Creation Crafts

It's been ages now since I promised you information on the crafts I did for Levi's first weeks of preschool, but by golly, I'm going to follow through!  We spent the first two weeks talking about creation, but only did crafts for the first four days (plus a generic one on Genesis 1:1).  Now, a month later, every time I tell Levi we're going to do a craft, he asks if it's for day five.  Mental note: don't start things you're not going to finish!

Note: the picture-numbers shown above each craft can be found here.


GENESIS 1:1

First we made a coffee filter earth: color with blue (water) and green (land) markers on a coffee filter, spritz with water, let the colors bleed.  Everything I read warned about not getting the filter too wet, and in the end we didn't get it wet enough -- you can still see the marker lines!  Oh well.  

Then I poured a little bit of white paint into a bowl, dipped a paintbrush in, and helped Levi use a second paintbrush to tap the first, thus splattering white paint over black paper to make the universe.  He enjoyed this part quite a bit.

DAY ONE

For a while, I actually had the first craft up as "day one," and it took me some time to realize that everything involved in the first craft -- stars, water, land -- all came on later days of creation.  So towards the end of the second week, we made light!  As I mentioned before, this was an attempt at blowing paint around using a straw, which was not at all effective and he simply used the straw to spread the paint around.  Still, I liked the effect!  (Paint recipe came from The Toddler's Busy Book and was nothing more than condensed milk, water, and yellow food coloring.)

We ate Oreos for a snack that day, and Levi still calls them the "light and dark cookies."

DAY TWO

Day two is just what it looks like: blue crayon on the bottom, and cotton ball clouds glued on the top (found at I Can Teach My Child.  I read somewhere that one of the "readiness for kindergarten" markers was an understanding of how much glue is needed, so I've been trying to incorporate more gluing activities into our routine.  It took some time to convince Levi to pull the cotton balls apart, but he liked sticking them on the paper.  I had him label the clouds, sky, and water -- though, as you can see, when I spelled "sky" for him, he thought I said "s-a-y," and wrote it before I had a chance to correct him.  No big deal.

For day two's snack, I topped blue Jell-O with Cool Whip for water and clouds.  Levi wouldn't eat the Jell-O but wanted huge spoonfuls of Cool Whip!

DAY THREE

It's a little silly that I'm even including this, but this was the first time Levi ever drew a picture.  From the first moment he picked up a crayon, it was lines and circles, followed by little squiggles he declared to be numbers, and then to actual letters and numbers.  I drew a picture myself and talked about it while I did it: God made green grass, and a brown tree, and maybe some red apples on the tree . . . and then he did his own.  I was sitting catty-corner from him, and I think that affected his spatial awareness on the page as he looked at my drawing: the tree is lying horizontally on top of the grass, with apples drawn all over the trunk.  It's a start. :)

DAY FOUR

This was the favorite for both of us, I think (and I'm terribly sorry to whomever, but I cannot remember which blog I took this idea from!!).  I glued a half-sheet of blue paper to a full sheet of black, drew a yellow circle on the blue side and a white crescent on the black side, and cut up yellow and white tissue paper.  Levi's job was to take a square of tissue paper, dip it in glue, and put it on the appropriate side.  I happened to have some white star stickers lying around, so those went on, too.

We read the creation account mostly from the Beginner's Bible, but also read and listened to the same from the Jesus Storybook Bible and read it from "the big Bible" (as Levi calls it) as part of our family devotions after dinner one night.  Our theme song for the two weeks was "This is the Day," which we sang most mornings after breakfast when we read the Bible story.  (We've done two more units since then, and have not managed to incorporate another theme song.  It was a nice idea, anyway!)

So there you have it: most of our Bible-related activities from our first official two weeks of preschool.  I'm largely using ABC Jesus Loves Me (Three-Year Curriculum) as my curriculum, occasionally seeking craft ideas from other sites if I'm after something more or different.  It's fun and gives all of us something to look forward to every morning!