B is for Boats and Bravery

Bible story: David and Goliath
Focus Scriptures: 1 Samuel 17, Isaiah 41:10
Books: My Blue Boat (by Chris Demarest), Boat Book (by Gail Gibbons)
Crafts: "b" sailboats, "B" bubble painting
Blessing others: baking banana bread for two "B" families at church

On Monday, Owen watched the letter B section on Starfall and then colored big B's brown and little b's black. (Say that three times fast.) It's one thing I think he's actually learning in all of this preschool nonsense: what the lower case letters look like, and how to compare them to capital letters. By Wednesday he'd become quite the stickler about calling them "capital" and "lower case," too.

After Levi finished his math, we did this " b boat" craft inspired by some blog I can't find now. The camera battery was dead, so I only have pictures of the finished product, but it should be pretty self-explanatory:

Levi insisted on coloring the left sail with a white crayon.

Owen in particular loves the books about boats, which we've read at least three times a day every day this week, and he was quite tickled to make a boat out of a "b."

Tuesday, we took advantage of one of the last (I HOPE) hot days and filled up the pool after nap time. Inspired by this blog post, we turned it into a (very brief) sort of science experiment, counting how many whales (a gift from my mother-in-law after her last trip to Florida) we could put in different containers before they sank. With a 15-month-old batting furiously at the boats and whales, however, it didn't last long (nor was it very scientific). We tried pieces of an egg carton (cardboard in the water . . . brilliant, Mommy), a piece of aluminum foil, and various bowls.

Trying out a small green bowl.

There's an orca in the red boat.

Boats are for floating, not eating, silly Silas!

Look how many whales the pink boat holds!

Attempting to float the foil boat, which kept filling with water and sinking.

Of course, after Daddy got home from work, things got way more fun:

Wednesday morning started our Bible Study Fellowship for the year. It functions as Bible-based, once-a-week "preschool" for the boys, and we all love it! I hadn't planned to do any school on Wednesdays, but nobody napped well (surprising, after our tiring morning), so we moved on to our painting craft for the week: bubbly B's. We used the lids off of bottles of bubbles dipped in black and blue paint to make circle "bubbles" on some capital Bs I drew on paper with a Sharpie. Very simple, but they really got into it!

Afterwards, we went outside to blow and pop bubbles. If Silas has seen bubbles before (I can't remember), he doesn't remember: he seemed both mesmerized and confused by them, and kept asking, "ball? ball?" Unfortunately, I couldn't blow bubbles and take pictures at the same time, to capture his face.

Thursday, we finally hit our Bible story and bravery focus. The curriculum suggested using five different Bible verses as reasons we don't need to be afraid, so I had Levi look up each one, read it, and answer a few simple questions (reading comprehension assessment!). Together we wrote a key phrase and the reference on cut-up pieces of paper bag, crumpled them into stones, and put them in a paper bag (as close as we were going to get to "five smooth stones in David's pouch").

Looking up verses in his Children's ESV.

Writing down the references.

Five reasons to "fear not!"

Bag full of stones (the papers from above, crumpled into balls).

Then the fun part: we sang our action poem (below) and Levi threw stones at me to knock "Goliath" down! I tell you what, hauling my 25-week-pregnant self back off the floor got pretty tiring after the fourth or fifth time. So I gave myself a break and popped in VeggieTales Dave and the Giant Pickle while I made lunch. Levi must have asked me a dozen times in the first 15 minutes when David was going to pick up his stones, so I think our little activity made an impression! Of course I can't fall down and take pictures at the same time (which seems to be a theme this week, my inability to take pictures). I hope I remember the fun we've had this week, without the pics to prove it!

"David, David" Poem (Adapted from Unknown Original Source)

Tune:  Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear
David, David, turn around (turn around)
Pick that stone up off the ground (bend down and pick up)
David, David, swing your sling (swing hand above head)
Let it go and watch it fling (flick wrist)
Giant, Giant, up so high (reach arms into the sky)
Watch that stone; it really flies (put hand above eyes to watch)
Giant, Giant, standing tall (stand on tiptoes)
1, 2, 3 and down you fall (count with fingers and then fall)