Preschool week 12 (letter Hh, number 6 and Gideon)

For this week we covered a lot for our Bible story. We covered the letter Hh, number 6 and the story of Gideon. After reading through the story of Gideon in the Bible I wasn't sure how to go about teaching it to Oliver. Everywhere I looked for resources the only part covered of the story was the very end when he used torches to march around the city. There is SO much more to the story and it's awesome how God worked through this man, and prepared him to lead. So I decided to break up the story through several days and focus on different parts each day. The first day we covered the part where God spoke to Gideon by causing fire to come out of a rock.
I had Oliver find a rock and we tore up orange tissue paper and glued it down to the rock (with only elmers glue too!)

The next day we read about the fleece Gideon put out on two nights asking God for a sign (one night the fleece stayed dry and the ground was wet, the next night the ground was dry and the fleece was wet). I tried to explain this to Oliver as it's something he doesn't quite understand, seeing how I am not able to create a miracle (ha!). To physically show this, I got two pans. One had water in it and Oliver dropped a napkin in it to watch how it got wet. The next pan was dry and I put a napkin in it and let Oliver put water on it. I explained how they both got wet and how God was able to make a miracle by keeping the parts dry that shouldn't be. Oliver may not have understood this, but he enjoyed doing the physical activity. I know once he's older he'll understand :)

Another day we focused on the next part of the story, when God had Gideon separate out his men that would go into battle with him. Gideon had thousands of men for his army, but God wanted him to take them to the river and watch how they drank the water. If the men were down on the ground, drinking water directly out of the stream they would not be chosen. The men that used their hands to cup water up to their mouths would be part of his army. This dwindled the number of men down to merely 300. I'm amazed at how few God required, but it showed how great He was and that it was not on account of men that they defeated the Midianites.
I had Oliver build a stream out of his legos, then showed him how the men were chosen by how they drank from the stream. He liked practicing this one, but only a couple times, then he was done! It was a good visual I think.

Our final part of the story. We read through the final part when Gideon led his men around the camp of the Midianites, blew their trumpets and broke their pitchers to reveal their lanterns. The Midianites were defeated by simple shouting, but by the mighty work of God. I helped Oliver create a torch and trumpet, using some paint, glue, tissue paper and toilet paper rolls. I have to admit we never finished his torch as we were letting the paint dry, but that's okay. Oliver didn't seem to mind as we became busy with other things!

And for our letter Hh I did something recommended from ABCJLM. I took a mirror out and had Oliver  breathe the "h" sound into it until he saw it fog up on the mirror. It was a great way for him to make the sound correctly and he continually says it correctly whenever I ask him what sound "H" makes. A great way to learn it! And he worked on the number 6, with some play doh, a favorite. I helped roll them out, as he's not that good with fine motor skills yet, but he's getting better at it.

Finally this week we started making thankful leaves in honor of the month of November with Thanksgiving. I cut out some leaf shapes in construction paper and strung up some yarn for us to tape them to. We are daily writing new things we are thankful for on our leaves and it's fun to see the string of leaves get longer and longer. We have so very much to be thankful for. God is so good and I am so grateful for all He has allowed us to have, and all He continues to teach us!

Preschool week 8: letter E, number 4, Moses and the Red Sea

For week 8 we covered the letters Ee, number 4, and Moses and the Red Sea. I created E and e out of felt for Oliver to work on. This kind of thinking (using your hands for letters) is challenging for him and I don't push him too hard with it. I know he'll get it eventually, I just want to give him a variety of mediums to work on forming letters.

This week we also headed down to our communities story time. We actually ended up getting there a wee bit too late. They had read the story and were starting on the craft when we got there–woops! But Oliver didn't mind as they had a snack (a huge pile of raisins for him!) and his focus was on that snack for sure. Nevermind the craft :)!

We also made pear/apple sauce this week! Oliver loves to sit on the counter and help me make anything, so because I had a lot of pears that were soft and we all love sauce around here (pear, apple, whatever!) I thought it would be great to make it this week.

