December 15, 2010

So I've been really lazy with taking pictures this month which would be why I haven't had many blog posts recently. Anyways I found this online and thought it was a great little project for me and the mini-Coopers. So I printed it out, we colored it and it came to life!



We had tons of fun with this project because as we cut and colored Mommy told them the story of Mary & Joseph and baby Jesus. Then after we finished everything the girls got to play with the Manger scene and act it out themselves! I can't say that all the pieces still have their heads after a few days of playing, but they got the point of what we were doing and that is what was important!

Feel free to print your own Nativity! It's lots of fun!

Day 25 "The Family Book of Advent"

So this week we were planning to start school back up but we had a leak in the kitchen and have no space to do our school work. So it looks like the girls are going to get another week of vacation!!

So tonight we started our "Family Book of Advent" by Carol Garborg. I got the book at Lifeway Christian book store. I think it was a great buy! Starting December 1st (today) we read 1 story each night up till Christmas day, and there is an activity we can do as well to get the kids excited about Christmas, and keep Jesus as the Reason for the season!

It was SUCH a special night for the girls tonight! We had a picnic dinner in the living room, then they got to eat some Oreo cookies with RED filling. Then we watched the 25 days of Christmas until 8:00pm. We then shut off the Tv and got them all to sit down and I started to whisper "Guess what? It's Coming!!" They repeated it excitedly "IT's COMING!!" Then I read the story about how the people of Israel waited for hundreds of years for the King, the Messiah who would save them!! They waited so long they were bursting inside with excitement! The King would bring Joy, hope, peace light and love to the world. At Christmas we celebrate the coming of the King, the birth of Jesus!

We then talked about how "KING" is another name for Jesus. We cut out stars, wrote the name "KING" on them, colored them and hung them on our tree! As we go through the different days we will learn different names of God/Jesus and add them to our tree! The book says to do a wreath, but since we had to take down all our decorations this year cause the girls kept breaking them we decided to just put them on the tree.




It was an exciting night and I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year and teaching them all about the birth of Christ!!

November 16, 2010: OCTOPUS: "Even the octopus praises the Lord."

Today we started out with our 100 Chart, our Calendar, and then our devotion for the day; which I thought was a good one for the girls since we learned about obedience last week. It talked about how even when no one notices or is looking we should still always be good because God ALWAYS sees. We also talked about how when we are obedient/good, we are doing it for the glory of God, not just for Mom & Dad! (1Corinthians 10:31).

Our Character Quality we are working on for this week is having "deference" not being "RUDE"!
This week we learned that the letter "O" is for Otter, Olive, Ostridge, Ox, and October!

We also caught up on a few worksheets from last week we missed since we only had 2 days of school. A~ cut out these words, sounded them out, read them, then glued them to the correct picture. We also did our blend ladder today and A~ is doing fantastic! She read a few new words today like "Dad" & "Add"!!



Then we learned how amazing the "Octopus" is! We learned they had 8 arms, and 3 hearts, they also have suction cups on their arms and when they touch something they also taste it! We also decided that there is no way we could EVER make a REAL octopus, because they are so amazing! Even the Octopus praises the Lord by showing people how amazing God is that he could make something so awesome!! So we did our best to draw our own octopus by tracing our hands and turning them upside down. A~ added a few arms because she didn't have enough fingers to give hers 8 arms! It was a great day of school!!

November 10, 2010: DINOSAURS-"Big and small God made them all"

We started off today with Math. We added the number 28 to our 100 chart. E~ likes to help count the sticks in the jar after the girls do it! She already can count to 5, just from following along with us!!

While A~ worked on her handwriting, S~ and mommy went over her ABC's. She is doing so much better, she went from only knowing 12 letters at the beginning of the year to now knowing 20! So to work on the other 6 that she hasn't gotten down yet, mommy pulled out the Word Whammer. I lined up the 6 letters and asked her to find the letter K...she would point to the one she thought it was and then checked herself by putting it in the Word Whammer. We did this several times with each letter.

Then S~ worked on tracing her name on a piece of paper.


While we were doing our busy work today, baby E~ was so patient waiting for us, so we sang a few of her favorite songs along with some others that we used to learn our words. We started with our ABC's, then our Sound song "A-a-apple, B-b-butterfly, C-c-Cow, D-d-Dinosaur etc..."(to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star) Then we did our Short Vowel Song (Mary had a little lamb tune) "I hear A in CAT & MAN, CAT & MAN, CAT & MAN, I hear A in CAT & MAN, A, A, A." The girls loved it!

