:17 "Every good gift comes from God."  We once again sang our verse to a little tune that we made up.  We sang "every good gift is from our God" and spent a lot of time talking about all of the things that we have and how God is the One who gave them all to us.  We even tied it back in to the story of Elijah and how the gift of food that he received was sent to him by God.  

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