Showing posts with label bible lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bible lessons. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2014

Week 5 Recap: Monster Mania!

Letter: o
Number: 5
Sight Words: the, and, in
Verse: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

Alphabet Activities
I made these adorable monsters, then had Lucy draw an "o" mouth on each of them. We pretended that the monsters were screaming "ahhhh!" like the sound "o" makes. Lucy thought my drawings were hilarious and was much more willing to write an "o" when it was disguised as a monster mouth instead of a plain ol' letter o.

Math
We didn't do much for math this week. Just a number 5 worksheet, and this "roll-a-monster" dice game. I don't think Lucy learned much, but she had fun. :-)
Literature
Lucky for me, our library has a display of monster books out right now in anticipation of Halloween, so I just picked a bunch that I thought Lucy would enjoy. Here's what we ended up with:
Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters by Jane Yolen
Monsters Munch Lunch by Abigail Tabby
Big Monster, Little Monster by Mary Tillworth
Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing - This one was our favorite because the little girl's name is Lucy. And there's a part in the story where the monster has to go potty. Lucy is obsessed with all things potty-related. And potty has a short o in it! ;-)

Our literature activity was making monster stomping feet. Lucy painted a couple empty tissue boxes on Tuesday, then we added eyes and teeth on Wednesday.

Sight Word Activities
We combined our Bible lesson with our sight word activity this week. We read the story of Jesus' temptation in our Jesus Storybook Bible, then talked about how Satan is the worst monster of all. But I assured Lucy that someday Jesus is going to stomp Satan's head (Genesis 3:15), and we were going to pretend to stomp him today too. I made a bunch of mean monsters with sight words on them, then she put on her monster stomping feet and stomped the words as I called them out.

Next week: All things fall!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Bible Lesson: The Wise Men Visit Jesus

This week, in our journey through The Jesus Storybook Bible, we read the story of the wise men searching for Jesus. Our first activity was making a star. I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making glue stars. Like I've mentioned before, Lucy loves squeeze glue, so I knew this would be a hit. She's also a big fan of glitter. I am not, but I make exceptions every once in a while. Haha. My trick for maintaining the glitter was to put a sheet of wax paper on the bottom of a rimmed cookie sheet. That way the glitter is somewhat contained in the cookie sheet, and the wax paper prevents glitter from sticking to the sheet itself. Our glue star took 2 full days to dry, but has been sticking nicely to the window ever since:


While we had the glitter out, we made crowns for the wise men.

We also did a couple different egg hunts this week (for sight words and letter sounds) and a shape search, so I reiterated how the wise men searched for Jesus. :-)

Our verse for the week is "God loved us and sent his son." (Parts of 1 John 4:10) This is Lucy's Cubbies verse for the week. I decided I wasn't going to push her to learn two separate verses each week, so we might just stick with the Cubbies verses for now.


Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The Shepherds and the Angels (With a Verse Memorization Tip!)

Week two in our Jesus Storybook Bible is the story of the angels proclaiming Jesus' birth to the shepherds. We combined a little bit of math into our Bible lesson, by making this bead angel. (Source)


The website tells you exactly how many beads you need for both the body and the wings, so I had Lucy count them out. It was 34 for the wings, and 24 for the body, so counting might be difficult for young kids. Lucy's a counting pro, though. (She was totally born like that. It is nothing I have taught her. Haha.) 

We had our angel sing the song/verse we're learning this week: "Glory to God in the highest heaven." (Luke 2:14a) My number one tip for teaching kids scripture is to put it to song - whether it's to the tune of a different song they already know, or just a catchy tune you make up. I use subliminal messaging and make sure to sing or hum the song quietly while we do crafts or worksheets, and pretty soon Lucy's singing along. Sneaky. ;-)


Friday, September 5, 2014

Week One: Complete!