For our Bible story about Moses and the Red Sea, I found a craft idea like this one online, and made it similar to that. You trim out two pieces of blue for the water and fold up the inside of them to look like water parting. I had Oliver glue down the pieces and all the little men (red were the Egyptians and purple and black were the Israelites). He did great with this and kept all them men in neat little rows. Something that is very much an Oliver thing! :)

I used another section from the print out pack I talked about here. This one was a matching one–of course Oliver loved it. My favorite part of it all, was when he was "sharing" his raisins with the little picture of the people. Sweet boy! And we also played another game from the print out where you roll a big cube with an animal on each side, and when it lands on one you mark it on a corresponding sheet. It's a graph but Oliver liked rolling the big cube and finding out which animal would reach the last number first!

We finished our week heading to visit family. We celebrated Jonah's and Aleksandr's (again) birthday with some cake, much to Oliver's delight! And we enjoyed visiting with family for a couple days.

Preschool Week 6: letter C, number 3, Joseph and his coat of colors

All right. I am a bit late posting our progress, since we are actually in week 8 as I write, but I've decided to just post some things we worked on that were particularly interesting that I'd like to remember for later use. Considering we do a lot of things consistently (like our routine things, and working on drawing lines, tracing numbers/letters etc.) it will help me overall not spend too much time here, when I need to spend my time in other places.
So with that being said, and the fact that I may be boring all those faithful readers (hee, hee, all two of you? ;) I will post weekly, or maybe biweekly, but let's not get too hopeful of that!
For our 6th week we were working on the letter C, number 3 and our Bible story was Joseph and the coat of many colors. These along with our weekly Bible verse kept us busy.
Here are some things we worked on {also, I'm warning you now it's going to be a picture heavy post}:

For the letter C, I had Oliver glue down puff balls (pom, poms maybe?) in C and c. He did a great job squeezing out his glue bottle and tapping down all the puff balls. He loves to make lines, so this was right up his alley!
I also introduced him to a new art: q-tip painting. You paint with a q-tip onto a letter that has little circles for you to fill in. I think this was a little too detail oriented for him at this point. He started out trying to fill in the dots and it turned into a great big mass of one blob of color. Which is okay too. He had fun using something new to paint with (q-tip)! I found the templates online for free. We'll keep them handy for more practice.

I created a "C" filled basket for him. To help him with the sound of C (what sound does C make?) I found a lot of items starting with C, and added in some things that didn't start with C. We pulled them out one at a time and talked about what their names were. I asked him each time if that item started with c and he got about half right. Sound is a hard thing to learn, and we'll get there. It was a fun visual way to work on letter sound.

I also drew some items starting with the letter C for Oliver to circle. We'd look at each picture and say what it is, then I'd ask if it started with "C". He circled the things that started with C. Also, I love old fashioned chalk boards. They are not used in schools as much, so I love being able to use one at home. I well remember working on chalk boards in my own schooling days. Is there anything better than a fresh clean slate? (I'm the nerdy one that loved washing the board down, so satisfying)

Oliver practiced cutting with his safety scissors (picked them up at the dollar store), and we had fun counting with a firefly game I printed free online. You put fireflies in the sky then count and find the matching number. He did great on this! He loves math, so far :)

Worked on a matching game (free online) where you match heads and tails.
Another easy game for Oliver. He actually started matching these months ago, and he loves matching games! He also glued down some circles I had cut out of different colored sheets of construction paper, into a caterpillar pattern of his choice. The head may have been in the middle of the body, but that's okay! ;) C is for caterpillar! 

A new thing we tried this week was drawing what I draw. I would draw something and have him copy me. We started with a circle then added to that to make a snowman. Oliver was frustrated at not being able to duplicate it, so we tried again with a simpler picture. A wavy line for water, a curve and line for a boat, a straight line and a triangle added for the sail. He did a lot better with this than the snowman. I'd like to keep doing this with him as it teaches him how to make shapes and lines and also follow direction. He'll be on his way to drawing his own pictures one day! 

