Christmas Unit Study: Week 3

10 more days
'till Christmas!

Here is our week so far, and the plan for the rest of it:

Monday:
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Sick day.

Tuesdsay:
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Story: Wise men followed a star
Bible activity: Acted out being a wise man, seeing the star and then following it.
Symbol: Santa: Watched The Santa Clause movie.
Craft: Cut out a stocking, and "sewed" it together with yarn.
Carol: What Child is This? First verse and chorus.
*Write in Christmas Journal each day.

Wednesday:
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Story: Wise Men visit Herod.
Activity: Act out the story.
Symbol: History of Santa
Craft: Cut out a star and cover with glitter. (Can use to play follow the "star")
Sing this weeks carol.

Thursday:
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Story: Wise Men find Jesus!!
Craft/activity: Draw and cut out a heart. Have Cora draw a picture of herself on the heart. Place in a box and have her wrap it up as a gift for baby Jesus.
Options: Add hands, and mouth in the box.
Sing Carol.

Friday:
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Story: Wise men go back home a different way.
Activity: On left side of a sheet of paper draw three men. In the middle draw a crown (Herod). On the right draw a house/home.
Draw a line from the wise men to the house, but go around Herod.
Sing Carol.
Hope to make pumpkin bread.

December: Christmas Unit Study

After taking a week off for Thanksgiving, and with the excitement of the Christmas season, I just couldn't bring myself to force us back into our normal routine.

So we are putting Heart of Dakota on hold...

Just for December.

I am taking this entire month to really celebrate the true meaning of Christmas...the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ.

So I took a little time and put together a Christmas Unit Study.

Here is what week one looked like:

Monday:

• Teacher planning day. :-)

Tuesday:

• Bible: Angle visits Mary (Little Golden Books. The Christmas Story)
• Bible activity: Cora acted out being Mary and I was the angle Gabriel.
• Carol: Learning Away in the Manger with hand motions (repeated daily)
• Symbol: Meaning of the Christmas tree (Science: What is an evergreen?)
• Writing: Copied today's date and the word Mary. Then drew a picture of today's story.
• Craft: Planned activity:Color and cut out a Christmas tree. Actual Activity: Made a Christmas count down, with tear away numbers.
• Christmas Countdown: Drew weather for the day on the calender and pulled off number on the Countdown board. (repeated daily)
• Advent: Verbally count number on the calender 1-25 (repeated daily)

Wednesday:

• Bible: Angle came to Joseph in a dream
• Symbol: Read more about the history of the Christmas tree
• Writing: Copied today's date and the word Joseph. Then drew a picture of today's story.
• Craft: Planned: Cut out different shapes to sort, glue them as ornaments on the tree from yesterday's craft. What really happened: No craft.
• Advent
• Christmas Carol
• Story: The story of the Three Trees

Thursday:

• Bible: Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem
• Bible Activity: Acted out packing and taking a long trip to Bethlehem.
• Opt bible activity: Look up distance from Nazareth to Bethe lam on a map.
• Symbol: discussed the meaning of Christmas lights/ Tree decoration
• Craft: planned: color and cut out light shapes, glue on tree from first day. Actual: none
• Writing: copied Date and Bethlehem, then drew picture of today's story.
• Advent
• Christmas carol

Friday:

• Bible: No room in the Inn, Jesus born in a stable
• Bible Activity: Went around knocking on "doors" asking for a place to stay, and finally going to the stable. Cora played the part of Mary holding baby Jesus, while Caleb and I pretended to be various barn yard animals. Then we switched places.
• Activity: Made and decorated Christmas cookies. Then delivered some to our neighbors.
• Advent
• Christmas Carol

Key bible Verse for this week:

John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him, will not perish , but have eternal life."

Unit 20 - Review

I skipped this unit the week before Thanksgiving and we moved on to unit 21 - Letter Q.
The plan was to do the Unit 20's review after our Thanksgiving break.

Unit 19- P

Pending update. Check back soon.

Unit 18- O

Pending update. Check back soon.

Unit 17 Letter N

To be updated. Check back soon.

Week 16

Letter of the week: M
Bible Stories: Elijah and Elisha

Memory Verse: "My Children, don't just talk about love. Put your love into action. then it will truly be love."

Birds Fed Elijah:

For this bible activity we pretended to be birds and picked up "food" flew it over and dropped in in front of Elijah.

We also drew and counted groups of 3 birds for the "Count on Me" section this week.

God's fire to the Altar:

For our craft on this day, we used play dough to make a model of Elijah's altar. Complete with a little bull and fire.