Well the first week was a success! I learned a few things, was surprised by a few things, and was overall pleased with how it went. Here's a quick  ridiculously long recap:

On Tuesday morning, I gave Lucy a little "first day of school" surprise. If she was going to real school, she'd get a backpack, lunch box, and other fun school supplies. So I bought her an Elsa lunchbox (that she thinks is a backpack - haha), a Frozen folder and Frozen notebook. Then I printed off a sign for her to hold:

Lucy was so excited to be starting school and she wanted to get started right away. Lena ended up sleeping through circle time, but Lucy loved it. Then we did our fun alphabet activity: igloo building. I was very impressed with my artistic abilities in drawing an igloo:

The lowercase letters are written on Avery labels and cut in half. I "hid" them all around the house (just sticking them on stuff), then Lucy found them and put them on their corresponding uppercase letter. She loved it and did so much better than I thought she would. She knows her lowercase letters better than I give her credit for.

Then, we moved on to our book work. She did two worksheets about the letter i, then one about the sight word "it."

Then I had her write "Ii, 1, it, and, the" on her manuscript paper. We've got a ways to go with handwriting. Haha.
Sorry. Bad photography
At this point, I offered her a break, but she wanted to keep going! So we read our Bible story - the Birth of Jesus - from the Jesus Bible Storybook. While I was reading to Lucy, Lena was playing in the living room. Or so I thought. I decided to go check on her and found her in my brother's room pouring water all over his table. Oops! 

After reading the Bible story, we did our Superhero Lesson and moved on to our craft. Lucy didn't like the craft and ended up throwing a big fit. But we powered through and finished the "Jesus is my superhero" cape:
Wednesday
We're usually going to take Wednesdays off, but since this was already a short week thanks to Labor Day, we just did one small lesson. We did a worksheet about the sight word "the" and repeated the number, letter, sight word writing. Then we learned about senses. We did a blindfolded "test" to see if she could identify common objects by smell, taste, touch, and sound. Here's my list:

Taste: lemon (sour), pickle (salty), cocoa powder (bitter), sugar (sweet)


Sound: keys jingling, me brushing my teeth, me cutting a piece of paper, shaking a box of macaroni
Smell: peanut butter, shampoo, toothpaste, ranch dressing (this was the only one she didn't get)
Touch: tape, marshmallows, ice, a balloon

Thursday
On Thursday we did math. I gave Lucy a ruler and helped her measure a bunch of different stuff. I pointed out that "inches" starts with "i", and had her write the number each time. It amazes me that she can write "5" correctly, but not "7" (the last one). Haha.

Lucy did a number one worksheet, and wrote her letter, number, and sight words again. When I offered her a break this day, she took it. I had just gotten a busy box out for Lena, and Lucy was much more interested in it than Lena was. Haha.
She did not, however, want her picture taken.
Later in the day, we did literature. I read "Curious George Builds an Igloo" to Lucy, then she built an igloo out of a plastic bowl, cup, frosting, and marshmallows.
Lena enjoyed this project, too.
Finished product! I was impressed that Lucy stuck with it and finished the whole thing!
Friday
Today we played Alphabet Bingo, with our sight words thrown in for good measure. She's having a harder time with the sight words than I expected her to, so we're practicing them whenever we can. She did an "and" sight word page, her usual manuscript work, then some more senses work. 

We did a sucker taste/smell test inspired by this
My marker stopped working after the first line. Lucy was a decent guesser!
Then Lucy made a senses book with pictures I had cut out from a magazine earlier.
This picture is a pot of boiling water. Haha. Interesting.
And that concludes the ridiculously long recap! I have some questions and concerns to share, but I'll save that for another post. :-) I'll also have an entry up soon about our busy boxes - which have been a huge hit with Lucy!! Thanks for reading this far!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Week One Lesson Plans

I have written and re-written these plans like 15 times. But I think this is what I've settled on for our first week of homeschool! It's going to be long. Prepare yourself. (And I did a bunch of copying and pasting from a Word document, so the spacing is kind of messed up. Sorry.)

We're going to start the day after Labor Day when all the public schools start, so our first week is actually shortened. I figure that's a good way to ease into it anyway. To see a more detailed layout of our daily schedule, read my entry here.

Weekly Themes
Letter: Ii (We're just going to focus on the short i sound for now - and we're starting with "i" per Kelly's Abeka curriculum.)
Number: 1
Sight Words: the, and, it
Verse: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2:11 NIRV)

We will review all of the above every morning during circle time.

