(And All My) Work Be Praise

Even though we don't make a big deal out of Santa at our house, it seemed like the logical thing to do to finish up the semester's animal studies with reindeer. Besides, if you can't use your red sparkly pipe cleaners in December, when can you?! Always, always with the googly eyes. And a red pompom nose, of course. Because, besides not really knowing much about Santa, they really didn't know anything about Rudolph, either, we got on youtube to watch the 10-minute movie from 1948  and also to listen to Gene Autry sing it. Levi has been pretty taken with the song since, humming when he doesn't know the lyrics and asking to learn it on the piano. We have a few more animals to study, scattered over the next few months, but will largely be concentrating on the human body for several weeks after the holidays. Should be interesting!

Due to the lethal combination of seasonal busy-ness and house-wide cruddy coughing, we didn't actually read any books about alligators, fiction or non-fiction. If I'd had my wits about me, we would have at least pulled The House on East 88th Street off the shelf to re-visit our beloved Lyle the Crocodile, but 'twas not to be this week. Still, our little craft was too cute not to share! ( Idea found here .) Two handprints: one with only three fingers painted, opened in a V to be the mouth, and another with all four painted and close together as the body. Peel-and-stick foam cut into triangles for the spiky skin, and of course the ever-present googly eyes! Peeling stickers: great fine motor development. I decided our alligators needed a riverbank scene, and the watercolors were already out, so I took a turn with the paintbrush. :) Top right: Levi's scattered spikes. Bottom left: Owen's meticulous straight line of spikes. Aren't pe...

Levi brought me a small pad of paper today, on which he had written his first story (as in, not just told a story out loud, which he does frequently). Mostly for the amusement of myself and my family, here it is in its entirety, including spelling errors: One day there was a happy liveing lion and a little chicken liveing quite happley. Suddenly, BOOM. BOOM. It was going to rain. The lion ran away. But the chicken looked around. He saw rain. Lion running through the rain. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM That yellow squiggle is lightning. BOOM So the chicken ran away; to find the lion. He met her at 2pm. a fire [???] Hey, lion; the lion was asleep. The chicken yelled ahhhhhh. Chicken yelling at lion. (Those blue lines are sound waves.) The chicken woke the lion up. The End.

I haven't given a full list of Levi's curriculum for this year, but I've been mentioning his subjects here and there. I don't think I've touched on his literature study yet: First Favorites Guide (Vol. 2)  by Veritas Press. We don't do this every week; I've mixed the books from this guide in with other books I want to spend time on. These literature guides -- a mixture of all sorts of activities, like answering questions (full sentences!), fill-in-the-blanks, write a postcard, color a map -- are really perfect for Levi right now. Most  of the time I'm a big fan of reading just to enjoy reading, plus a craft or activity to make it fun. Levi started reading so early, however, that I've never been quite certain about his comprehension level, and this is helping me know what to expect when he reads books on his own. Included in this guide are two selections from a series I'd never heard of: Nate the Great . They're longer stories but not yet...

I didn't figure out what to do for Advent until yesterday. The first day (November 30), I pulled out an old Thriving Family magazine I'd saved with an advent-activity calendar. The first day's discussion was good, examining the Advent wreath (evergreen because God always keeps his promises, purple candle because Jesus is King, etc.). When I finally flipped ahead to see what was coming, though, I realized that it was still a bit too old (and complicated) for my little people. It'll probably be great when they're 5-10 years old instead of 1-5. The second day (December 1), we thought we'd give the Jesus Storybook Bible plan a go. It's not really a "plan" so much as "read one story every day." There are twenty-one Old Testament stories and three stories surrounding Jesus' birth, so it works out quite nicely to cover 24 days of Advent. And since every Old Testament story ends with a reference to Jesus, it's very Christ-focused. Th...

This year, besides our thankful chart , we focused a little bit more on the history of Thanksgiving -- you know, Pilgrims and Indians and all that. It's fun that the kids are getting older and able to understand and remember some of these things! Levi had two lessons on Thanksgiving in his history curriculum , but we went beyond that and used this kindergarden unit on the History of Thanksgiving  as well. (It's kind of hard to see the link on this page; it's in pink, sandwiched between two rows of social media links.) The unit includes books (we got two from the library and didn't worry about the others), links to videos on scholastic.com (which the boys loved watching), craft ideas (which we never got to), and more. I highly recommend it, and will be watching this blog for future units! (Actually, that's not 100% accurate. I get e-mails from freehomeschooldeals.com , and immediately download anything that looks like it might be useful some day. It's been a f...