Oil kept flowing:

2 Kings 4:1-7

We had a great time acting out this story. Even little Caleb got into this one, giving his sister "empty jars" when she went door to door asking for them. Then he handed them to her as she filled them up with "oil" until there were no more jars. After that, Cora sold me the jars of oil. It was a fun activity.

Naaman was healed:

This day we used laundry soap and water to make little bars of soap. This was to remind her that Naaman was to go and wash in the river. It was fun to make and shape the soap, but I wasn't too keen on using laundry soap to wash our hands.

Week 15

Letter of the week: Review week Letters A - L

Bible stories: King Solomon

Solomon's Wisdom:

While studying Solomon, Cora learned that God told him to ask for anything and he could have it and that he asked for wisdom. After that, in her prayers at night, she prayed and asked God to give her wisdom!

Building the Temple:
For the bible activity the second day we created a temple out of spaghetti noodles and mini marshmallows. It was so much fun. She did a great job. Then she ate the temple. :-)

Giving Thanks:

After the temple was completed the people gave thanks. We practiced giving thanks by taking out all our musical instruments and marched around making "a joyful noise" while thanking God for all our many blessings. "Thank you God for _____________"

Count on me:

Drew three crosses in each box and then practiced writing our numbers and counting by threes.

Unit 12,13,14

I am sorry to say that I have neglected this school blog the past few weeks.
We have been pretty busy.

So to catch up, I have loaded all the pics from the past few weeks to this Smilebox.

We have taken a two week fall break.
Last week the kids went to visit their Grandparents and this week we are just hanging out at home and enjoying the fall weather.

I'll try to do better at updating this blog when we start up again next week.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Unit 12

This week I discovered how useful You Tube can be for homeschooling!
Who knew?!

This week is letter "J" week.
So we have watched clips and learned about jellyfish and Mexican jumping beans;
enjoyed watching Sesame street letter J songs,
watched blue jays collecting material for a nest,
watched jack rabbits and jumping kittens,
and even watched a Bugs Bunny and the lumber jack cartoon.
Fun stuff!

But we also came across a great set of kid videos with the nice women and her puppet alligator as the host.
She made clips for every letter. In the clip they go over the letter sound and then investigate three foods that start with that letter. Cora really enjoyed them.
Check them out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyLHI3PQ6lk&feature=PlayList&p=E42AD7EC33E98FAC&index=9

Unit 11

This week we learned the letter "I".

On the Count on Me page this week, we increased the number of items she drew from 2 to 3 and are starting to learn to count by 3's.


For our Bible stories this week we learned about:

"A fighter" (Gideon)
"A strong man" (Sampson)
"A kind woman, too," (Ruth)
"Nothings I-I-impossiable for God to do!"

I made a mistake the first on the first day and somehow turned to the wrong page and did the activities for Day 4. Oops

So on day 2 we did day 1, on day 3 we did day 2...and so on. It was a little mixed up but we got it all finished.

Since this week was the letter "I" week, it would have been a great week to make home made ice cream.
We didn't do it, but it would have been a good idea. :-)


Instead, we used their pretend ice cream to cover the masking tape "i."

These are also great for teaching colors, Spanish colors, or counting scoops. I pretend to be the customer and they make the ice cream that I ordered. Fun.


In some of the material for the letter "I," it is drawn without the top and bottom line. Then it looks like a lower case "L."
I am still not sure which way they are teaching the kids now, so we learned it both ways.

For one of the activities, I gave her a sheet of white paper and she followed my verbal instructions to draw a picture of our bible story that day. It was a good activity to reinforce the story and to develop listening skills.
(Gideon's Army: The blue is the water, the hand is for the people who used their hands to drink, and the smile indicates that they are the ones that God choose to be in the army.)









After reading the Sampson story, we used some grocery items to learn about weight.
What items are heavier? What items are lighter?

Unit 10

Unit 10 Review Week : Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh

Unit 10 was a review week.

After completing our number 10 page we took all of the previous number pages from units 1-10 and made a 1-10 counting book.

It was also a nice review of the bible stories we have covered up to now.

The bible stories for this week were: Rehab and the Spies, the crossing of the Jordan River and the fall of Jericho.

Cora enjoyed creating the walls of Jericho out of crackers and peanut butter, but the best part was knocking it down and eating the rubble.

She also enjoyed marching around the city 7 times then using our outside voices, inside, to yell and make the walls fall down! :-)

I thought it was about time we did a craft project with no directions or rules, so we also made some time for free style finger painting.

