Preschool Week 4

Preschool Week 4

Bible: This week we read the story of Noah's Ark from the Jesus Storybook Bible.  Naturally, we we made out own versions of the ark and rainbow.

Hannah and Ethan coloring their rainbows.

Ethan Adding some detail to his ark.

Finished projects!

The inside of Hannah's ark.(Jesus Storybook Bible )

My inspiration was a mish mash of these two links:
Noah's Ark:

http://www.artistichandsoffaith.com/?p=917

http://joyfuljewish.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-noahs-ark-mobile/

Reading:  Reading favorites this week included Peter Spier's version of Noah's Ark as well as a number of the Eloise Wilkin Stories (Little Golden Book Treasury).
(Sonlight P3/4)   

Language Arts and Handwriting: We worked on all things letter D.

Adding orange antlers to their deer pictures.

Making and tracing the letter D with the wooden pieces.  This seems especially useful to Ethan.  Ethan is a hands-on physical learner.

Hannah's very best letter D.

Coloring the D page in the Handwriting Without tears book.

Printing the letter D

 (AAR pre-1)

 (HWT)

Math:  We did a variety of math/counting/number activities.


This is a simple game.  Roll the dice and add lego to the truck according to the number roll.  Roll a blank spot on the dice and dump everything.

Hannah wanted to count and Ethan wanted to dump.

So much fun (a little noisy)!

Hannah counting out beads into egg cartons.  Each spot was labeled with a small round sticker with a number on it.

Ethan counting while standing.

Finally, he decided to sit down to count.

With the bears, Hannah and Ethan practiced some matching. As well as distinguishing between sets of bears.  For example, a group of big bears may appear bigger but have fewer bears than a group of small bears which appears smaller but actually has more bears.

Matching according to size.  They LOVE these activities.

(Compare Bears Maths)
(Montessori at Home(Math Section)

Art:  Painting with cookie cutters.  This was a pretty simple art activity but sometimes they are also the best.

Hannah lining up her cookie cutter imprints.

Hannah disgusted at Ethan's messy painting.  

Oh my sweet girl I truly understand.

This girl has such a fascination with hand prints.  She always sneaks one in when we paint. 

Science: This week we traced shadows at 2 different times to see the difference.

For our object, I chose a ball on a bucket because I knew it would be fairly easy to trace.  Hannah did the first outline.

Ethan traced his shadow onto a new piece of paper an hour later.

Afterwards, we cut them out and compared the different size of each shadow.  The lego was just to hold the papers down because they kept curling.

Hannah and Ethan both thought that the shadows looked liked fish.  So of course they needed to decorate them.

Finished fish.

(PEEP and the Big WideWorld Explorer's Guide)

Just for fun:

Ben playing with the leap frog letters.

Today is one THOSE days!

You know the days.  You have company coming for dinner, a nephew coming for the morning, a bad headache, and 2 other kids you think might be capable of staying out of trouble.  This is the day after the day you spent the day with GG (great grandma), doing some errands, and then going out for dinner at your sisters house.  Not to mention the 2 kids who colored on the wall with crayons that don't seem to be washing off.  So your tired, your pregnant, and you still have that headache.

Hoping for a quiet day you go about the things you typically do when you have a burst of nesting energy and decided that today is the day to go through the baby clothes that the 2 kids have grown out of on order to get a move on getting ready for the baby coming.  It was going well, really well. (The calm before the storm).  Ben and I were in my room happily sorting through clothes and reminiscing at the very cute sleepers I was folding.  The 2 kids were quite, very quite so I checked on them.  To my surprise they were playing quite nicely in Ethan's room with the cars on the car mat.  I went back to my task content that the 2 kids were behaving and giving me the freedom to work quickly.

After much folding and sorting I realized how quiet the 2 kids were in Ethan rooms.  My kids are pretty good but what they are not is quiet.  I figure I should poke my head in the room and see what they were up too.  UTTER CHAOS had taken over Ethan's room.  I think everything that was his was on the floor, his bed, under his bed.  On top of that the bins of things I store on the top part of his closet were strew EVERYWHERE.  Stuff that they know better than to touch.  And he was still up there passing things down to Hannah.  I cannot tell you how much my heart dropped at the site of such a mess. Hannah immediately knew I was upset, very upset.  Ethan on the other hand seemed oblivious.

All that said I am super thankful for Andrew who talked me off the roof.  I still haven't dealt with the mess but I needed to finish what I was doing in my room first.  I often post about the fun and exciting things we do around here at our house.  I post about what the kids are learning and the things that my kids do that I think is cute.  Today is the other side, the messy side, the not so cute side.  I'll end there because I have a mountain of things to do and a closet that is calling my name to hide in.  In fact, I might just go straight to the closet to hide for awhile.

One of the cute moments.

Water Bead Fun

This weekend I filled up a bin of water and poured in a tube of rainbow colored water beads for Hannah and Ethan.  We have done this before but it's been awhile and I knew they would enjoy something fun since it was raining and Andrew was gone for work.

They loved trying to scoop up the beads while they were still so tiny.

I think Ethan was trying to decide if he could eat them.

Mixing and pouring.

 It didn't take very long to swell to full size.

 I'm so glad that I set this up for them because I was having a very TIRED day.

