Category Archives: Preschool

Long Story Short: God Creates the World

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Well, here we are, back at the beginning!  I started this blog right after Ian turned 3, when we began going through the Bible lessons in the ABC Jesus Loves MeThree-Year Old Curriculum, which took us on a chronological journey through many of the best-known stories in the Old and New Testaments.  This past spring I wrote a post about what our next step should be, and I’m so excited about the route we’ve chosen.  This week we started going through a fantastic family devotional called Long Story Short by Marty Machowski. (Seriously, read the reviews at Amazon or Timberdoodle and you won’t be able to resist either).

The book is broken up into 78 weeks of stories from the Old Testament (the New Testament is covered in the sequel, Old Story New (scheduled to be released this Fall), which also has 78 stories, so together it will take us at least three years to get through all the material, probably more since I’m scheduling in breaks around holidays and vacations).  Each week consists of 5 ten-minute devotions designed to be used with kids from preschool through high school.  While the main story may be from the Old Testament, each week you also look at how it is part of the overall “Gospel Story,” so there are New Testament passages to read as well.  I wasn’t sure if our children were quite old enough for it, but if this week is any indication of how things are going to go, I think they’re going to get a lot out of it.  And maybe in the future we’ll go through it again and they can process things at a deeper level.

This week’s lesson covered Genesis 1.  We started Sunday night so that we could dive into some school activities on Monday.  Daddy read the Bible passage while I helped Ian follow along in his ESV Seek and Find Bible.  Then I walked us through the questions.  If the question was too hard, I just shared the answer as part of our discussion.  Then I told them what the suggested prayer topic was and asked who wanted to pray.  Usually we just had the boys pray, but sometimes Daddy or I would pray as well. They boys really enjoyed this nightly “Bible time,” and they were sad the two nights we didn’t do it.  There are only 5 per week, but it worked out really well because we were out late at a Bible study one night and playing miniature golf as a family another night, so it would have been hard to get more than 5 done.  On weeks when we’re not out late, I’ll use The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski) or a related Scripture to carry us through the end of the week.*)

After the first night, our Bible story was constantly on the boys’ minds.  All day on Monday they kept exclaiming, “God made ______ [dirt, trees, cows, the sky, etc].”  When we had lunch, I prayed, “Thank you, God for making grapes,” which led them to ask about the other foods, which taught them that even if God didn’t make something in the form we see it, He did creat the materials for it.  So then they started saying, “God made the stuff to make ___.”  This continued throughout the week!

The first night it was a little difficult to keep Elijah engaged, so after that I tried to come up with ways to keep everyone listening.  For example, when we read through the days of creation, I asked the boys to raise their hands every time they heard “God said…”  We talked about how even though only God can create by speaking, we also can create things.  We just have to start with paint, playdough, or some other sort of material.  (And then, of course, we had to get out our paints and spend one morning creating our own masterpieces.)

  

Go-Along Books

We have several Bible storybooks, but since there are lots of other fun books related to Creation, I decided to set those aside for this lesson.  Here are some of the books we read or looked through this week:

Reading Practice

I want to help Ian practice his reading skills by finding things at his level related to our Bible lessons.  This week I had two good resources:

  • We Learn About God from Rod and Staff Publishers (a beginning “reader” that’s right at Ian’s level)
  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (still a little too hard for Ian to read on his own, but he got good practice following along as I read.)

The other thing I did was print out our Bible verse and then cut up the individual words.  (I laminated the cards to keep in my Creation file, but that’s just so I can use them again with the other children).  I did something similar to the reading lesson Charlotte Mason described in Home Eduction (Volume 1 in the Original Homeschooling Series) Part V, chapter 4 “Reading“.  He was already familiar with Genesis 1:1, and he knew a few of the words by sight already, so I didn’t read it in order to him the way I would have with something new.  Instead I just mixed all the cards up and asked him to put them in the right order.  I helped him recite the verse so he’d know where to start, but then I was amazed how quickly he laid out the whole verse.  After he was done, I had him read it to me, pointing to each word as he read.  He was so proud of himself and immediately mixed them up and did it again.  He also took great pride in repeating the feat for Daddy that evening.  When we did “Bible time” before bed, he turned turned to the first page of Genesis in his ESV Bible and read the first verse as he pointed to the words.  He was a little confused why it didn’t say “Genesis 1:1” after “earth,” which opened up the door for talking about chapters and verses.  I pointed out the title “Genesis” and the big and small numbers, and soon he understood.

