Week 20- Letter R

Week 20- Letter R

Language Arts and Reading:

This past week we worked on the letter R.  Our activity was a big hit this week with Hannah and Ethan.  It is a picture of a raccoon holding a pumpkin pie.  After putting some glue on the pie, Hannah and Ethan took turns sprinkling some cinnamon over the glue.  Ethan especially enjoyed sniffing the pie and getting cinnamon all over his nose.

Science:

A departure from our regular nature exploration we instead made tea bag rockets. AMAZING.  Both fun and easy.  Obviously there are no pictures because this involved matches and fire.  But we did manage to take a video.  Have a look:

Check out this link for more info.

Math:

This week was all about rectangles.  

We counted sides and corners and compared rectangles to squares.

We explored some different rectangles from around the house.

Then Hannah and Ethan traced the rectangles to make a picture.

Finally, we all went on a rectangle walk.  It was raining so we "walked" around the house.

Art:

While we didn't "make" something this week.  Hannah and Ethan painted for the first time on our much anticipated banner easel.

Faith Formation:

Our lesson this week focused on developing a greater awareness of and appreciation for the sense of touch. To encourage Hannah and Ethan to express their thankfulness and appreciation to God for their sense of touch.  

We played a game with our mystery box.  I put a bunch of soft and hard items in the box and they had to take turns reaching in and guessing what the object they touch was and whether or not it was hard or soft.

Here is Ethan deciding that the rock he pulled out was hard.

Hannah and Ethan with their hard (Popsicle stick) and soft (cotton balls) pictures.

Our story this week was Matthew 19:13-15 where Jesus welcome and blesses the children.  It’s a wonderful image of Jesus reaching out and blessing others with his touch.    

Wordless Wednesday

 

Week 19-Letter Q

Week 19-Letter Q

Q week was a bust, but I thought I would share anyway. I thought it might look strange from P straight to R without a mention of the letter in between.  Here is what we did (in no particular order and with little explanation hahahaha) 

Language Arts:

The kids Q-tip painted the water in their picture of a Q with a duck.  It should have been a quail but instead they picked a duck because ducks quack.  Who am I to nit pick about the details.

Math:  

We sorted, counted, and talked about shapes.

 Then they matched shapes to the cards they had each chosen.  Hannah chose a layered card and I was a little suprised at how easy this was for her to do without help.  Ethan wanted to match shapes or colors but not both at the same time.

Art:  

We made Valentine's Day hearts.

First, Hannah and Ethan colored the heart shaped coffee filters with felts.

Then they painted the hearts with water.  The water makes the ink from the felts bleed.  The kids really liked this activity. Later, we glued the heart to some lifesavers to make butterflies.  Hannah and Ethan gave these to some of their friends.

 Faith Foundations: 

The focus on this lesson with on our eyes.

We did other stuff but I didn't take any pictures. 

 On to week R.

Our Lenten Spiral 2013

Our Lenten Spiral 

Last Tuesday, the kids and I made our Lenten Spiral.  A Lenten Spiral is basically a advent calendar leading up to Easter instead of Christmas.  Last year, we made ours out of salt dough and this year we did again. I made some changes based on what worked and what didn't work last year.  Instead of a salt dough cross (which kept falling and breaking last year) we are using a marble as the counter that moves from the outside to the center where we have a wooden cross.  This is a visual reminder of the preparations and reflection we do as we await Easter.

Hannah made a cross with Jesus on it.  Unfortunately, she squished it up before I could stop her.

Here she proudly holds up her second cross.  

Ethan and Hannah hard at work making more crosses.

Our finished pieces ready to go into the oven.  On the left are the crosses Hannah and Ethan made, in the center is a tomb and a rock, and on the right is our spiral.

All set up.  I have everything here for now.  But the tomb will be for our Easter garden which we will make closer to Palm Sunday.

Here you can see the spiral up close.  The marble works well.

The tomb.

I also included an Easter book basket with a few books we already owned as well as a bunch of library books.  We made the crosses into ornaments and hung them on our branches.  

Wordless Wednesday