Wise and Foolish Builders
This was one of those weeks that just didn’t turn out quite the way I planned it. But that’s okay. I’m learning to go with the flow and grab those teachable moments.
Our Bible lesson was from ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum Week 21: the wise man who built his house upon the rock and his foolish counterpart (found in Matthew 7:24-27). For literature, I thought we’d spend some time with the Three Little Pigs, since the stories fit so well together. My main objective was for Ian to associate being “wise” with doing things God’s way (which often means being patient), and being “foolish” means just doing whatever we want. For a memory verse I wanted to begin working on Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” That was the plan anyway.
But things happen.
#1. I forgot to put the memory verse on our iPod playlist. Plus, Ian enjoyed LAST week’s playlist so much, that was all he really wanted to listen to. So while I tried to spend time listening to this week’s lesson, I figured I’d go with his interest. After all, he’s going to hear this Bible story many times over the course of his life.
#2. We finally got to have a playdate with some of our good friends. So we lost a day there.
#3. We discovered ReadingEggs.com (more to come on this one!) We lost most of Thursday morning to this, but I have to say it was time well spent as by the end of it, Ian had read his first sight words!
#4. We decided to use our tickets to Ian’s favorite children’s museum, which are only good through the end of the month. So there goes Friday as well.
We did spend a little time on the Three Little Pigs. We read the classic story from English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs (great for learning to just listen and FREE for Kindle), as well as a simple mini-book from Scholastic. The boys also enjoyed a free storybook app on my Kindle Fire and listened to the story on a CD from the library read by Holly Hunter. Ian especially got a kick out of The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivisas.
There were a number of ideas at Making Learning Fun (tracing numbers, mazes, concentration cards, etc.), but the closest I got to any of them was introducing Ian to cuisinaire rods, which I loved playing with as a child. They are a great tool for building “number sense,” and I hope to use them in many different ways in the future. My goal this week was to help him get familiar with them and be able to do at least part of this addition activity, but alas…
I don’t want to linger on this lesson (it’s such a short passage of Scripture and the meaning is too abstract for Ian to really grasp anyway), so we’ll just move on next week and work on being more intentional about focusing on the Bible.