  

Bible Notebook

I really liked making a notebook as a record of our journey through the Bible the last time around, so I decided to do it again.  This time I’ll be doing them with both boys, so I’m going to try to do different activities than I did with Ian the first time. This week I printed out out the mini-book from Christian Preschool Printables to use for the boys’ Bible Notebooks.  I made up a page that had the Bible verse and a number for each day.  For Elijah, I cut out only the pictures and had him glue them next to the number on the page.  I had Ian trace the words and numbers for the day before gluing them over the printed numbers. (He’s been asking how to write letters a lot lately, so I want to start having some sort of “copywork” for him each week.  This seemed like a great starting place.)  It was nice being able to make the same activity developmentally appropriate for each boy.  They were both incredibly proud of their work, especially Elijah (“Grandma, I glued!”), since it’s the first official “schoolwork” he’s done.

  

Activities

There are lots of wonderful activities from Christian Preschool Printables, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the boys, so I tried to restrain myself.  I printed and laminated the Memory Match Game.  The boys did a good job just matching them up, but we never got quite confident enough to play “memory.”  We also each colored a Creation Wheel from Oriental Trading Company, which Ian loved turning to reveal each day.  Elijah only colored the top page and then lost interest.  I was a little irritated that they put a rainbow on it, since that’s a prominent part of the story of Noah, but we talked about how God created that too, just later on.

  

I really wanted to give the boys a chance to observe some animals, but with temperatures in the triple digits I just didn’t feel up to a trip to the zoo.  Instead, we took a field trip to a local pet store, where we saw cats, dogs, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, snakes, iguanas, and lots of varieties of fish (and even got to pet most of the mammals).  Both boys loved it, and they soon were back to their gleeful exclamations of, “God made ___!”

Multimedia

I found several resources online that Ian enjoyed playing around with:

Our “Listening Lesson” had a few more items on it than the last time we discussed creation.  This year I want to start being intentional about learning both traditional hymns and also some of the worship songs we sing in our Sunday services.  This was an easy lesson to incorporate a number of such songs into our iPod playlist:

I’m so excited to be starting this journey!  By the third night, Ian was begging for “more Bible time!”  By fourth night, both boys were eagerly volunteering to pray at the end of our time (when both have been extremely reluctant in the past).  Okay, so Elijah’s prayers in any setting are now about thanking Jesus for rocks, and the sky, and every animal he can think of, but I love that he’s excited about prayer!  “Bible time” is now something we all look forward to at the end of the day, and I love that they’re going to bed treasuring God’s Word in their hearts and minds.

—

*Here are a couple of ideas I came up with for filling in extra nights:

  • Psalm 19:1-6
  • Psalm 95:1-7
  • Romans 1:19-20
  • Psalm 104 (for older kids)
  • Job 38-39 (for older kids)
Posted in Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Caps for Sale

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Last week we were going to take a break, but Before Five in a Row beckoned us.  We had read through Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina during the previous week as part of our lesson on self-control, but the boys were enjoying the story so much I decided it need a good, honest “row.”  This is one of Ian’s favorites, and we did almost everything in the B4FIAR manual, as well as a few extras.

Ian got silly with one of Arianna’s toys and tried to balance them like the peddler’s caps.  (Pardon the not-so-charming scratch under his nose!)

I printed out a bunch of pages from Homeschool Creations.  Many just went into Ian’s “workbook” (a collection of worksheets or activities that I slide into plastic sheet protectors and have him do with dry-erase markers so I can reuse them), but there were also a couple activities I left out on the table all week.  One was a word sort with “-ap” and “-at” words.  I planned to use it just with Ian, but Elijah asked me first and ended up doing really well sorting the words into the right columns.

Their favorite activity, however, was rolling the cube that had pictures of the different kinds of coins on it.  In the story, the peddler calls out, “Fifty cents a cap!”  It was a great tie-in for learning about money.  My objective this week was for Ian to be able to identify a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, 50-cent piece, and dollar coin.  This game definitely helped us accomlish that.  We took turns rolling the cube, and then I had Ian fill in the graph to mark the results.  He loved learning how to make an X using the corners, and when the game was over (when one of the coins had been rolled 10 times), we practiced reading the graph.  We played this several times throughout the week because he enjoyed it so much.