Then it was "Dinosaur" Time!! Last night when I was out at Target I found some dinosaurs in the dollar bin and grabbed some. The girls were SO excited when I showed them to them. I took out one at a time and we named that dinosaur. Then we also talked about the movie "Land before time" that they watched yesterday and named the dinosaurs according to the names in the movie, "Little foot, Sharp tooth, Sarah, Petree & Spike"

Then we picked out a dinosaur from the ones on the table, and made our badge with our memory verse on it "BIG and Small God made them All!" And the girls drew a dinosaur on their page. We had a great time!!

November 9, 2010: DINOSAURS-"Big or small God made them all"

Today we learned about the letter "D" for "Duck, Doll, Drum, Door, and Doll". We did our "D" books, colored and cut them out and stapled them together. We also learned "D" is for Dinosaur!!

We looked at pictures of different types of Dinosaurs today. We learned the T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Terodactyl, and the Velociraptor.

Then we read the book "What really happened to the Dinosaurs." It taught us that God created the dinosaurs the same day he created all the other animals on the earth. We learned that there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark, and that the rest of the dinosaurs that didn't make it onto the ark drowned in the great flood. Their bodies were pushed into the earth by all the water and that is why it appears to scientists that they were older than they really were. We learned the word "Dinosaur" means "terrible lizard", and that they died off after the flood because the earth had changed so much. While we were reading anytime the girls saw a dinosaur that we learned a name for they yelled it out! They had a blast!!

Then the girls picked their favorite dinosaur from the pictures S~ chose the Velociraptor and A~ chose the T-Rex. Then we got out some play dough and made our own dinosaurs. We had so much fun!

November 2, 2010: US- "God made us wonderful" (5 senses)

Today only A~ did school. Everyone else was pretty fussy so they just colored at the other end of the table. Not many pictures today mostly I worked with A~ on her Reading lesson.


This is her word list for this week, she did really well she read all of them without my help.

And then we worked on her blending ladder worksheet.

November 1, 2010: US- "God made us wonderful" (5 senses)

Today we talked about our 5 senses again. A~ is doing really great at remembering all 5 of them! We read the book "My 5 Senses" and the girls just loved it!

Then we did our badge with our verse on it that we memorized "God made US wonderful". As you can see A~ drew a photo of herself on her badge!

We did some math with our "number cup" and worksheet. A~ drew a number from the cup and whatever number she drew is how many apples she drew on her sheet.

Then we took the textured letters and traced them with our fingers so we can learn to write them correctly!


Then we played their favorite game..."Touch the letter that starts the word....."

October 26, 2010: US- "God made us wonderful" (5 senses)

Today we learned the letter "U" for US, UNDER, UP, UMBRELLA, etc....and we colored and made our "U" books.



Then A- practiced and reviewed writing all the letters we've learned so far this year! I can't believe we are entering our 9th week of school already! Then mommy and S- worked on recognizing her letters. We are down to 7 that she still hasn't been able to get yet but I have a feeling she will get them down soon!



This week we are learning about our 5 senses. Today we learned about our hands and all about "touch." We learned that we have bones in our hands as well as muscles, and the muscles help us to move our hands.



Then we learned that we have 27 bones in each hand. We used our photo of the hand to help us count the bones.



Then we learned the names of our fingers, "index, middle, ring, little, and thumb"





We learned that "nerve endings" at the end of our fingers are what help us to feel things. So we then took a few things and put them in a pillow case and they got to feel them with their hands without looking and guess what was in the case. Then we put a thick sock on their hand and they tried it again and said "I can't feel anything!" This was great for explaining the importance of nerve endings and what they do, and that "God made us wonderful!"

We also learned our character quality for this week, "generous." Being generous is when we realize that everything we have is God's and we use it for his purpose, weather it's to bless someone else, or share a toy, or give up a toy for someone who might not have one. We will be trying to learn this quality all week!

October 19, 2010: TURTLE-"I don't quit; I persevere!"

We had a couple special guests today during school! We had baby S- who was so much fun! She was so sweet and we had such a great time with her today! She loved reading books with us and singing her ABC's, she would get so excited to sing the ABC's with us! She also LOVED to color!





We also had a little visit from our favorite old friend from Pre-school last year "TACO"!!!! Taco read us a story "The hare and the tortoise."




Then we made our own puppets! I think they all ended up being a "HARE" instead of a tortoise, but they turned out great! Later after the glue dries we will act out the story with our puppets.



We also counted 20 days of school today (minus the first 10 days we learned about creation). We added 1+1,1+2,1+3...all the way up to 1+10. Then we counted to 20 by 10's. It wasn't a lot of counting but they got it!




We also had our reading lesson today. Starting with this lesson A- has started to learn to read/sound out small words. We use what they call a blending ladder, similar to what we did yesterday but today, we used our textured letters and sounded them out one letter at a time then put them all together! She did Awesome! Today she read the words "sam, san, sat"



Then we did the cut and paste worksheet where she told me the word and pasted the girls name under the girl and the boys name under the boy. We had a great productive day!