We like using the spices to make the letters.
It's good to get all the senses involved in the learning process.

After reading the story of the crossing of the River Jordan, we played a balance game. First, I had her count out 10 blocks, one for each commandment. Then, she place them into the "Ark." Finally, she held the ark and carried it across the dry path across the Jordan River.
(Note the sink of dishes and shoes on the floor. What can I say, school and fun comes before house cleaning!)

Unit 9

After a week off to visit the grandparents, it was hard to get back into our school groove. My daughter wasn't that into it, and truth be known, neither was I.

So, to avoid any unnecessary battles, and to keep school fun, we had a pretty light week.
I believe we did manage to cover most, if not all of the material (with a few minor adjustments), but maybe not as thoroughly as we have on other weeks.

One of the activities for this week was to finger paint the letter 'H,' but I was feeling lazy that day so instead we went to the pool. While there I gave her a bottle of water for her to use to "draw" the letter 'H'.
There's no reason we can't have pool school, right?!

Each week, we use masking tape to make a giant letter of the week on the floor.
Well, this week my tape was no where to be found. So, instead she used Lego type blocks to build a H instead.

She really did enjoy making her 1-10 counting book.
She had recently be given some little heart sticker by her Aunt. So, she was excited to get to use her new stickers. I folded some construction paper into a book and she practiced tying bows to hold them all together. Then she put the correct number of stickers on each page to make her own counting book.
It was a good activity.




What about my younger child you may ask?
Well, I am still in a habit that I am finding hard to break. We are still doing most if, not all of our work during his nap time. I know I need to involve him more, but takes so much more effort and is exhausting. That being said, he still amazes me with what he does pick up on from the lessons that he does hear. He knows that certain shapes are letters or numbers. He doesn't know what they are, he usually calls everything A or B, but he knows they are different than other shapes in his world.
Obviously, he's learning despite my lack of teaching. Way to go little man.

Looking back on last week, it doesn't seem like it was too bad, but it was more like sloshing through knee deep mud. We made it through, but it defiantly took more effort from both of us.

________________________________________

Unit 8 day 4-5

Due to a rain out at work, Dad was able to be home for our activities yesterday.

Cora and her dad used small "action figures" to act out the parting of the Red Sea.

Today we finished up Unit 8. Letter G

I went on-line and found a few fun letter G related worksheets. My daughter really seems to enjoy them.

The bible activity for today was kinda fun. We read how God provided food for the Israelites. So, to act it out I placed "manna from heaven" around the living room while the Israelites slept. When they "woke up" she went around putting the "manna" in her basket. It was fun.

Then during prayer time tonight, she said her prayer then stopped and asked us if she could pray again because she forgot something. Then she prayed and thanked God for all the wonderful food that he gives her to eat. Too sweet.

Next week is our scheduled week off and we will be taking a trip to visit family. Should be nice to have a break.

Unit 8 Day 1-3

Last week we finished up Unit 7: baby moses -first plague, letter F and the number 7.

Unit 8 covers the Passover and Exodus from Egypt, letter G, and the number 8.


I have been looking over my blog photos and saw how many of the photos are taken at the kitchen table. That has me thinking that it's time for a little change. Maybe soon we'll try to mix it up by moving to a new location. Though, there is something to be said for a good routine and stability.

This is what the daily lesson plans for Heart of Dakota, Little hands to Heaven look like.

They are very easy to follow. The introduction estimates that each square takes about 5 minutes to complete, giving you 30 minutes of material.

I have found that we spend more than 5 minutes on most sections.

Yet, the divisions make it easy to spread the lesson out through the entire day, or you can just sit down and do them all at once.

We typically split up our day, doing the bible story and bible activity in the morning and then the other activities in the afternoon.

I generally have the bible story CD playing while we do our afternoon activities.

At first I thought the music was pretty lame and hokey, but the kids like it.

Cora goes around singing the songs and when we read the bible story she stops me and tells me that this is like the one in her songs. It really does helps her to learn and remember the stories. As lame as the songs are, even I find myself humming them throughout the day.

Unit 6 day 5 and Unit 7 days 1-2

Heart of Dakota - Little Hands to Heaven

Last Friday, I had planned to finished off the last day of Unit 6, but I came down sick and we had to put it off until Monday.

So on Monday, we covered the last of the letter E and started on letter F.

We drew bricks on the count on me page to remind us that the Israelites had to use brick to build things for the Egyptians.
We do this same "Count On Me" activity every week. She draws two items in each square and then she draws the numbers 1-10 under the squares. We have done this 6 times now, so I was a little shocked when she had such a hard time with the number '5'. Even after I drew her an example, it still took her 4-5 tries before it was close to correct.

