Category Archives: Preschool

King David Brings the Ark to Jerusalem

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This week we talked about David finally becoming the King of Israel years after God chose him, and I also included the story of how he had the ark brought to Jerusalem.  We had a busy week so we didn’t spend as much time as usual on “school,” but I didn’t want to skip the week altogether so we just did what we could.  I really want Bible study to be the most important part of our days, even at this young age, and I think we’re already starting to see the fruit from that priority.  Last night Ian pulled his “real” Bible (not a story book) off the shelf and pretended to read it, first to me, then to Daddy.  He retold several stories and asked us to help him learn how to read the letters.  I love that his desire to learn to read has first manifested in a hunger for the Word of God.

With our flannel board set I adapted the story to fit our needs.  I wasn’t thrilled with the way it was told in Betty Lukens: Through the Bible in Felt.  I also didn’t like using the same “king” figure that we just used for King Saul, so I chose a man that looked similar to the figure we’d been using for David as a boy, then added a crown from another story.  As always Ian enjoyed acting out the story over and over, especially the part where Uzzah reached out to steady the ark and died.

I loved the pictures in our Bible storybooks showing the scene as the ark was bring carried to Jerusalem, especially in The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (the original version) and Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury.  They just captured the spirit of celebration as people danced and played on their instruments along with the procession while at the same time showing their reverence for the holiness of the moment.  We also read about David becoming king in The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley).

For our Bible Notebook this week, we used glitter paint on this picture of the ark of the covenant (as well as a fun “do not touch” reminder I found on Google images).  There’s no memory verse on it because we’re finishing up with Psalm 23, which Ian’s done really well with!

  

I didn’t make an iPod playlist this week, but we listened to lots of children’s worship CD’s and celebrated with our musical instruments to get into the mood of the story.  Some of our favorites are from the Great Big God series from Vineyard Records UK, especially the volume 1 and volume 3.  They’re aimed at older kids, though there’s also a CD for preschoolers (we just don’t have it).

  

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

David & Goliath

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This week we headed back to the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum for the Week 16 lesson plan on David and Goliath.  We had so much fun with this Bible lesson!

Ian already knew the story from church, so when he saw the flannel board set all ready, he was eager to dive in as soon as he woke up Monday morning.  I was cooking breakfast and told him I do it with him after we ate, but he just couldn’t wait.  I loved hearing him tell the story (as he remembered it) as I worked in the kitchen.  And then as soon as he’d eaten, he ran back to the board and asked me to tell it over and over.  I told it twice and then just left him to act it out on his own while listening to our iPod playlist (see below).  He especially liked making David’s stone knock Goliath down!

  

We made a lifesize Goliath picture on some mural paper.  Both boys were SO excited about coloring him.  At first I tried crayons and markers, but then I decided it would be much easier to break out the dot markers.

  

Proportions are hard when drawing something that big on the floor!  I thought his arms were too long until we got him posted on the wall.  Ian is exactly 3 feet tall, so he was only a 3rd of Goliath’s height!  Measuring him out even surprised me.  9 feet was taller than I had imagined.  He barely fit on our wall, even with our high ceilings!  On Friday I let the boys throw sock balls at him as I helped him fall down.  (Of course, then Ian wanted me to put it back up, but I was not up to dragging the ladder out again!)  For our Bible notebook, I just printed out a page with these pictures.

We enjoyed two videos this week: Veggie Tales: Dave and the Giant Pickle (available streaming on Netflix) and David and Goliath from the Nest Animated Stories from the Old Testament series (so thankful for my parents’ DVR).  We also read from our Bible story books.  Ian really liked it in The Rhyme Bible for Toddlers.  (The stories in that book are short and don’t have a lot of detail, but the rhymes are a lot of fun and it’s one of Ian’s favorites.)

For some reason, Ian really wanted to sing a song about David and Goliath, so I was glad to find one in the ABCJLM lesson plan.  I wasn’t familiar with it and it wasn’t on any of the CD’s I have, but it was in our Wee Sing Bible Songs  book, so I was able to play it on the piano, and Ian had a great time singing with all his heart even though he’d never heard it before.

