(And All My) Work Be Praise

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...

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!...

Despite my last post on crayon etchings , art is not a subject we deliberately cover often. In the fall/winter of 2014, when we studied animals, Levi and Owen practiced drawing animals Ed Emberley-style , and all four of the boys draw and color every day of their own volition, but that's pretty much it. Now that we've moved to Minnesota, we've become dear friends with a young couple at church. Silas and Angelina took to each other in a special way from the very beginning, not a small matter for an introverted three-year-old. She sits with us in church (and her husband, too, when he doesn't have to work), making my job of training children to sit in the pew while Daddy's preaching much, MUCH easier. Her sermon notes are works of art, and Owen especially loves to copy her drawings. Twice now Angelina has spontaneously asked to bring over art supplies and do an activity with the kids, and we are thrilled to have her! Silas is currently obsessed with drum sets, so f...

Some of you know how obsessed I am with gathering free homeschooling resources. On our desktop computer, I have an intricate system of files, separated by subject and grade level (and anything else that helps me find things). The vast majority of my digital stash has come directly from the daily email sent out by Free Homeschool Deals . The owner of the site is meticulous about publicizing free resources, free samples, free promotional materials . . . you get the idea. Any time something looks like I would ever even remotely  consider using it, I download it and file it. Copywork (cursive and manuscript) on holidays, hymns, Bible verses, historical speeches. Templates for reports on biographies, mammals, constellations. Unit studies on plants, blood cells, ancient Egypt. Preschool and kindergarden packets full of tracing, cutting, matching, do-a-dot marker work in any theme your heart could desire. Letter-of-the-week activity bundles. Printable planners in various colors and styl...

My grandma loves cardinals, so when I saw this idea for handprint red birds  ( also here , a little less cartoon-y) come across my Pinterest feed, I knew I wanted to do something similar for her some day. I thought about it at Christmas time, but we were busy making these handprint canvases for my parents and my in-laws and didn't end up seeing my grandma in December anyway. Grandma turns ninety on Saturday, and my dad and aunt are throwing her a party: the perfect opportunity to make and give this gift! I don't have pictures of the process (taking pictures while painting children's hands is never a good idea), but it was very simple. The canvases are 8x10 from Michael's; the paint is just plain old tempera paint. I did the handprints first and then added the other details later, all in tempera paint except for the names, for which I used a felt-tip pen. I think they make a cute little set, if I do say so myself!

Owen asks me nearly every day if we can do a craft of some sort. I sort of got away from "preschool" activities this year, but if I am to honor my artistic four-year-old's interests, I need to plan these more frequently!  Over Christmas vacation, Levi was reading the Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark , so Owen logically asked for a dinosaur craft. A little Pinterest-searching later, we ended up with these cute guys , made from a cereal box, two toilet paper rolls, and some green paint. (There is a template to cut out the dino bodies in that link.) This week, I let Owen browse my "crafting for kids" Pinterest board and choose something (within the very necessary limits that we have the materials on hand). He chose these paper plate rainbows  and we set to painting! I used random objects from the kitchen to draw concentric circles on the plate in pencil. Later, Levi had me cut his in half so that it was the shape of a rainbow, ...

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...

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...

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 ...