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 9 and 10 (letter F, number 6, the ten commandments)

This I am actually a few weeks behind posting.
As we are actually in week 12 as I write, I know that I have become a little more relaxed in our day to day the past couple weeks. And it happens. I've had several things in my life that have taken me away from so much focus on schooling. We still do our schooling, but it was not as planned out as it had been when we first started.
This weekend I finally felt like I was at a place where I could sit and think through our upcoming week and really plan for it. I had to say no to some things so that I could focus on my "lesson plans" (I say that very loosely!). I love teaching Oliver and whenever I sit and think through our week I get so excited about how many things I can include in our everyday. Pinterest is such a great source for me for helping in my planning. When I know we will be working on a specific Bible story I can look up related ideas for crafts for it. Or for our letter of the week, or number. And since it's fall, with Thanksgiving approaching, there are numerous things we can include in our days that relate to that. So much fun!
The biggest thing that I notice about taking time to plan is that I feel better, and prepared mentally for Monday morning. My preparation makes our days smoother and Oliver knows what will come next. Now that he's three he really thrives on a consistent schedule. He has a lot of play time in the day, but he really enjoys our time together having "school time". He gets so excited to work on new projects together.
But for weeks 9 and 10:
Week 9 was review of the previous week so there isn't much in pictures of that. Week 10 was the letters Ff, number 5 and the Bible story, Moses and the 10 commandments.
I had Oliver work on drawing Ff and 6. We also did a few "f" crafts. This one was making the letter f into a frog. He glued down all the parts to a letter f. I showed him where they would go and let him use the glue to make it all happen. He did great, even with the excessive amounts of glue! :)

I also pulled out our chalkboard to let him draw f with chalk. I just love the chalkboard! And it was a new texture for Oliver to use.

We worked on a new game too. I had printed these files from this great site. It has pictures and words that you can match to the corresponding page with the same pictures and words (written in a dashed line). I didn't know how tough this would be for Oliver since he can't read yet. He had to find the matching letters in the words to match them correctly. He surprised me at how well he did. I talked through the letters of the words with him to help him know to look at the first letters in the words to make sure they matched. He is such a smarty pants! He matched them all :)

A little puzzle fun. He still needs help with big puzzles like this, but he really likes puzzles.

This week we were learning about Moses and the ten commandments. To go along with that ABCJLM suggested teaching about rules had this game idea on their site. I found some paper plates in our pantry and we used them as steering wheels for our "cars". We drove around and pretended to come to stop signs while we waited for other cars to pass. I explained to Oliver what would happen if we didn't follow the rules. We would crash and we could get hurt. And we talked about other rules in our lives, both at home and from God. How they keep us safe and protect us. Oliver LOVED driving around and doing this physical activity really grounded what I was trying to teach him. 

We did another F craft that I saw online (failing to remember where now, maybe Pinterest?). I placed a large F and a small f on two separate pieces of paper. I had Oliver find all the small f's on logs and all the large F's on logs and glue them on their matching paper. Then we glued down fire on top of the logs. I helped him with this one since there were so many parts. I had this craft ready to go the day before too since I cut out all the pieces out of construction paper. A cute little f craft!

Finally we ended our week working on a little painting. I had Oliver paint two pieces of paper cut out as rectangles for our ten commandments. When they dried we crinkled them up really good. I had intended to glue them down and write the commandments on them, but we never made it that far. I have them ready to go, so we can pull it out another time :)