  

(Yes, we do school in pajamas, diapers, and dalmation costumes.  Don’t you?)

Along with that game, I collected a bunch of coins and just let the boys have fun playing with them.  We talked about “heads” and “tails” and sorted them in different ways.  Ian liked clinking them together and commented on how the different types of coins made different sounds, which I thought was a great observation.  The money was a big hit, and I still haven’t managed to get it all put away because they keep getting it out!

Finally, in addition to a fun reading of the story on YouTube, we watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Three Hat Day,” featuring Caps for Sale as one of the books recommended at the end of the program.  Ian really loves this show, so I let him watch any I can find that relate to what we’re learning about.

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

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Well, we didn’t exactly finish our Fruit of the Spirit unit with a bang, but we did make it all the way through, and I’ll just have to be satisfied with that. 🙂 Certain things fizzled out along the way, like our “tattoos,”  the Fruit of the Spirit board game (although we did play this one quite a bit until just recently), and the Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables.  As far as the books we used throughout the unit, 9 Fruits Alive by Mindy MacDonald was a big hit, especially with Elijah.  He’s requested it several times a week for the last couple months. Jesus in Me by Dandi Daley Mackall, however, pretty much just sat in our basket after the first couple weeks.  (Truth be told, I forgot about it.  I probably could have pulled it out and they would have enjoyed it.  Oh well.)

For this final week on “Self-Contol,” we really didn’t do anything extraordinary.  In fact, it mostly consisted of videos. {*cringe*} I intended to watch the Pleasure Island scene from Pinocchio and discuss the consequences of doing whatever you want and not exercising self-control.  We may not turn into donkeys, but it’s definitely not good for us and prevents us from being all that God has made us to be.  However, we never got to that one.  We did watch the older storybook animation of the self-control from Character Builders.  I loved this line from it’s song: “Get yourself some self-control or self will give you trouble.”  So true!  And of course, Ian wouldn’t let us get through the week without watching the episode on self-control from our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit.

We read one of Ian’s favorite books from Before Five in a Row, Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  This book was as much a hit with Elijah as it was when I first read it to Ian when he was two.  Both of them requested it several times throughout the week.  We tied it in with the fruit of the Spirit by talking about the man’s reaction and discussing whether or not he demonstrated self-control.  They enjoyed this book so much I might just have to keep it out and do some of the activities from the B4FIAR manual since we didn’t really “row” it this past week. (Post to come!)

Our “Listening Lesson” was shorter than it’s been, mostly because I’ve just about had my fill of some of the songs that we’ve used throughout the unit!  Here’s what made the final cut

I’m so glad we did this whole unit.  It was a great fit for summer.  It kept us in the Word without requiring a lot of planning time, and it laid a solid foundation for deeper study in the future.  I don’t think either of my boys will ever forget the nine traits listed in Galatians 5:22-23, and we’ve built a lot of fun memories along the way!

 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Against such things there is no law.

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness

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This past week was one my favorite parts of our Fruit of the Spirit unit.  Gentleness is not something my boys manifest terribly often without prompting.  Having a baby sister (and a mama with a severe aversion to chaos, especially the loud variety) has given them plenty of practice, however, and I am so proud of how well they do at setting aside their nature “rough-and-tumble” nature and putting on gentleness.  Actually, I’m kind of in awe of it.  These boys adore their sister, and my heart just melts every time they snuggle in next to her and start speaking so softly in a higher pitcher “motherese” voice.  Are they always that way? No.  But on the occasion one of them is just too wild and she burst into tears, they are quick to respond and make things right.

We didn’t do a whole lot extras this week.  For Bible, I chose to focus on the idea of the Lord as our shepherd.  We watched the “gentleness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit.  And we read Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets, one of the books from Before Five in a Row (though we didn’t do anything out of the B4FIAR manual, just read it several times).  Ian loved this story about a little girl who learns that running after animals and trying to catch them isn’t nearly as rewarding as sitting quietly and being still.  It never uses the word “gentle,” but I think it’s a beautiful picture of gentless, and Ian saw the connection right away.

