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.

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