Along with that song, here’s our iPod playlist from the week:

As you can see, we’re still working on Psalm 23 for our memory work.  Ian can now recite the entire psalm along with me, though he can’t do it on his own yet.  We still have one more lesson on David, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he gets there.  Even if he doesn’t he is definitely on his way, and I know it will be hidden in his heart for many years to come.

“Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.”  Psalm 119:11 (NASB)

P.S.  For more ideas, check out Jen’s post over at I Can Teach My Child.  I love the way she brought the story to life for her daughter!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Ask Mr. Bear

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Although it’s an old classic, I had never heard of Ask Mr. Bear until I discovered Before Five in a Row.  It’s a very appealing little story, with a pattern that’s easy for kids to follow and a sweet surprise at the end.  Both my boys wanted to read it over and over this week.

The Before Five in a Row manual has so many wonderful ideas for this book.  We spent lots of time discussing birthdays, and just making cornbread muffins (which Ian assumed were cupcakes!) was a celebration.  Both boys really loved it when I read the story using different voices for the animals and we practiced making their sounds.  The illustrations are great for introducing the idea of pastels (especially in contrast with the bright colors in Goodnight Moon).

I also chose two activities from Homeschoolshare.com.  The first one is actually based on an activity from the manual.  We used the HSS animal classification cards (which cover several B4FIAR books).  I had Ian help me divide the cards into two piles: birds and mammals.  The birds were easy, but he had a hard time grasping the concept of mammals.  “Here’s the cow.  What do you think it is, a bird or a mammal?”  “It’s a cow.”  Elijah spent lots of time studying the cards as well. (Somehow Ian managed to stay out of all these pictures!)

  

The other thing I did from HSS was the “product cards” from the lapbook, which we did after we read through the book a few times.  Ian got a few of them right on his own, and for the others we went back and reread the appropriate page from the book so he could get them all.  Elijah really liked looking at the cards and trying to name everything.

  

I’m so thankful to Before Five in a Row for introducing us to this fun story!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Corduroy

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This week for Before Five in a Row we kicked off a month of bear stories with Corduroy.  In preparing for the month I went a little crazy with my laminator, but it’s so nice having things ready in advance, and I think Ian (and maybe Elijah) will really enjoy some of the activities I have planned for the next few weeks.  Corduroy was one of Ian’s favorites last time through the B4FIAR books, and he was really excited when I pulled it out Monday morning.

The first thing we did was break out the button jar, just for exploring.  Both boys had fun with this and requested it several times throughout the week.

 

As usual, I checked out HomeschoolShare.com for ideas.  I skipped over most of the lapbook items, but I did like the button pattern strips.  (After our last experience with the patterns not going on long enough I printed out an extra copy and cut it up to have plenty of pieces to continue the pattern.)  Ian’s still not really catching on to patterns, but he enjoyed doing it with me so this was good practice for him.

The other thing I printed and laminated was this color bears matching game, which was one of the best activities we’ve done.  First I just introduced the cards to both boys.  I had Ian find the matches, and as we talked about the colors Elijah tried to copy us.  I’m not sure he really gets the concept yet, but he’s been enjoying learning the names of the colors, even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  He just likes being a part of what we do.

 

After Ian was familiar with the cards, I took 5 pairs and turned them upside down so we could play “concentration.”  He caught on quickly and wanted to play again, so I added one more pair.  He was still having fun so we played one more time with all 9 pairs.  Not only was it great for his concentration skills (which he really surprised me with!), but after the game was over we each counted our matches and figured out who had “more” or “less” pairs, a concept I’ve been wanting to touch on but hadn’t gotten around to yet.  I’m glad both boys enjoyed the cards so much, because we’ll probably keep them out all month as we go through our bear books.

Just for fun, on Wednesday I took the boys to Sears for the sole purpose of riding the escalators.  They both got a big kick out if it, and Ian said, “It’s like a mountain!”  I knew he was thinking of Corduroy’s comment.