Poor thing found that very stressful and became angry.

So after the number '5' we took a break and colored a picture before continuing on with the activity. I am glad that homeschooling gives us the luxury to take as long as we want to do something and then to move on to something else when it just isn't enjoyable anymore.

After all, shouldn't learning be fun?!

Today we did our masking tape of the letter 'F.'

This was nice and easy because we just took the bottom leg off of the 'E' that we had down from last week.

Every week, we look at her toys for things that start with the letter of the week and use them to trace the letter on the floor. 'F' proved to be a lot of fun. She was a Feathered Fairy holding Flowers and a Fan while Flying on the letter 'F'.

Too cute.

I guess we could have just used a Fish, but that wouldn't have been as fun, now would it.

For our bible story, we read the story of Moses' mother placing him in a basket and putting him the river to save him from Pharaoh. After we read the story, we used one of her baby dolls, a basket, a blanket,and a blue nap mat (as the Nile river) to act out what we learned. She hid her baby and then prayed for his protection before placing him in the Nile.

She really enjoyed this activity. Except when her little brother kept dumping baby moses out of the basket and jumping on our river. It can be pretty stressful to attempt to do these activities while my 1 year old is running around. For that reason we usually wait until his nap to do our crafts.

Today for our craft project, she cut strips of green paper and glued them to a blue paper to make the basket floating in the grass of the river.

I know it is better for her to figure it out on her own, but I have a hard time not helping her on these projects.

So I find it is better that I start on another task instead of watching her do her craft.

Don't get me wrong, I stay close enough to make sure that she doesn't glue things on the carpet and windows or cut her self with the scissors, but that's it.

This not only allows her to learn, grow and gain confidence, plus also gives me time to get dinner started or do the dishes.

Win Win.

Unit 6 day 3-4

Unit 6 Day 3


On day 3, we used glue and sugar to make a picture of Joesph in the desert with the Egyptian Pyramids.


Then we also used some of her toys to act ouy the 10 brothers bowing down to Joseph.





Unit 6 Day 3

For our Bible Story today we read of how Joseph told his brother who he was and forgave them.


We then used a mirror to look closely at our faces and pointed out things that make us special. Just like the brothers had to look closely to see that it was indeed Joseph.


Next we read from our ABC, verses book and learned the verse for the letter E.
"Even a child is known by his deeds."



In our letter activity today we used puff balls to outline the letter 'E' and 'e'

Unit 6 Lesson 1

This week we are moving on to letter 'E' and the number 6, and learning more about Joseph in Egypt.

We kept our lesson confided to my youngest's nap time today, because this morning we visited a blueberry farm to pick fresh blueberries.

Flexibility...a continued blessing of road schooling.

Just like last week, we did not have the magazines to cut out 6 pillows, as per the instructions, so I had her draw 6 beds instead. The pillows/beds were to remind her that Pharaoh had a dream.

There is little emphasis on numbers in this curriculum. There is only one weekly activity which addresses the new number of the week. Though, once a week she does write all of her number from 1-10 an the Count On Me sheet.

I would like to see more use of numbers in the curriculum, but I know that there is so much time ahead for her to work on that.
So maybe it is better to be focused primarily on the letters now.

Unit 5 Lesson 4-5

Cora was feeling better today so we continued on with the story of Joseph U5 day 4 and day 5.

Day 5 didn't have too much to cover so we just combined it with day 4.

Today we learned how Joseph was obedient. We acted out being obedient with a stuffed animal, kinda like the game of Simon Says. Also played "Yes, Mommy" where she said "yes, Mommy" to everything I asked her to do, just like Joseph had to do as a servant and prisoner in Egypt.

Instead of just looking at the flash cards, I had her finger paint the letters A-D, then I gave her free time to paint anything she wanted.

Good Friday.

Unit 5 lesson 4

Had to take a sick day on Thursday.
My little girl was sick.

After a day of laying on the couch, in the evening she asked to do a school craft.
So we used some spices and glitter to outline our review letters.

Hopefully, we'll be able to do the rest of lesson 4 today.

Unit 5 Day 2-3 (Little Hands to Heaven)

Continued with our review week

and today we introduced

the number 5.

We were instructed to cut out 5 purses or wallets and glue them on the Number 5 page to remind her that the brothers sold Joseph, but instead we took the idea in the math activity and did color rubs of 5 coins.