Because we had memorized Psalm 23 back when we studied David last year, much of our “Listening Lesson” this week was a review:

There is so much more we could be doing with each part of this unit, but I’m content with what we have done.  I wanted to keep being intentional about staying in God’s Word, but at the same time I wanted to feel like we were getting a break.  I know we’ll come back to the Fruit of the Spirit in a few years, so I’m saving lots of ideas and enjoying taking it easy for a while.  One last week coming up on self-control, then we’ll take a week off before diving into our next Bible adventure!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

More Classical Music My Kids Love

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One of the subjects I’d like to be a part of our children’s education is music appreciation.  Ian’s already learning to play piano and enjoy making music through a Yamaha course, but I also want to help them all become familiar with some of the beautiful music that has been enjoyed for centuries through a little composer study à la Charlotte Mason.  Our children are still so young, but my plan for the next few years until we are “officially” homeschooling is to gradually add in the subjects that I want to be a part of our curriculum.  Otherwise it would be pretty overwhelming when Ian turns six if I suddenly try to jump into everything at once.  So since I have a fairly extensive background in music (not to mention an absurdly large collection of classical music CDs), I’ve decided now is a good time to start being a little more intentional in this area. (I tend to think in terms of the schoolyear starting in August, even though I intend to homeschool year round, taking breaks as we need them rather than a big summer holiday)

Last year I shared about some of the music we started listening to when they were quite little in the post “Music My Preschoolers Love.”  They still enjoy all those pieces, but now they’re also ready for a few more mature findings.  Yes, they’re SO mature now that the oldest is 4 1/2.  Seriously though, having been exposed to it early has made them more open to hearing things not necessarily meant for children so young.  I especially like finding CDs or other audio files that explain a bit about the music and give the kids something specific to be listening for.  For example, after hearing the composer tell about using tubas to portray the big boats in Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Elijah started asking, “Mommy, is that the big tubas?” every time they played.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam ShovelThat CD is the first one we bought from the Maestro Classics series.  It was such a hit, both with the boys and with me, that I also decided to get Peter and the Wolf, even though we already have another recording of this piece. I just really like all the extras that come on their albums–(plus the Peter and the Wolf (MP3) was just $5 thanks to a coupon from HomeschoolShare–they’re also sponsoring a giveaway until the end of July so check it out!)  And we just got The Soldier’s Tale to include in the last week of our July composer study on Stravinsky (post coming soon).  I’ve put the rest on the kids’ wishlists for gift ideas and I hope we can eventually collect the whole set.  Here are all the titles available:

The Maestro Classics website also has homeschool curriculum guides with lots of great suggestions for integrating different subjects with the music from each CD.Beethoven Lives Upstairs

Another great resource for exposing your children to the works of the great composers is the Classical Kids series.  A fellow homeschooler shared these with us, and while I haven’t yet listened to all of them yet, they get great reviews.  They tell a story about the composers’ lives, using various pieces of their music throughout the CD.  What a great way to help your kids become familiar with the unique musical “voice” of different composers!  Over the next school year I’ll be using these as the framework for our composer study, choosing one CD a month and supplementing with podcasts from Classics for Kids (lots of great resources there!), music from my own collection and kid-friendly biographies from the library.

There are two additional Classical Kids CDs that are thematic rather than being about a particular composer.

And just in case you needed any more ideas, I’ve recently added to our music library a couple other albums combining classical music (or classical style) with engaging stories.  We’ll be listening to Ferdinand the Bull and Friends when we “row” The Story of Ferdinand.   And although our listening schedule looks pretty packed this year, I’m really looking forward to queezing in some time for the award-winning Baroque Adventure: The Quest for Arundo Donax. 

Wow!  That’s a lot of music!  I hope you’ll try out some of our suggestions and share some of your family’s favorites in the comments. 🙂

(If you’re interested in implementing Charlotte Mason-style composer study in your home, check out Ultimate Guide to Composer Study over at Homegrown Learners for lots of great information and ideas!)

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study, Homeschool Resources, Our Vision, Parenting Resources, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

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It’s hard for me to believe we’re coming close to the end of our Fruit of the Spirit unit, but last week we finished up faithfulness, which only leaves us two more weeks to go!  To help Ian understand faithfulness, I defined it as “keeping your promise no matter what,” whether that be a promise to God or another person.  To illustrate this trait, we spent time talking about Ian’s favorite Bible story: Daniel in the lion’s den (found in Daniel 6).  Daniel chose to worship and pray to God alone, even when it meant he would probably be eaten by lions.  What a powerful picture of faithfulness!