Ian really enjoyed watching the old live-action video of the story(check your library).

So our Bear Month seems to be off to a great start.  Ian even found an old teddy bear that he’s overlooked since getting it and decided he needed it in his bed.  I think we’re going to have a lot of fun over the next few weeks!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

David’s Calling

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David's CallingIn our second week discussing David, our focus was on Samuel anointing him to become king.  As I was planning which stories to use outside the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum, I looked through the list in the book that came with our flannel board set: (Betty Lukens: Through the Bible in Felt). This one seemed simple enough to use with a young child yet with a clear message he could remember.  I chose to emphasize two parts of the story: first that God chose David and had Samuel anoint him years before he actually was crowned king, and second that God based his decision on David’s heart, rather than his outward appearance.  I told Ian that just like with David, God has something planned for his life, even though we don’t yet know what it is and it will probably be years before he sees it come to happen.

As always, he really enjoyed using the flannel board set to learn the story, tell it with me, and act it out on his own.  I focused on the scene where Samuel looks over each of Jesse’s sons and then anoints David with oil.

We read the story straight from 1 Samuel 16 and in the original version of The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley).  We also watched the video “David and Goliath” from the series Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible.  (As with the Nest Animated Bible Stories, I record these on the DVR and save them for the appropriate lesson.  We’ll probably watch the Nest video on David next week.)

For Ian’s Bible notebook I wanted to find some sort of art project to do with oil, since the anointing was the part of the story he seemed to enjoy acting out most of all.  So I was glad when I found this suggestion online.

It’s not one of my favorite pages we’ve done, but I’m okay with that.  Part of the problem was I wanted to include more of Psalm 23, especially up to “You anoint my head with oil,” so it ended up being very wordy.  Plus Ian doesn’t go for coloring much, so it’s more Mommy’s work than his.  I drew the picture of the heart with the crown, just so we could talk about the story a little more, and then I let Ian rub the back with oil on a cotton ball.

On our iPod playlist we repeated a number of things from last week (since we’re still working on the same memory passage):

All in all we had a pretty simple week with our Bible story, but I know Ian understood it because he acted it out with the flannel board a lot on his own.  And since my goal is to help him hide the Word in his heart, I’d say we had a successful week!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

David, Shepherd Boy

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This week we learned about David during his time as a shepherd.  I had two main purposes in chosing to do this lesson.  First of all, there is so much shepherd imagery in the Bible, and this seemed like a good way to introduce such a foreign idea to a 21st century American child.  Also, I wanted to spend a few weeks talking about David, and this seemed like a logical place to start.  For the record, I’m straying from our ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum (which seems a bit ironic since I finished the last post praising it!)  I had a couple reasons for going this route.  For one thing, I noticed the ABCJLM 3-year old curriculum only had two more lessons with stories from the Old Testament (David and Goliath and then Daniel in the lion’s den).  There are so many other stories I wanted to touch on.  I thought about just sticking with the curriculum since we’ll hit all those at some point in the future, but my other issue was that we started this “year” back in March, which means our holidays aren’t lined up (since the curriculum is designed to start in August).  I didn’t want to run into the same issue next year, so I decided I’d rather stretch out this fall with more OT stories.  We should be ready for Baby Jesus to arrive right around Christmas.  (Of course, since our own baby will be arriving only a few weeks earlier, the chances of us doing much as far as lessons any time around there are pretty slim.  But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!)  Anyway…

Our first stop, as always, was the flannel board set.  Elijah is usually just an onlooker during this time, but after seeing me go through the story with Ian on Monday, he decided he wanted in on the fun.  Several times through the week he went to the table where it was set up and asked me to tell the story.  Of course, then Ian always wanted to join us, so we got in lots of repetition this week.

Elijah was SO proud of himself.  The boys both had a great time pretending to be the bear (Elijah) and the lion (Ian) that tried to attack David’s sheep.  (The lion got a little carried away and decided to chase Grandpa down the stairs.)

