(And All My) Work Be Praise

Most years, we do some sort of gratitude-collecting project during the month of November. (See old ones 2012 ,  2013 ,  2014 ) I'm never sure whether to post pictures at the beginning of the month, so you can use the idea if you like, or at the end, when we've completed the project. For now, this is the ten minutes I have to write out a quick post, so this is when it's happening. :) Thanks to the ABC Jesus Loves Me five-year curriculum , we're doing an Alphabet of Thankfulness this year. Silas is an early reader and Toby is loving phonetic sounds, so it's a good time in our family to do a letter-based project. A few minutes with some brown construction paper and a Sharpie, and we have this on the wall in our dining room: I thought the plain paper was boring, so one afternoon while Calvin napped unusually long, I grabbed a leaf from the front yard and traced around it with an orange marker all over the paper. It's faint, but the pattern makes me happy. I...

"Morning Time" (or circle time, or table time, or what-have-you) seems to be all the rage among homeschooling families right now. I've probably seen a dozen blog posts on the topic, each with her own master plan of what subjects to cover at the start of each school day. It probably comes as no surprise that my current routine is very simple. After all, I can only hold them at the breakfast table for so long, at their current ages! On our best days -- probably three times a week, if we don't have anything extra going on -- our list looks like this: 1. Bible story, with optional Bible song. This is most often taken from the ABC Jesus Loves Me two-year-old curriculum . I read from a variety of sources (a different one each day, when I can) -- first the Beginner's Bible , but sometimes from the "real" Bible, or the Jesus Storybook Bible , or a storybook of parables we have if one of them happens to correspond. Depending on how full little mouths are (I ...

As I mentioned a few weeks ago , I'm trying to pick up on some kindergarden-ish things I might have missed with Owen (5.75) using the ABC Jesus Loves Me 5-year curriculum . Over the past month, we've done a week-at-a-time overview of the four seasons: simple information like what months are in each season, what the weather's like, what holidays are included, and which family birthdays fall at that time. To go along with this, Owen read through the Poppleton series by Cynthia Rylant , even though they're a bit under his reading level (and even though there is no Poppleton in Summer).  It also gave me an opportunity to do a special craft with just him once a week. All of my kids like to do projects, but Owen is particularly artsy, and it was nice to spend a few brief minutes connecting with him over this each week. The first week, I painted his arm and hand brown, and we made four hand/armprints on four pieces of paper. Each one eventually became a tree, decorated fo...

In following the ABC Jesus Loves Me 4-year-old curriculum , I've been doing some activities to introduce Silas to the different coins. For reasons unbeknownst to myself, he recognizes and weirdly loves nickels, but the rest are new. First we did some coin rubbing with crayons. He struggled a little bit at first to hold the crayon on its side, but as you can see in the picture below, we eventually got a good outline to show up.  The following week, as a fine-motor activity, I buried some coins in balls of playdough. The boys (Owen joined in this activity) had dig them out without using their thumbs. It's great for strengthening other muscles of the hand, which in turn helps with handwriting (or, in Silas's case, violin bow-hold). I didn't take any pictures, but here's a token "we play with playdough in our jammies" photo just for fun (messy kitchen counter and everything). Last week, we got a litttle more specific and sorted a pile of co...

It's been four years now since I did a unit on creation with my kiddos, and it's fourth child's turn to do some preschool crafting! You can see Levi's day-of-creation crafts from four years ago here . His are definitely more involved than Toby's -- such is life with four kids instead of two -- but we did change things up a bit this time around. DAYS ONE and TWO Day one: Toby's first experience with a glue stick (black paper to white). Not terribly successful (think, half a glue stick smashed onto the paper . . . ).  Day two: The picture doesn't look like much, but he colored the clouds and water with chalk. I was hoping it would have a more dramatic effect on paper, but it didn't. Truth be told, I had intended to use cotton balls for clouds, but we didn't have any, and I didn't make it to the store before week's end. Keepin' it real. Day two is Toby's favorite to say out loud: "God separated the clouds and the water!...

As I've mentioned dozens of times, but some of you (I've met new friends since last year!) probably don't know, I'm a big fan of the ABC Jesus Loves Me preschool curriculum. You can buy workbooks, but I never have; the weekly lesson plans are all available for free online. The author, Heidi, now has curricula available for one-year-olds (though I'm skeptical of the point) through five-year-olds (which can be supplemented to be kindergarden, depending on your state's requirements). She has suggested activities for a 36-week academic year, including Bible stories, Bible songs, character development, finger plays, nursery rhymes, classic children's books, shapes, colors, numbers, letters, pre-writing skills, letter and number formation, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, literacy, social sciences, self-care . . . seriously, everything. I've never done it all! We tend to be a bit ahead of the game in academics in my house, but I would honestly NEVER thi...

