Scripture: Psalm 133:1
Craft: red, white, and blue U (with tissue paper)
Food: star sugar cookies with red and blue decor
Gross motor: American flag hunt (walk through the neighborhood)
Resources: Oopsey Daisey Mommy School
The weeks surrounding Memorial Day seemed like a fitting time to do a USA week. Without knowing my plans, my mom brought Levi a big state puzzle on her most recent visit! He and Owen completed it on two different occasions (mostly Levi, but Owen did get more pieces in on their second go-round).
Levi wanted to take a picture of the puzzle . . .
. . . and then Owen wanted to take a picture of Levi.
Our craft was, for once, entirely out of my own head and not from Pinterest or a blog! That, of course, explains why it's so simple. :) I've been emphasizing beginning consonant sounds for Owen a lot, just naturally within our daily conversation and book-reading, so I took the opportunity reinforce "r" for red and "b" for blue. It should be obvious from the picture, but I drew a U on cardstock, drew wide stripes on it with a black marker, and then wrote R or B in some of the stripes to make somewhat of a flag. In hindsight, I should've used pencil for the letters, because the marker was still visible through the tissue paper (cut into squares and glued on). No finished pictures, but you get the idea.
Still working on successful glue-bottle technique.
The Mommy School packet included the suggestion of going on a neighborhood flag hunt. We printed off the flag graph (really just a page with twelve flags on it) and set out, stopping to color in a flag each time we saw one. We ended up seeing exactly twelve! Levi and Owen took turns coloring in the flags, and were surprisingly content to let the other have his turn. Hooray for unexpected cooperation.
Levi coloring in the second flag.
Oh, this kid. Flip flops, cargo jeans, Mr. Messy t-shirt, bucket hat . . .
"Look how high the grass is! They need to mow!"
We have a small state puzzle that I picked up from the dollar store for Levi's quiet time bins (which he almost never uses). Levi has completed it several times on his own, but on this particular day, with Owen's help, they only did about a third of it before losing interest.
Also pictured: the random book Owen picked up at the library,
Let's Go Nuts: Seeds We Eat. A very oddly pleasing book.
We had a picnic scheduled with some friends for Memorial Day evening, so in the morning, we rolled out star-shaped sugar cookies. Many thanks to my mother-in-law for the random of bag of sugar cookie mix she donated to my cupboard, and to my sweet friend Jenny for the homemade boy-sized aprons.
Later in the morning, we drove up to a community north of us for a Memorial Day parade. We watched the same one last year, and my sound-sensitive boys sobbed through most of it. This year, Levi and Owen kept their distance (and their hands over their ears), but they watched the whole thing and there were no tears. Small victories!
After lunch (and while Silas the Destroyer was napping), we decorated the star cookies.
This, of course, required a taste test . . . just to be sure!
How utterly patriotic is this picture.
Being careful not to spill the sprinkles.
Memorial Day passed, but we still had a full week ahead of us with no planned activities. One morning, in a flash of desperation inspiration, I covered the dining room table in white paper, traced a few stars in one corner, and set them to coloring a big American flag. It would have been REALLY awesome if I had remembered about the butcher paper I have in the basement for such a time as this, instead of taping down eight billion pieces of cheap printer paper. ~rolls eyes at self~
For "unity," we mostly talked about the idea that many things can work together as one: just like 50 states can work together as one country, so the six members of our household can work together as one family . . . and so two certain biggest brothers can work together to complete tasks or play games! (I didn't think of it until later, but we have a great book by Donald Crews that would've been perfect for this concept: More Than One. Two is a pair, five is a team, etc.) As often as possible, I quoted our verse for the week: How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! Christian brothers, sure, but blood-related brothers, too. :)
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