Because there wasn’t really a story to go along with David being a shepherd, we didn’t have a lot of choices of things to read.  I chose two passages out of The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, one on David taking care of his sheep by killing the lion, and one on David writing songs to sing to God.  For memory work, I started working on Psalm 23 with Ian.  I don’t know how much he’ll be able to get, but I’m hoping to help him memorize the whole thing over the next 4 weeks we spend learning about David’s life.  We made it through the first part of verse 3 this week, which is a lot longer than our normal memory verse, so I think we just might make it.

My main concern with branching out from the ABCJLM curriculum is figuring out what to do for our Bible Notebook each week.  I usually get inspired from the great links included with each lesson.  This week’s story was pretty easy though.  This sheep craft wasn’t quite as 2-dimensional as I like to be for our notebook, but I knew the cotton balls would be a hit.  (We made an extra for Ian to play with and display in the kitchen along with Elijah’s.)  And as a bonus, he got a little scissors practice in with the grass.

    

I had some trouble deciding on what to put in our iPod playlist.  There were many different translations of Psalm 23 incorporated in to the songs I had.  (I decided to use the English Standard Version for our memorization.)  Ian noticed right away when one of the songs used “I shall not be in want” rather than “I shall not want” as I had taught him.  But I just told him they meant the same thing and he left it at that.  Here’s what we listened to this week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Yellow Ball and Jenny’s Surprise Summer

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Yellow Ball and Jenny's Surprise Summer  

Last week for Before Five in a Row I decided to do two beach stories, both of which were big hits with Ian.  Yellow Ball was one of his favorites last year when we read through all the books, but Jenny’s Surprise Summer was new to both of us and definitely lived up to the reputation of the B4FIAR stories.

Altough there are lapbooks for both Yellow Ball and Jenny’s Surprise Summer on HomeschoolShare.com, I didn’t see anything I’d want to laminate and reuse with the other kids, so I ended up skipping them altogether.  We did discuss most of the ideas in the book, and Ian was especially interested in then different kinds of shells in “Jenny.”  When I row that one with the younger kids I’ll have to break out our shell collection (currently in storage as we’re kind of in limbo with our housing situation).  I know Ian will like that, and I’m sure the others will too.

Thursday was a “field trip” day at the beach (the reason I chose these books this week).  Ian and Elijah both come alive in a new way at the beach.  I love the page in “Jenny” that reads, “Summer was the best time of all.  It was a time for bare feet and seashells and swimming with the gulls.”  Ian’s not much of a swimmer yet, but if you count splashing with glee at the water’s edge, that page describes him at the beach.  He’s just in heaven, and Elijah’s right there with him.

    

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Speak, Lord, for your servant hears!

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This week we continued learning about prayer through the story of Samuel as planned for us in the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Week 15 lesson plan.  I love that between the week on Samuel’s birth and this week on him as a boy, we learned both about presenting our requests to God and listening for his voice—both such important parts of our prayer lives!

Ian had a lot of fun this week playing with our flannel board set.  I just left it out all week and he kept coming back to it, usually asking me to tell the story as he manipulated the pieces to act it out.  I am SO glad that I went ahead and bought this great resource!  It seemed expensive at first, but it was worth every penny.  (And I used money from our tax return so it wouldn’t cut into our normal budget.)  It has been such a great investment, even if none of our other kids ever get as into it as has Ian.  It brings the stories to life and allows him to re-enact them over and over, planting Bible truths deep in his heart.  I highly recommend the Betty Lukens small deluxe set!

For our Bible verse, I deviated from the ABCJLM plan and went with 1 Samuel 3:10, which we sang to the tune of “Mary had a little Lamb.”

“Speak, Lord for your servant hears, servant hears, servant hears.  Speak, Lord for your servant hears.  First Samuel 3 verse 10.”

For our Bible notebook, I was inspired by one of the ideas from the ABCJLM lesson plan.  She had links to some print-outs of large ears, but instead of stapling them to a headband, I printed out a picture of Ian’s face and had him color the ears and glue them next to the picture along with the Bible verse.