It's been over a year since I blogged last, and I really don't expect to have time to start up in earnest again any time soon. Even still, I couldn't resist the opportunity to show some comparison pictures between my first toddlers and my current toddlers. I'm using ABC Jesus Loves Me  again, a combination of the two-, four-, and five-year-old curricula (more on that later). One of my favorite activities from the two-year curriculum is using dried spaghetti to show the shape "line." I mean, really, who thinks to teach "line" when you're doing shapes? Not me. Above: Silas at 2.5, in January of 2015. Halfway through, we turn the paper sideways, so as to get a feel for horizontal and vertical lines. Below: Toby at 2.5, in June 2016. That week, he wore his construction hat all day, every day. Painting on a vertical surface is a great way to strengthen little hands!  I love that you can see the smooth curve of chubby toddler c...

I have been trying for three weeks to get Silas to do this rectangle activity. Usually the glue stick is one of those coveted items that gets him excited about a craft, but he is dead set against it. So, in the name of authenticity, I'm going to stop hoping the craft will happen and just show you real life instead! The goal: glue some black rectangles onto a larger rectangle. (Silas is standing next to me right now shouting, "I DIDN'T glue, Mommy! I didn't!") I even flipped the paper over and tried to get him to glue anything anywhere. No dice. Today, he chose to eat leftover oatmeal instead. I don't even know how his bowl got from the counter to the little table. He did, however, spend time each day I tried putting the cap on the glue and taking it off again, which is a great fine motor skill. And right this second, he's in the kitchen picking up all of the black rectangles he threw all over the floor in his rage, so we're p...

We're doing a little unit on Chinese New Year this week. One page of this printable pack  was a one-to-one-correspondence activity, matching up something (stickers were suggested, but we used the yellow dot marker) with each gold coin.  I fully expected Silas to dot willy-nilly all over the page, but he actually took great care in matching up the marker with the coin. Success!

This morning I stood gazing into the craft section of my big den closet, trying to find something unusual for Silas to practice green squares with. The glittery, sticky craft foam sheets I've used often before caught my eye, so I grabbed a green sheet and quickly cut out some big and little squares. (Okay, I didn't measure, they probably weren't actually  squares. But close enough for a two-year-old.) First, we sorted them into big and little. I picked up this tray at a dollar store a loooooong time ago, with intent to use it for sorting activities, but this is the first time it's come out of the cupboard. Then I peeled the backing off of the foam and let him stick them all over them ABCJLM square paper . I feel strongly compelled to assure my readers once again that Silas and I spent maybe five minutes at the most at the table for this. He was quite grumpy at the beginning, which is actually why I brought him to the table alone, hoping that some one-on-...

Painting is always a good idea, when you have a long day at home with nothing to break it up. Painting with cars is simply the icing on the cake! (Idea taken from a friend, with the educational benefits superimposed from ABCJLM . Which really just means that a few times I asked Silas if he was making lines.)

At long last, Silas is starting to get interested in doing things. He's only 2-1/2, so it's not like he's behind or anything. My older two were just so engaged in activities by this time that I've been frustrated, not sure how to entertain the toddler all morning long! Finally, two weeks, ago, he asked for a dot marker, and happily sat at the table for nearly half an hour. That was my cue to pull up the ABC Jesus Loves Me two-year-old curriculum and plan a few activities! My days already feel pretty full right now, so we're just doing one shape and color activity (combined) each week. I didn't manage to post last week's, so here are the two we've done so far: Red Circle I cannot overstate how simple I am keeping things. Print the ABCJLM circle page from week one . (Or just draw a circle on a piece of paper. Who's going to care?!) I chose to write the word "RED" in the middle, because Silas knows most of his letters and likes to point ...

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 ...

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...

Drummer Hoff  is as much of a favorite with my sons as it was with my brothers when we were children, which gives it a special place in my heart! It's a simple little book, with classic Ed Emberley illustrations, that shows the progression of loading a cannon to be fired, but there's something magical about shouting "kah-bah-bloom!" and watching the whole illustration turn red on the last page. Each page builds upon the actions of the previous page, so that by the end, you have this: General Border gave the order, Major Scott brought the shot, Captain Bammer brought the rammer, Sergeant Chowder brought the powder, Corporal Farrel brought the barrel, Private Parriage brought the carriage, but Drummer Hoff fired it off. (Yep, I did that from memory.) Silas pointing to Major Scott's shot, back in March. I mentioned  about a month ago that Owen had no concept of rhyming words, so last time we read Drummer Hoff (maybe two weeks ago), I made a huge de...

To go along with our ocean theme, I picked two story books that we already own: Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle, and The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. It's a good thing I did, too, because sickness kept us home from library story time two weeks in a row! Mr. Seahorse  is a strange but true book about father-fish who take care of fish eggs until they hatch. Besides the usual Eric Carle illustrations, every few pages is translucent. "As Mr. Seahorse drifted gently through the sea, he passed right by . . . ." A stonefish hiding behind a rock, for example, and you can just see the stonefish through the rock on the translucent page. I hope I'm describing that adequately. So for an art project, I first had the boys draw pictures of fish: Owen's lion fish, with black and brown stripes just like in the book. Levi's purple flounder. Then, I cut apart a page protector (because who has transparencies around anymore?!) and had them color "ocean pla...