And our Bible story craft this week was for the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors. A craft suggestion of ABCJLM was to paint colors on a brown grocery bag that you cut into a coat for your kiddo to wear. The first day we painted Oliver had no interest after about two strokes of paint. So I put it away for the next day. The next day I put paint on a plate for him and he liked this better than using a watercolor set. He painted with his brush, then turned to use his hands. 

Funny thing is, I loved the way the look of the dried paint was all mixed up on the paper plate he used. So we later cut out a coat shape from the paper plate and glued this to a piece of paper. I like that craft better than the original idea! Look at that bright colored coat! 

And that was the end of our week. 

Also, congratulations for making it through this long post. 

Preschool Week 4 day 2

So for our second day of the week, we started out with our routine things (prayer, weather, calendar/song time, verse/Bible story) and Oliver wanted to color a sun. SO, I gave him some markers and paper and let him create whatever he liked.
That lasted a couple minutes until he was done.

We then worked on glueing our apple (craft recommended from ABCJLM) and "worm" to one side. Oliver did great controlling the glue and putting the worm together (pom pom's).
This was to be used after it dried for a prop in reviewing the story of Adam and Eve in the garden.

We glued the flag together. It took a while to get this flag finished! Between waiting for paint to dry, we now had to wait for the glue to dry to keep the whole thing together.

We finished our day with a little drawing. I think Oliver just wanted to circle shapes in this shot. I honestly cannot remember what we did. (I catch up on posts a week later so I'm so glad I have photos of what we do, because as you can tell my memory is TERRIBLE)

And at the end of our school time we pulled out play-doh and made cupcakes. And spaghetti and different shapes that Oliver could mix and pull and squeeze. (We picked up this play-doh set for a steal at a consignment sale- $4, and Oliver LOVES it)

Preschool Week 4 day one

I glanced at the weeks lesson plan for week 4 on Sunday night (or it may have even been Monday morning) and I clearly remembering thinking "phew, thank you Lord," as it was listed as a "review" week. I was still pretty wiped out after our busy week the previous week (to Charleston). A review week was actually ideal since we didn't finish a full week last week, but also I am tired, and not very motivated to create new projects (admittedly lazy over here).
So off we went to start school on week 4.
We were still finishing up our flag that we started on last week, painting the final white stripes.
{Also his shiner is looking much better this week!}
Oliver then worked on making the letter's Aa with felt. He is getting better at this. Good thing we have a review week for this, especially since we had a short week last week. It's so encouraging to see him learn things!

I pulled out my Aa printout (in a page protector) and used this as a play-doh template. I had seen this idea on a lot of preschool sites and thought Oliver could try it. It wasn't really a success. Oliver has a tough time rolling out pieces on his own still, and putting them on the template wasn't fun to him, especially once play-doh is out! He'd much rather just play with it, and that's what we ended up doing. But before I brought out more play-doh, I had him try writing the number 2 as well as Aa with a dry erase marker. He is getting better and better at tracing/writing.

Aleksandr was up from nap, so there was that going on :) At his age the things we are covering with Oliver are not things he can do quite yet. Soon enough little one, soon enough.

Also, with the play-doh, Oliver made an H and said "Wook mommy, it's dancin', the H is dancin'!" Hee hee. He's so silly. And that was also a cue to me that the play-doh on letter thing wasn't working, I just needed to let him create something on his own :) 

Finally the day ended with this. Little brother was desperate to get up and see what all the fuss was on the table, and why in the world wasn't he involved in it? Yup, lots of tears (from baby boy) usually means schools over! 