We watched Samuel the Boy Prophet from Nest Entertainment’s “Animated Stories from the Bible” series.  (These DVD’s are great, but rather expensive for our budget, but sometimes you can find cheaper copies on Amazon marketplace.  I also discovered that they are shown on TBN and BYU’s satellite stations, so I took advantage of Grandma and Grandpa’s DVR and set it to record every episode.  Then I made note of what we have so I can use them when the appropriate stories come up in the curriculum.)

On our iPod playlist this week:

A few final words on ABC Jesus Loves Me.    Although I mainly use the Bible element of the curriculum there is SO much more to each lesson if you’re looking for ideas of how to teach your child all the basics.  And there’s now a whole schoolyear’s worth of curriculum for 2-year olds!  I love it because it’s not a structured program (which I don’t think is appropriate for little ones) but rather just a thoughtfully prepared plan for introducing all the sorts of things you want your child to know.  I would have loved to have this when Ian was two!  (I don’t know that I’ll use it with my younger ones simply because I think it will be easier to let them just tag along with my plans for Ian.)  My main goal in teaching during these “preschool” ages is to be intentional with giving the kids things to learn and filling their hearts with God’s Word.  This curriculum helps me in fulfilling that goal better than I could have dreamed.  I am so thankful for all the work “Momma C” has put into all three years of ABC Jesus Loves Me!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Hannah’s Prayer

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This week we learned about Hannah, whose faithful prayers were answered when the Lord blessed her with a very special son named Samuel.  It wasn’t an ideal week.  We had another family funeral (!) which pretty much wiped out our entire Monday, but I didn’t want to let a short week derail us when we just got back on track with our Bible lessons.  So I plunged ahead with the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 13 lesson plan, which just happened to include the next book on my Before Five in a Row list (see my previous post on The Runaway Bunny).

As usual, I introduced the story using our flannel board set.  I love sharing Bible stories that are completely unfamiliar to Ian.  He seemed particularly charmed with the story of Hannah praying for a baby, I think because we’ve talked so much about the baby we’re expecting by the end of the year.  (And having the priest named Eli probably helped too, even though our “Eli” is really Elijah.)  It’s a simple story that contains such a wonderful message about the power of prayer.  We retold it several times in the morning, and then because I had left it out all day, Ian asked to do it later after dinner and again throughout the week. He liked putting the Samuel figure up in the air “so he could talk better” to Eli.

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I’m already excited for next week when we get to talk about how God moved in young Samuel’s life.  Our lesson challenged me to be more faithful in praying for each of my children, for I’m sure Hannah’s prayers did not end when Samuel was born.  On our first day (I’ve been really bad about remembering this the last few lessons) I started singing the Bible verse to the tune of “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” as suggested in the lesson plan:

1 Thessalonians 5:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing,” “Pray without ceasing,” 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

I tried to sing it throughout the week whenever I thought of it: bedtime, bathtime, in the car… Even Elijah was trying to sing along, though his gibberish didn’t make much sense to Ian.  “Pray without ceasing, Eli!”  Come on, 1-year old!  Can’t you get the words right?

The boys both enjoyed reading the story in various Bible storybooks: the original version of The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury, and the original version of The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes.  (I talked a little more about the different versions of these Bible storybooks in this post on the Red Sea.)

For our Bible notebook, we adapted a craft from Danielle’s Place.  It’s quite a ways down the page, but if you search for “Praying Hands Picture” you’ll find it.

    

First we did a tissue paper collage for the “stained glass” window. (Ian took this work very seriously, though he got tired of putting all the pieces of tissue paper on, so we ended up with him being mostly in charge of the watered-down glue and me leading the way with the paper.)  Then instead of using the premade silhouette from the pattern for the hands, I used Laura’s suggestion from ABC Jesus Loves Me and traced Ian’s hand along the fold of black construction paper so it would open up.  He LOVED it!  As soon as I had cut out his hands and explained that he could put them together to pray, he started playing with them and recited the memory verse, completely unprompted.  (Well, he managed, “Pray without ceasing.  5:17,” but I was pretty proud, especially because I hadn’t said anything about writing the verse in it later).  I tried to write the verse with a white crayon, but it was too hard to squeeze inside the hands, so I ended up writing it again on the outer portion.  If I were to do it again, I think I might have printed it out on white paper and pasted it on, because it was just kind of hard read.

