Homeschooling Week #5

This week is all about Harold & The Purple Crayon. I struggled to integrate the Bible lesson this week, so I decided to do it separately.  

We also focused a lot on color and imagination this week as part of our study.

This week is a "light" week. We spent some time reviewing what we learned about frogs and The Frog Prince last week. I was pleasantly surprised by how much he can recall.

Reading:
We read the book and talked about it. Noah especially liked the part about the dragon in the book.  
We watched a DVD version of the book that involved someone reading the book and watching as the art work came to life on screen.

Colors:
Nana taught Noah a song about the color purple that sounds a bit like a cheer. It's very cute, but I don't know all the words. 
Noah sings "P-U-R-P-L-E! Purple! Purple! Purple!" so that's all I know.

We played a seek and find game with various purple objects. The instructions I used were: "Find something purple." Noah wasn't very successful as we are just starting to learn about colors, but it was a great way to get the discussion started.

Art:
We painted with purple finger paint. Check out our art! (Image to the right.)



Bible Study:
This week we are talking about the Tower of Babel.  We will read the story in Noah's Bible picture book first. Then, we will watch a cute kids video read-along version from JC Play Zone. You can check it out here if you're interested.

We will focus on learning that God wants us to work together this week.

-Crazy Earth Mama

Homeschooling Week #4

This week is all about frogs! 

Our city has a frog themed festival to celebrate Spring every year at this time, so I have coordinated our lessons for the week to take full advantage of all the great free activities for children this week.

Noah will be reading The Frog Prince by Kathy Jo Wargin and focusing on frogs all week.

Reading:

• After reading the fairy tale, we will talk about the story and what it means. 
• This week we will begin discussing our opinions about things by saying whether we liked the story or not and talking about our favorite or least favroite parts of the story.
• We will participate in our local preschool literacy promotion program, Leap Into Literacy this week, where we can hear stories and earn books with other kids his age.

Music:

• Noah has participated in Kindermusik! classes before and really enjoys them. I like that he gets to experiment with different musical instruments and learn about music while playing, dancing, and singing. Our community will be hosting a Kindermusik! dance class in the park where kids his age can learn about dance and rhythm. It's not frog related but it will be a great fun learning opportunity.  If you want to learn more about Kindermusik!, check out their website: http://kindermusik.com

Froggy Picnic:

• Picnic snacks at the park during the Kindermusik! event.
• I found some great frog themed healthy snacks that Noah can participate in making and then enjoy eating! Click on the "healthy snacks" link above to find out how to make peanut butter apple frogs with your kiddos.

Science:

• The Disappearing Frog Project event sponsored by our local Arts Council.
• The project is an interactive art & science exhibit that will teach us about decline of frogs and ways we can protect our environment.  
• There will be lectures about frogs for children, art from local artists, a frog puppet show, and a chance for children to create their own frog art.

Math:

• This week we will be learning a frog counting song with puppets! Click here to get the lyrics & puppets for your own little one.
• We will also be playing a counting game with a Lily Pad Hop! I got the idea from Toddler Approved.  It involves making lily pads and numbering them 1 through 5, check out the link to see just how it's done.
• As an added bonus, we can practice hopping and "ribbits" during our lily pad game (Noah just loves pretending to be a frog!)

-The Crazy Earth Mama

Homeschooling Week #3

From Head to Toe by Eric Carle is our focus for this week!

Reading:
We will read Eric Carle's book as well as the story of creation in our toddler Bible.  
We will talk about all of the animals and how God made the animals and all the world.

Field Trip:
We will be visiting the local county museum to see the animal exhibits and talk about how the animals would have moved and what they might have sounded like.  
We don't have a zoo nearby, so seeing the animal exhibits at the museum is as close as we can get during the week.

Exploring Nature:
In true Charlotte Mason fashion, we will take a nature walk through our neighborhood and point out all the things God made. I'm giving Noah a plastic bag to save all the things he finds on his nature walk. Everything in the bag will be something God has made.I think it will be a great interactive lesson!


Art:
We will practice making our own versions of the animals in the book for craft time. Maybe I can even get him to use his hand print or foot print this time!

Music:
Aside from the wonderful music we will make while acting out the fun pages in Carle's book, we will learn a preschool song to go with our Bible story lesson.

God Made Me Lyrics:

From my head down to my toes, God made me

From my head down to my toes, God made me

From my head down to my toes, and my eyes and ears and nose

From my head down to my toes, God made me

^^ practice touching body parts as we say them in the song. This will make the song fun and interactive, help him remember the words, and practice labeling body parts.

Pictures to come!

-The Crazy Earth Mama

Homeschooling Week #2

This week is all about The Emperor's New Clothes.

I always try to relate our fairy tales back to bible lessons. We are practicing the habits of attention, truthfulness, and obedience right now. 

I really like The Emperor's New Clothes because I kept thinking of different bible lessons that would go well with the book. Here are the two I chose to focus on:

1. God made me special!

Job 33:4 "For the spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the almighty gives me life."

We are special because God made us, not because of anything we do or wear, not because of how we look.  In the book. the emperor wants new clothes because he believes he needs a new outfit for everything. His outfits make him special, he thinks. We know that it isn't our clothes that make us special - it's our Lord who made us special when he created us in His image. 

2. God wants me to tell the truth.

This is a new lesson for Noah. We haven't really focused on telling the truth much in the past. However, he's starting to learn the difference between reality and make-believe. So, I think it's a good time for the lesson. 

The bible verse I'm using is Ephesians 4:15 "Love should always make us tell the truth. Then we will grow in every way and be more like Christ, the head."

The people in the story do not tell the truth to the emperor. They are afraid to tell him that they cannot see his clothes, so they lie. In the end, someone does tell him the truth. The person who tells the truth really loves the emperor and, in the end, that person is the hero of the story because he told the truth. Telling the truth is always the right thing to do.

Activities for this week:

We are playing dress up! Noah loves to play dress up with my clothes. He likes to put on my shirts and wear my shoes. He likes to dress up in his daddy's clothes too. This week, we will pretend to be the emperor by dressing up and walking down the red carpet (our hallway happens to have red carpet).

We are also going to spend some time playing with paper dolls. I found some very cute paper dolls that can be printed for free over at Royal Baloo. I've included the link so you can get these great 4 Seasons paper dolls too.  This should also provide a great lead into talking about appropriate clothing for the weather (since someone doesn't want to wear a coat when it's cold or shoes when we go outside).
         http://royalbaloo.com/downloads3/seasons-paper-dolls

I found a super cute Muppet's version of the Emperor's New Clothes that we can watch on You Tube. I don't often use movies for teaching, but I think a short film like this every once in a while is new and fun. I plan to          try having a conversation about the differences between the book and the film. I'll let you know how that goes. 
             " The Muppets - The Emperor's New Clothes" by XOtericate 

-The Crazy Earth Mama