Tuesday
Alphabet Activity: Igloo match-up, scavenger hunt style
 - I haven't totally figured out the logistics of this yet. I want to hide lowercase letters on "blocks of ice" around the house, then have Lucy match them with uppercase letters on the igloo. Kind of like this:
Picture credit


"I" worksheet from book
 - One of my focuses for this year is to get Lucy to write her letters correctly. I bought some cheap-o letter workbooks from Dollar Tree that have a page for every letter that we'll be working on. 
Link - but don't pay Amazon prices. Go to Dollar Tree and spend $1!
Daily letter, number, sight word work
- I bought "manuscript paper" from Dollar Tree. Every day Lucy's going to write our letter of the week, number of the week and sight words of the week. 

Bible Lesson: Jesus is Born
 - We're doing the New Testament through the Jesus Storybook Bible, which starts with the Christmas story! Haha. We've read this one a few times before, so we're taking a new approach. Instead of focusing on the fact that Jesus came to earth as a baby, we're focusing on why Jesus came to earth. Here's the little blip I wrote that I'll do before we read the Bible story. It doubles as a review of the Old Testament stories we did last year.

- Craft: "Jesus is My Super Hero" cape.
  - We're going to use one of Justin's old t-shirts to make this no-sew cape. I found a reverse clip of a "Super-J" here. I originally planned on printing it on iron-on transfer paper and ironing it to the cape. But transfer paper costs more than I want to pay, so I think I might just make my own stencil for Lucy to paint. That'll be more hands-on for her anyway, since she can't really iron. 

Wednesday
Wednesday is usually going to be our day off. We have Storytime at the library in the morning and Lucy's going to start going to Awana on Wednesday evenings. But since we already have Monday off this week, we're just going to do a shortened day on Wednesday. We'll skip the alphabet activities/writing and just work on one of our "specials" for the week:

Senses: I'm going to find stuff for Lucy to touch, taste, smell, etc. 

-        Touch (blindfolded)
o       What is it?
o       What does it feel like? Hot, cold, wet, sticky, scratchy, smooth?
o       Ice, others – point out which one starts with i
-          Taste
o       Sweet: ice cream
o       Sour: lemon
o       Salty: pickle
o       Bitter: any suggestions that won't totally make Lucy gag?
o       Make chart, point out which word starts with i 
-          Smell (blindfolded)
o       Can you identify the smells?
o       Popcorn, soap, coffee, crayons, play-dough, something that starts with i?
-          Sound
o       Loud, quiet, high, low

-          Sight (not totally sure what to do for this one)


Thursday 
Math Activities:  Inches (because it starts with the letter "i")
   -   Measure stuff, write down how long it is in inches: “The table is ____ __nches long.”
Number “1” worksheet from our math workbook.
Link - again, don't buy this on Amazon. I got it at Sparta Variety for $2.99
Daily letter, number, sight word work

Literature
-          Curious George Builds an Igloo
o       Igloo building


o       Point out sight words in book 

Friday
Alphabet Activity
-          Alphabet/sight word Bingo
This is from Oriental Trading, but I'm going to make my own - mostly with lowercase letters. Plus the 3 sight words we learned this week. 

Sight word worksheets (from Pinterest)
This packet is $5. Not sure if I'm going to spring for it or just try to make my own.
*Edited to add: I found free worksheets here!*

Daily letter, number, sight word work

Put the sight words we learned on the word-a-pillar:
Source

Special: Senses
-          Sucker taste test: I found an idea on Pinterest that taste tested ice cream. But Lucy's not enough of a ice cream connoisseur to taste differences. Plus, ice cream is expensive! So we're going to do it with dum-dum suckers. Lucy definitely knows her sucker flavors. Ha.
Source
-          Read a book about senses
Link
-         Make a booklet like this:
Source

As of now, I'm not planning based on themes. I'm working off the week's letter and kind of
doing what I want for math and specials. But I'm definitely open to change! We'll see how the first week goes!