I was surprised that she found this task difficult and got frustrated at her attempts to do it on her own. After I helped her hold the coins down, it was much easier for her. I should have taped the coins down under the paper to make it easier for her to do on her own.

I liked the Hide and Seek Review page today. She had to look for all the letters we have learned thus far as well as match the lower case with the upper case. She missed finding a few of the letter, but was able to point them out with a little help.

For the math activity, we took our cup of pocket change and she sorted them. She has a nice little cash register, so we used that, but you could just use cups or a muffin pan as the book suggests.

We also took a few minutes to look at the the coins. The quarters were especially fun with all the different state pictures on the back. There are a lot of activities you could do with the state quarters, math, geography, history, art.... could be very useful one of these days.

Unit 5 Day 1

I was surprised to find our week off of school to be such a nice break. It's not that this material is difficult or even too time consuming, but it was still nice to have a week off from "school."


so, after a week of vacation bible school and a long weekend of camping in Hot Springs, we started back into our school lessons today.

Unit 5 is a review week.

I thought this meant that we would be reviewing the bible stories as well as the letters, but turns out the material reviews the letters, but continues on in the bible material.

Today we started to story of Joseph.

For an added math activity, I had her draw one big person to be Jacob/Israel and then 12 smaller people to be his 12 sons. We counted the sons she drew and then she wrote the number '12.'

The bible activity for today had her act out Joseph getting his new colorful coat. Then we used paint and a coffee filter to make a colorful coat. While I was setting up the paints I asked her to draw Joseph's colorful coat on a stick figure man. This was not a scheduled activity, but it kept her busy while I got the craft supplies together.

For the letter activity, instead of simply reviewing the "flash cards," I made a little jumping game for her to do. This seemed like more fun and got her up and moving as well. Win Win.

Unit 3 and Unit 4

This week we finished up unit 4, the letter 'C',

and unit 5, the letter 'D'.

We studied the story of Abraham and Sarah and their promised baby boy Issac.

Then we went on through the story of Issac and his two sons Jacob and Esau.

In one of this weeks activities, I wrote her name with black marker, then she used different colored markers to try to cover up and camouflage her name. We did this to understand how Jacob tricked his father, by hiding himself and pretending to be Esau.

I also used this activity to explain camouflage and showed her a few examples of animals that use camouflage to hide themselves in the wild.

They traced the letters 'D' and 'd' with a deer and a doll.

The finger play for the letter 'D' had to do with a Dusty camel.

So, I printed out a photo of a camel in the desert and we took a few minutes to learn a little about camels.

Where they live, why they have a hump, how long they can go with out eating/drinking, their long eyelashes, and their self closing nostrils. I don't expect her to remember it, but seems like a good idea to introduce a little extra science.

This curriculum is so easy to use that it is possible to just read along as you go, but I am finding that if I take the time to look ahead I can add a little more information to cover even more subject areas. This makes it even more of a unit study type.

That being said, I am taking care not get carried away and add too much information. I want this preschool study to remain light and easy for her so that we can just have fun with it and to make sure we still have time to enjoy our summer.

I set out our year to have one week off each month. Next week will be our first week off. It just happened to fall on the week that Cora will be attending VBS at a local church. This works our perfectly. In light of this, I combined a few of the days for week 5 so that we could finish this unit before our break.

It also works out well that the 5th Unit is a review unit. So the week after our "break" we will look back over all the finger plays and letter sounds that we have learned so far.

I honestly didn't plan it this way, but it just works out perfectly. Hopefully, we'll be able to follow this same pattern in the future.

_________________________________________________

Every unit, there is an activity that uses the "Count on Me" page. This week she drew two tents in every square. Then she wrote the numbers below the boxes. After she is finished we count the boxes, then count them by 2's, and finally again in Spanish.

Today the math activity was a lesson on distance. Something being near or far away. She was to pretend to be Jacob who had to travel a long way to get to Rachel. So we marked her jumps from a starting line. Later we used the tape measure and looked at the numbers to determine the length of each of her jumps. I attempted to get my youngest to join in the jumping, but he wasn't interested. He just ran around the yard.

Unit 3 Lesson 3

Today we acted out the story of Abraham.

I dressed her up in my robe, scarf, and head band. We took out all her stuffed animals to be the sheep.

Then we set up a tent and cooked dinner for the travelers who had a message from God. My youngest didn't want to dress up, but he did enjoy playing in the tent.

Later, while Caleb was taking a nap, we used a pop corn box, ribbon from a gift bag, and valentine's glitter to make a "picture" of the story.

It was a really fun day.