For our Five in a Row book we spent the week with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, which I wrote about in a separate post.  Mike was faithful to Mary Anne, continuing to work with her when newer and better construction equipment took over most of the jobs.  He even stays with her at the end of the story, when she’s no longer used for digging.  It’s a great demonstration of being a faithful friend.

We spent a lot of time on Mike Mulligan, but somewhere in the course of the week we also watched one of the two episodes related to faithfulness on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit.

Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the Spirit

Our “listening lesson” was pretty long this week because we included a lot from a CD of  Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel from Maestro Classics, as well as some music from our first “composer study” (post coming on that soon).  Here’s the part related specifically to our faithfulness lesson:

We’re in the home stretch now!  Coming up next: Gentleness.  With two rambuctious little boys, this could be a challenge!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness

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We continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit with another light week because we’d just come home from camping and I headed to a homeschool conference Thursday, but we did manage to spend enough time that it felt like we’d covered goodness.

What is goodness?  I think of it as things being as God originally intended.  I love what C.S. Lewis said about good and evil in Mere Christianity:

“ …badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness . . . Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.” C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity, II, 2, para. 10.

“Goodness” and “badness” are not two equal and opposing forces.  If there had never been good, there would have never been any possibility of evil.  “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31.  The only reason we’re not all oozing goodness is because sin entered the world when Adam and Even chose disobedience in Genesis 3.  So when we do the opposite of what they did, when we turn from sin and live God’s way, we are manifesting “goodness.”  What beautiful fruit!

As we talked about it for this lesson I didn’t want to focus on DOING so much as BEING.  But how do you describe the essence of “goodness” to preschoolers?  I liked some of the ideas in the song “Goodness” on the Music Machine: Fruit of the Spirit CD:

“Bees make honey and it sure tastes good. Did you ever smell a flower? Well it sure smells good…”

Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the SpiritThat seemed as good a place as any to start about having God’s goodness in us.  The idea was reiterated when we watched the video on Goodness from the older version of Kid’s Character Builders on YouTube. (The newer version, with updated animation, is also available on DVD.) The video says your heart is like a honeycomb that God wants to fill with “goodness.”  After watching it we enjoyed honey sticks and talking about how good they were.  We also watched the episode on goodness from our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit (still a favorite around here).

For our “listening lesson” this week I added a couple poems just for a little something different:

And that was pretty much it!  Most of our summer disruptions are over (at least the planned ones), so I’m hoping we’ll be able to dig in for the next three weeks and have a strong finish to our study of the Fruit of the Spirit!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness

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The latest installment in our Fruit of the Spirit unit was kindness.  Between my nieces visiting, the 4th of July holiday, and a quick camping trip, it was kind of a light week for us as far as school.  As I was preparing for our lesson, I saw that lots of people combined “kindness” and “goodness” when going through the Fruit of the Spirit.  I considered doing the same because of the factors I just mentioned, but I decided against it.  There’s obviously a difference or else Paul wouldn’t have listed them separately in Galatians 5:22-23.  I really wanted to do some study on the two Greek words (just for me, not necessarily to share with the kids), but that just didn’t happen.  (Big surprise.)  I chose to discuss kindness as the choices we make as far as what we DO, whereas when we discuss goodness, we’ll focus more on the essence of who we ARE.  I honestly have no idea if that’s anywhere close to the biblical definitions, but it will work for us (for now).

There are so many great Bible verses that can be used to discuss being kind.  I LOVE the  “Kind” clothing collage and hanger ideas Amanda over at Impress Your Kids shared that help illustrate Colossians 3:12, “So put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes.” (NIrV). Another great verse for this week is the “Golden Rule” (“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Matthew 7:12).  Along those lines we watched Veggie Tales: Are You My Neighbor?  I’m afraid that’s about as close as we got to any sort of Bible study this week.  We also watched 2 videos on kindness from the older version of Kid’s Character Builders on YouTube. (The newer version, with updated animation, is also available on DVD.)

Our literature connection for the week was The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (see my separate post), but we also read a fun book about encouraging others called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.  After we finished it the first time I made a point to say something encouraging to each of the kids who was listening.  My 5-year old niece immediately broke into a smile and exclaimed, “Hey!  You just filled my bucket!”  It was a great tool for demonstrating kindness.