Fashion according to Hannah

Hannah has been picking her clothes and dressing all by herself for quite sometime.  I usually get a kick out of watching her in the morning as she chooses her clothes.  Typically, this is a combination of pink and purple.  On mornings when all her pink and purple clothes are dirty she usually gets quite upset.  She walks around lamenting at her dire circumstances.

Well this week, when the pickings were slim in her own dresser I guess she decided to try out Ethan's clothes.  For the rest of the week I kept finding her in his clothes randomly.  I love the above picture of the two of them in bright green shirts.  They look like they could be twins to me there.  Ethan is certainly catching her on height.

Here is another one I took yesterday of them reading together.  Hehehe Too cute.

There is one thing that bothers me and it has nothing to do with Hannah wearing Ethan's clothes.  It's the size of their clothes.  Ethan wears size 2 pants (and most are still too long) and size 2 or 3 shirts.  The pants he is wearing in the picture are 18 months and while they are too small, they fit better than size 2 pants.  hehehehe Short boy.  Hannah wears size 4 girls pants and size 4 but mostly size 5 shirts.  That said she fits perfectly into Ethan size 2 and 3 clothing.  Short girl hehehehe.  Why do girls and boys clothing need to be cut so differently.  I wish the sizing for kids clothing were more standardized.  I don't really care what size is on their tags.  But it would be so much easier when shopping if I didn't need to remember if they fit big in this store but smaller in that store.  Okay Rant over.

Dreams

I had the strangest dream last night that Andrew missed the baby being born because he was away on a retreat and didn't have cell service.  In the dream, this didn't seem to bother me in the least, what was more troubling was the nurse who kept trying to tell me my baby was a girl. Hahahaha.  I was pretty insistent that MY baby was in fact a boy, a very small baby baby boy.  Again, she tried to reason that my baby was not a small baby boy but a large baby girl. I remember saying to the nurse well how much did she she weigh.  The nurse said 7.5lbs, and I was think 7.5 isn't big a t all.  The dream continued and Andrew eventually showed with more formula then I could ever need.

Why do I bring up this random piece of trivia, because if I do in fact end up with a baby girl weighing in at 7.5lbs I want it documented here that I dreampy it ahead of time.  hehehehe.  We are having a boy according to the doctor but I guess you really never know until the baby is born. :D

Hannah

Ethan

I'm not worried though both Hannah and Ethan were cuter than I could handle.

Preschool Week 3

Preschool Week 3

Bible: Our story this week from the Jesus Storybook Bible was "The Terrible Lie".  Based on Genesis 3, it is the story of Adam and Eve falling from sin.  This is my favorite part from this story:

"Just trust me," the serpent whispered. "You don't need God. One small taste, that's all, and you'll be happier than you could ever dream..."

Eve picked the fruit and ate some. And Adam ate some, too.

And then a terrible lie came into the world. It would never leave. It would live on in every human heart, whispering to every one of God's children: "God doesn't love me."

And it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare.

We did a craft based on the bolded part above.  First, Hannah and Ethan ripped their heart in half and glued them back on the paper.

Then they glue a black piece of paper labeled "lies"on top of their heart.

I explained that their hearts become irreparably broken when sin enters inside.  I asked them if they could figure away to make their hearts whole again.  Hannah decided that glue or tape might work but I pointed out that it might make it better but it would still be damaged.  Ethan very quickly explained that he thought maybe Jesus would be able to fix it. He was right only Jesus can fix it.
(Jesus Storybook Bible )

Reading:  We continued to read from the " HarperCollins Treasury of Picture Book", as well as "What Do People Do All Day" and "Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm".   

Hannah, Ethan, and Ben reading after rest time.

(Sonlight P3/4)   

Language Arts and Handwriting:  


Making the letter C with the wooden pieces.
You would think that this would be boring but they love it.  (HWT)

Writing the letter C on the mini chalk boards. (HWT)

Practicing the capital C (HWT).

The glued on their words start with the "c" sound (as in cat).  (AAR pre-1)

Hannah meticulously gluing grass to her cow picture.  (AAR pre-1)

Math:  Our Compare Bear Math had us matching bears by size.

The kids push their bears into playdough to make impressions.

Then they had to match each bear to the correct "chair".

Ethan making impressions.

Here is Hannah trying match her bears to chairs.

The last thing they did was a very simple size matching worksheet. (Compare Bears Maths)

Also this week, Hannah and Ethan worked on numerals 7 to 9. (Montessori at Home(Math Section)

They counted out circle chips for each number.  

Hannah and I also looked at odd and even numbers.

Art:  Ethan and Hannah played around with our Colorix crayons.  They color like really slick and silky crayons (almost like lipstick).

Ethan colors vigorously.  

Hannah has a much more delicate touch compared to her brother.

The neat thing about these crayons is you can brush water on them to turn it into watercolors.

He paints just as vigorously as he does color.

Science:   We did more shadow stuff.  Hannah and Ethan helped me measure their shadows at three different times (9am, 10am, and 11am) and watched their shadows move to the right and get smaller and smaller.

We watched Peep and the Big Wide World called "Shadow Play".  (Peep, Quack, and Chirp discover their shadows — then use them to teach Tom the cat a lesson.).  They LOVED watching a video about shadows.  (PEEP and the Big Wide World Explorer's Guide)

Just for Fun:

Ben had lots of noisy fun dropping clothes pins into the can.

Hannah and Ethan playing with their Easter story board. 

 It has cling stickers you can move around to tell stories and play with for fun.