As I mentioned previously, the boys are really into charts right now. This is almost entirely thanks to Sid the Science Kid on PBS, and I only feel a little bit guilty about that. We're in a rough season right now, and even though I don't love how much television we're watching, I'm glad that at least they're learning about science-y things (albeit from a slightly creepy, annoyingly-giggly crowd of cartoon characters). So while last year we painted and cut out dozens of leaves for our November "thankful" list, and the year before that I even put the leaves on a big tree on the wall , this year went something more like, "oh, shoot, it's a week into November already and I haven't even thought about Thanksgiving. We should probably do something . . . ." As I had the thought, my eyes landed on our animal classification chart , and inspiration struck. Another big sheet of paper, a few markers, and ta-da: our Thankful Chart! Clearly,...

As I sat down to write this post, I thought to myself, "gosh, another childhood favorite. I wonder why I'm using so many of my own books this year." And then it hit me: getting to the library with all of the children, without ruining any naps, requires a mid-size miracle. So it is that we pulled another fun one off the shelf this week: The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash  by Trinka Hakes Noble. Craft:  snakes, of course! ( Idea here .) Paper bag, paint, foam cut into triangles, glue, and the ever-present googly eyes. Silas wanted in on the painting action this time. These boys are serious about their gluing. (Never mind the weird lighting. It was not the middle of the night, honest.) Snakes! Science:  I got several library books on snakes -- hold up. Didn't I say above that we never get to the library? It's mostly true. But my favorite local library branch is open on Sundays, so once a month or so I sneak off by myself in the middle of ...

Last week we re-visited another old favorite, Corduroy  by Don Freeman. I'm pretty sure the copy we have was mine as a child. We covered bears a little bit during our berry month over the summer, but there is no shortage of bear stories and activities in the world! Levi reading the story to his brothers. Food :  teddy bear toast  with banana and blueberries. Cute and easy! We also made these  peanut butter button cookies . It might interest you to know that the holes in Corduroy's button are only pictured on one  page in the entire book: at the end, when Lisa is sewing his new button on. (It might also interest you to know that I spell "Corduroy" wrong first every single time.) Even though it's a two-hole button, we decided it would be okay to make both two- and four-hole button cookies. Poking holes in the cookie dough with a straw.  Silas joined in the "flattening" (er, smashing) of the balls of dough. Unflattering pictu...

We sing O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing quite frequently at my church. It's one of those in which the words fly by so quickly that I don't often stop to consider them, but over the past several months I've been struck repeatedly by this verse: He breaks the power of canceled sin He sets the prisoner free His blood can make the foulest clean His blood availed for me ~Charles Wesley It's funny (or not, really) how having small children can turn the most patient person into screaming madwoman. (Not that I was ever the most patient person, and I'd like to think I haven't quite reached "screaming madwoman.") Confession over losing my temper (largely to one of my children in particular) has become a near-daily occurrence around here, but even with repeated repentance, I'm still struggling. So I try, in what little brain I have left for meditating on higher things, to let those words sink in: I am not a prisoner to my temper, or to my impatienc...

This week we re-visited an old favorite, Caps for Sale . I had corresponding activities tucked away from both ABC Jesus Loves Me and Before Five in a Row . Levi's monkey drawing . Are you familiar with this book? A peddler stacks caps on his head and walks around town trying to sell his wares; Silas loves to fill in his call: "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!" One day nobody is buying, so he walks into the country and takes a long nap under a tree. When he wakes up, all of his caps are gone: monkeys in the tree above have stolen them all! There follows a delightful "monkey see, monkey do" sequence, which Silas especially loves to mimic. In the end, the peddler is so angry he takes off his remaining cap and throws it to the ground. All of the monkeys follow suit, and he gets his caps back. The whole story is just perfect for acting out, from wearing hats to good posture (to keep hats from falling off) to shaking fingers at the monkeys. Pi...