For our “listening lesson” this week we pretty much just kept up with the same CDs that have been getting us through this whole unit:

The boys and I are loving this whole study.  Ian looks forward to each week’s new “fruit,” and Elijah can recite all nine of them faster than my husband or me!   If you’re doing a similar unit, I hope you’ll share about some of what you’ve done (or post a link if you’ve blogged about it).  I’m keeping a notebook with all the ideas I’ve collected (including many we’re not using), because I know we’ll come back to this whole concept in a few years!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Grouchy Ladybug

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Our literature unit last week was on The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle.  I chose it to go along with our Fruit of the Spirit lesson on kindness (post coming soon), because while the main character isn’t terribly kind, the other ladybug in the story is a wonderful example of being kind even to those who treat you badly.  My 5-year old niece was staying with us last week, and she and Ian adored this story.  Not only did they think it was funny that the grouchy ladybug went around trying to pick fights with animals so much bigger than itself, they loved the repetition that allowed them to “read” along with me as soon as they caught on to the pattern.  Several times I caught both of them flipping through the pages saying the words out loud, so excited that they could read the story all by themselves.

Even though this story was just a part of our “Kindness” lesson, the kids enjoyed it so much I decided to throw in some extra learning about ladybugs.  I pulled out some books we happened to have in our home library: The Ladybug (Life Cycles)  by Sabrina Crewe, The Ladybug and Other Insects (a First Discovery Book) by Gallinard Jeunesse, and About Insects: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill, part of a series we love because of its simplicity (there are books on mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, etc. as well).  We found a few fun videos on YouTube, starting with a basic story video of the book.  I really liked this quiet, soothing reading of it.  We watched a Reading Rainbow episode called Bugs. and there was a fun Ladybug playlist someone had put together.  There were also some fun lapbook materials from Homeschool Share.  I only used a couple pages this time, but Ian got such a kick out of the story I think we’ll definitely come back to it when Elijah and Arianna get older!

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

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We continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit this past week talking about patience, which I defined for the boys as “waiting without complaining.”  There were two Bible verses we focused on:

“Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God…” Philippians 2:14-15

“Be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:2

Ian knows the first one well already from a song (see our iPod playlist below), and I was surprised how much he enjoyed the lesson all week.  I guess I thought it would come across as nagging, but that must be from my own childhood baggage (*grin*).  I must have been an impatient little girl, because I remember countless times when my mom broke into song:  “Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry…”  Quite the catchy tune.

Even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard the Music Machine album (I had the vinyl as a kid, but we do have a CD now), if you’re from my generation you’ve probably heard the song on it about patience.  It must have been a favorite, for most of my friends seem to know that one.  It tells the story of a snail called Herbert, who in his younger days was a little too speedy and wreaked havoc as he crashed through spider webs and collided with crickets.  But his wise father taught him a little ditty that helped him mend his ways and take his time crawling through life (though it made the ants mad and the beetles, well, “they would fume.”  The point of the song is that when you start to get impatient with other people, remember that not only is God patient, but there are times when other people have to wait for you as well.  (We watched this video on YouTube for more about Herbert.  If you like it, check out the newer version with modern animation on from the DVD set Character Builders.)

Ian loved the song, and I decided it would be fun to spend some time with snails up close.  So one morning we went out snail hunting.  The day was already hot and dry so it wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated, but at last we managed to find three little friends to join us for our morning lesson.  We put them on dark paper so we could see the slimy dotted trail they left behind them.  The boys were fascinated!  We talked about the different parts of the snails anatomy to squeeze in some “official” learning, but mostly we just had fun watching them.  Ian set up races (a great chance to practice patience!), had fun redirecting them whenever they’d get close to the edge of the paper, and really would have liked to keep them around a lot longer, but alas, Mama wasn’t really keen on that idea.

  

For more Bible connection, we also discussed the story of Simeon, the man who waited to see God’s promised Messiah (see Luke 2:22-35).  It was a story Ian had never heard before, which made him curious and therefore very attentive.

For literature, we read the book The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss (part of Before Five in a Row).  I asked Ian why he thought I had chosen that book to go along with our lesson. We had planted seeds a while back in anticipation of doing this book, so he had no problem connecting it to patience.  We were rewarded for ours by seeing our little green shoots and lots of roots!

Here’s what was playing all week for our “Listening Lesson”:

It will be two weeks before I write about our lesson on “Kindness.”  There’s lots of stuff going on around here (visitors, vacations, and of course, 4th of July), and since we’re halfway through the Fruit of the Spirit, it seemed like a good idea to take a break!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool
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