    

I didn’t have much for an iPod playlist this week, but the three things we had were fun:

  • “1 Samuel 1 Hannah’s Prayer” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
  • “God is So Good” (I had it on several CDs of Bible songs)
  • Karen & Kids podcast: “Samuel Part 1” (see this post to find out more about how we love Karen & Kids)

Even though we didn’t have time every day this week, I was really pleased with all we managed to do (including our Before Five in a Row activities).  Ian had so much fun with it all, and as we prayed at bedtime Thursday night he wanted to be sure to thank God for his paper plate bunny mask.  I’m glad he likes to share with God about all the things in his life.  I hope it’s the beginning of a long life full of prayer.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

The Runaway Bunny

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The Runaway Bunny

This week we “rowed” The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.  It’s been a long time since we did anything from Before Five in a Row, and I’ve had most of our activities planned for weeks, so I was ready to jump back in.  Coincidentally, this also happened to be the book of the week in the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 13 lesson plan we were using for our Bible story.  I pretty much stuck with the activities in the B4FIAR manual, as well as a couple things from HomeschoolShare.com.

After reading through the story once just to enjoy it, the next time I pointed out to Ian that some of the pictures were black-and-white and some were full color.  I didn’t mention the pattern, but I did ask him to predict what we’d see when we turned each page.  At first he was just guessing randomly, but then he started getting it right.  He never commented on the pattern, but I’m wondering if he’d caught on.

Ian’s had a little trouble grasping the whole concept of patterns.  On several occasions over the last year I’ve introduced simple ABAB patterns without any spark of understanding from him.  It’s been one of those frustrating things where I just can’t figure out why he doesn’t get it (as in I just want to say, “Come on!  Isn’t it obvious what comes next?”  Obviously I restrain myself.)  I didn’t want push him though, so I’d just drop it, knowing he’d catch on eventually after other gentle exposures.  So I was glad the one of the activities (the “rabbit sequence strips”) from the lapbook at HomeschoolShare touched on patterns.  (As I’ve shared before I’m not big on lapbooks, but I do like printing and laminating components that can be used as separate activities.  I keep everything filed away by book so I can pull them out again when I go through B4FIAR and other special books with my younger children.)

The sequencing activity was extremely simple, but maybe that’s why Ian was successful.  I liked the way it established the pattern, but I wish I’d printed out another copy to cut up so he could keep going.  (He asked me where the next one was.)

The other activity I used from HSS was the “rabbit perception puzzle.”  I actually thought this was going to be too challenging for Ian, but he surprised me by matching all the pictures (some of them were very similar and you had to look really carefully to notice the differences).  He was quite pleased with himself when he finished and wanted to do it again.

    

We also made bunny masks.  I’d seen it on several other B4FIAR blogs, and to be honest it always seemed kind of silly to me.  It certainly wasn’t on my plan for the week, but while working on our Bible notebook page for this week’s lesson, Ian took the piece of construction paper left from a cut-out and started pretending it was a mask.  So I grabbed a few paper plates and made bunny masks for both boys.

    

Elijah liked it until I tried to put a rubber band on his and then it just made him mad, even after I took it off.  Ian, however, wore his around for a while, put it on his stuffed bear, and dragged it around with him for the rest of the day.  Each to his own.

Finally, we played the Goodnight Moon game again, though this time we tried a harder level and matched the color cards to the black and white gameboards.

    

I tried this is Ian a few months back and he couldn’t do it, but this time he whipped through all four gameboards matching every picture without any help at all.  So fun to watch them grow!

A few weeks after we “rowed” this book, someone passed along a link to these great storytelling pieces.  I’m planning to print them out to use when we re-row this later down the road!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool
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