Sun, Moon, and Stars - Week 1

 It's a new day of Creation and a new unit: Sun, Moon, and Stars.

 Jenny started us off by teaching the kids a few facts about the planets.

Caedon read about this day in Creation from Genesis.

Then we all worked on making books or mobiles about the planets.

The kids cut, colored, and glued their planets to construction paper. This took a lot more time than we expected. We had to take some of the work home. We did finish our mobile, but I never got a picture of it. Some of the kids chose to make books out of theirs.

We LOVE to Party

 The end of our land unit happen to fall on Valentine's Day, so we decided to use that day for a Valentine's Party. 

Cheri brought a book about sharing to read to the kids.

Then we used stickers, glue, and lots of glittery things to made Valentine's Day bags to store our cards.

We had a game where you load a straw with a q-tip and try to blow it out into a bowl. 

Then we lined up the bags and everyone passed out their cards.

We decided to make this party a little special and do lunch together. Everyone made their own heart pizza to enjoy. 

There was a lot of pink that day! 

Land - Week 4

Cheri took us outside to a park for this week's lesson. It was a bit chilly and a bit windy, but nice to be out in the sun. She talked to the kids about different types of land formations and had them make the shapes with their hands and bodies. They learned about mountains, plateaus, islands, peninsulas, caves, and more.

We tried to get Jack to get in the cave, but he wouldn't do it. Caedon volunteered.

The kids broke up into teams and were sent on an assignment: run out to the other side of the field, find a picture of a specific land form, and bring back a tile from the bucket next to it. Cheri likes to make the run. YEAH!! 

After a couple of laps of doing that, each team were given a color of tile to take back to the buckets, and were then to retrieve the bucket and card. Lots of exercise today. Cheri then discussed each picture with the kids to make sure they knew which was which.

Land - Week 3

 

Continuing our study of land this week, Wendy focused on perspective and

the different parts of landscape art (foreground, middle ground and background)

 

 

 

 

 

Wendy using her hands to show how things that are in the foreground appear larger even if they are really the same size.

 

 

Using their thumbs the kids tried to cover three spools of thread as they looked at them with one eye closed. They discovered they couldn't cover the one in the foreground. They were able to cover a little more of the spool in the middle ground and finally their thumb was able to make the spool in the background completely "disappear".

 

 

 

 

 

Wendy taught us how to break up our page into foreground, middle ground and background with a giant "Z".  

 

 

 

The kids used the chalk to color their papers and then added in a variety of sizes

 (small, medium and large) to the foreground, middle ground and background.

 

 

Artists' hard at work.

 

 

Some of the finished artwork.

Land - week 2

Brandy gave the kids a lesson this week all about the earth, it's layers, mountains, and earthquakes. 

She had a fabulous book with lots of earth facts, pictures, and even pop ups. We learned different ways mountains are formed. 

She spent most of the time talking about earthquakes. This is a website that shows what earthquakes are happening minute by minute. There's a lot going on in Alaska.

She told them about the Richter scale and how it measures the size of the earthquakes. 

Then, she had a earthquake simulator where block houses experienced real earthquakes. The kids are watching to see which structure will stand the best.

The kids got to build their own structures, too. Whose will be able to withstand the earthquake? 

We had a homemade seismograph that showed us how big our earthquakes were.

And don't forget about those under water earthquakes. What happens when we have a typhoon? 

Julie had a rabbit show coming up, so she brought her rabbit along to get some practice... 

The kids got to ask questions and pet it, too.

Land - Week 1

 ^"And God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.' And it was so.  God called the dry ground 'land,'..."

It's the first week of day 3 of our Creation Unit. Jenny helped the kids make terrariums out of coke bottles. First we sang our water cycle song.... (tune of She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain")

Then we filled the bottoms of our coke bottles with rocks and soil.

The kids got to pick from a few flower seeds to plant in their terrariums. And then we added water.

Even the babies got to do some. Wait! What babies?? They're getting too big to call them that, now. 

We had our Creation coloring sheets to color. 

And then a fun snack of dirt and worms.... 

Some of them weren't so sure about eating dirt, but it taste yummy when it's made from oreos and chocolate pudding.

This is one of our terrariums after about a week. It worked!!

Konnor had a SUPER lose tooth. After several tries, I got a piece of floss wrapped around it. He told me that he didn't want me to pull it, so I told him I'd just get the floss back off. Well, I lied. I yanked it instead. It came out SOOO easy. He was super pumped to have that sucker out of there. You can even see the adult tooth coming in. 

La la la la....

This was a huge project us mommas got ourselves into, but it turned out way better than we imagined. We spent weeks learning lines, music, and motions. And the kids, too - ha ha. 

One of the local churches graciously let us use one of their facilities to host this musical extravaganza. We invited all the kids' families to come watch. I think the grandmas and grandpas truly enjoyed seeing their babies sing their hearts out.

Our musical had 5 songs that we learned with lines in between each one. Each child got to have a few spoken lines. We had "grumpy" characters and thankful ones to teach them the meaning of Thanksgiving. That's me on the ivories accompanying them.

We had a guest co op join us for our musical, too. This pretend preschool group performed one song all by themselves and then they joined us again for the last one. They were all SOOOOO cute!! They are all about the same age as Ben, so he helped them out.

Each family brought a few dishes and after our musical, we had a delicious pot luck lunch.

We decorated the tables with Mayflowers, pine cone turkeys, some crayons, and coloring sheets.

I know what this guy was thankful for!!