Preschool Week 3, Day 2 (our final day for the week)

Day two, also the last day of our school for the week. It was a short week due to the fact that we headed out of town the rest of the week for a family trip!
We started the day with our routine things, then I introduced Oliver to the Pledge of Allegiance. I thought I would like to start including this into our routine things so that Oliver can start to memorize it. I am thinking we may include the Christian pledge too, but one thing at a time.
We actually don't have a flag in our house. Can you believe it? Not that we aren't patriotic, we've just never bought one. When I get a chance I'll pick one up we can hang in our school area. But to make do with what we had, I used a small flag that is used on our calendar. I showed Oliver the colors, read through the pledge and explained how we respectfully say it.
The next thing was to create a flag for Oliver. I had him paint some popsicle sticks in flag colors, and we'd later glue them together. He likes to paint and does pretty good painting small pieces like that.

We then moved onto the number 2. I had Oliver write over the 2 with his dry erase marker. He did pretty good with it. I then helped him create a 2 with chalk on the chalkboard. His attention isn't very long with writing yet so we didn't spend a lot of time there.

I kept the marker out and tried something new with the letter Aa. I had him search for all the "a's" in the words on this printout. I need to get a smaller tipped marker for him to do this kind of detail or just print out some larger words. (mentally planning for future)

He did some writing exercises with the letter Aa, followed by shape drawing (lines and circles). Then we moved to the felt board to practice creating Aa. He's getting it, but it's still tough for him to remember how Aa is formed. I'm so proud of how well he does with sitting still and working hard on these!

Finally we wrapped up our day reading through Psalm 34:13 and listening to the song that went along with it on Steve Green's album Hide 'Em in Your Heart. You can listen to both volumes for free on Spotify! I'd like to purchase them eventually, but it sure helps to get them free! Oliver really loves music and he will sit and listen to it play for quite a while. Not sure how long if I let him :) I've let him sit there a good 30 minutes before and he was content doing just that! But he sat and listened along to the song and it's great how quickly you can learn a verse just by hearing it in song!

Preschool Week 3 day one

Today we started out with our routine (prayer, weather, calendar). Since we started a new Bible story this week after having wrapped up the days of creation last week, I decided to read from Oliver's storybook Bible for this week's story. We sat and read about Adam and Eve eating of the tree that God told them not too.

{Also on a side note, yes Oliver DOES have a shiner. How? you may ask, well not by any kind of rough housing during play, but more lack of grace on his part. He was up in his room supposedly sleeping at night, but not really, and was messing around on his bed, playing with his stuffed animal friends. He somehow managed to trip into the side of his bed. The next morning I asked him what happened, and this is the result, his first shiner. Poor guy.)

Following along with the story we worked on paint dotting the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. Oliver really likes taking the caps off and on :) He does really well with it now too! 

We then moved onto the number 2 and the letter Aa. I let Oliver create the number 2 using felt pom poms to form the number. He did well with that. I then let him practice writing Aa with a dry erase marker, as well as writing more practice sheets with circles and lines. I love using these with Oliver even if they seem tedious. I'm realizing repetition is great for him, even if it feels boring to me at times (and sometimes him too). It takes multiple times to start getting technique correct, in which he'll one day start writing on his own. 

It was about this time that his brother woke up from naptime, and we had to head out for some groceries. So after shopping, lunch, and naptime we came back for a new Aa activity together. I was ambitious during the boys nap after lunch and made a felt board for Oliver. I will try to post about it soon so I can share how easy it was to make. Using felt pieces to form letters is a great tactile way to teach letters not only visually (what they look like) but how they are built. I say this like I know what I'm talking about. Ha! I did not go to college for teaching, so I don't know how the brain learns to read, but I do know seeing letters and being very hands on in several ways helps him learn it. He does GREAT at puzzles and I thought he'd enjoy figuring out this puzzle. It was frustrating for him immediately as he didn't understand/remember how the parts to big A went. I pulled out a print out of what Aa looks like for him to look at while he used the felt board and that helped him a lot. We'll keep practicing this one and I'll add letters as we add them each week in our ABCJLM curriculum.