Creation - Day 3

I think today is a good day because my amazing husband has been home for the weekend.

I'm feeling blessed this morning and confident in my choice to "school" my girls at home.

Our day started beautifully.  Adelyn and I had been reading books in the swing in the garden for over and hour and Charlotte finally woke up around 8am.  So after she ate her oatmeal, we began.

We decided to work outside and with my new "tote" it was easy to grab everything and move to our patio,  which was incredible this morning <3

As the girls colored and cut their 3, I read from our new Bible, which we are really loving!

While the girls pasted their 3 into their books, we learned our song.

Adelyn, using her new purple glue stick

 Adelyn was particularly wiggly this morning and while Charlotte did some work, Adelyn got pushed on the swing.  She had a sang her Day 3 song and was happy - so I was happy (after all, she's 3!).

Charlotte copying the dictation "God made plants"

Adelyn does a little of her own "writing" by rainbowing 3 with sidewalk chalk.

Sidewalk chalk is awesome for 2-3 year olds because it takes a fine motor skill and makes it a little more gross motor.

Photo credit: Adelyn Grace

Of course, Charlotte couldn't be left out :)

After our writing, everyone drew a picture of Day 3.

This cool thing happened.  

I took the above picture because I thought Charlotte was finished with her picture.

Then, I saw her turn back to the previous pages in her book.

Afterward, she drew clouds and water on her picture, then light and dark.

I asked her why she did it and she told me it was day 3, so everything from day 1 and 2 were there too.

Maybe that doesn't sound cool to you.  

However, that my child understood that God's creation was a cumulative sort of thing without my prompting was pretty awesome as far as this Mommy can see!

So, this is the truly finished picture :)

We then moved to some Math-y sort of stuff!

We put 3 grapes on our ten-frames and counted how many empty spaces there were.  

Then, we wrote a number sentence to go with the way Charlotte arranged hers.

Charlotte then copied my number sentence and tried "saying it" herself.

Connecting a number sentence to a concrete tool is pretty difficult stuff, but super important!

Then, we arranged our grapes every way possible and wrote different number sentences.

Charlotte realized that 2+1 and 1+2 were "kind of the same, but a little different"

We called them turn-around-facts and talked about how they both equalled 3.

We moved from ten-frames to our God-given ten-frame (our fingers) and showed 3 different ways!

This one was our favorite!

We even used both hands to show that 1+2 was the same as 2+1

Then, we headed to Hudson Gardens to explore tons of plants that God made on Day 3, and meet up with some other homeschoolers.

After naps, we made a craft for Day 3!

We made a flower out of materials that God made on Day 3.

I just used a pencil to outline a flower and we used glue in one section at a time with different materials.  The inside was filled with dirt because God made land.

Then we used flower petals, flower seeds, (bird) seed, grass, pine needles & cones.

As I picked flowers, we talked about the parts of a flower (stem, root, leaf, petal, seed)

This was the first time that the girls discovered that there are seeds in the center of flowers.  They were pretty stoked about it and we used those flower seeds as one of our sections!

All done!

Charlotte's finished craft -up close!

After our flower craft, we used the mess on the table to make bracelets.

I stole this idea from our children's museum!

Turn masking tape inside out and put the sticky side out and wrap around your wrist to make a bracelet.

Then, sprinkle all of the things God made on Day 3 on your bracelet.  

They were our leftovers, so it was super-easy!

Creation - Day 2

Yesterday, Charlotte bugged me nonstop about doing "Day 2".

I think she enjoyed the first day of our unit, which is awesome :)

However, I know that brain input takes awhile to fully download at this age, and giving at least one day between any big "lesson" is important to me to be sure we are not only talking about ideas and doing fun crafts, but the girls are retaining information about God's creation of the world!

Reminder: Many ideas came from this blog:

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/days-of-creation/ 

They colored while I read from Genesis about Day 2!

The girls seemed to like the repetition of how the lesson went, 

knowing to first color the number, then cut it, etc.

Adelyn LOVES to  cut!

They both colored a picture in their books for day 2, and Charlotte wrote the sentence "God made sky" while Adelyn and I worked on writing the number 2.  

Adelyn just turned 3, so she is just beginning to figure out how to make her hand go where she wants it to.  We used a big whiteboard to "RAINBOW" the number 2.  

Rainbowing is a great teaching strategy for a ton of things (writing, word study/spelling, etc) and it fits Adelyn well right now since she is just learning to write.  She is learning about the numbers 1-7 and recognizing numbers, matching them with amounts, etc.  However, writing the numbers 1-7 is pretty difficult for this little one, so this helps!  

The way rainbowing works is I write something in one color, then they trace over it again and again in different colors.  Adelyn needed me to hold her hand a few times to get her muscles to remember the motion of a 2, but after a few times together, she did it on her own :)

One thing that is so important to me is independence, even with mistakes!

Kids need time to practice getting glue in the wrong places, cutting too far, coloring the wrong way, etc without us giving them direction!

Regardless of schooling or homeschooling, every parent can afford their kid(s) a ton of freedom at home.  Allow them to cut for themselves, glue, arrange, etc.  Let them color their tigers green and be as silly and creative as they want.  

I held the paper, but Adelyn cut, glued, placed the 2 and colored all on her own!

Charlotte's finished page.

We did the 10-frames again with the number 2, asking many of the questions I asked yesterday.

One additional thing that Charlotte and I did was talk about if I put 1 square on the top row and one on the bottom row, we could write a number sentence to match that.  

I wrote it, pointing to the squares, and she wanted to write it herself.

I really didn't make a huge deal out of this, just wrote it and pointed.  

Charlotte liked using "plus" and "equals" as she wrote them.

Adelyn had wandered off by this point, which was perfect :)

Probably the biggest hit of the day was our cloud writing!

Adelyn had to be convinced that it was ok to put her hands in the shaving cream :)

I can still remember my 4th grade teacher letting us write with our fingers in shaving cream!

Kids LOVE this!  Charlotte had done it before and it was still just as exciting.

We practiced writing the number 2

Charlotte is actually a pretty stellar writer for 4 (not that I'm biased) but the number 2 is actually a pretty difficult one.  The motions are a little whacky, so it's probably one of the numerals that takes the most practice.

I used the same rainbow approach with Adelyn, writing the 2 and having her trace

Charlotte even write the sentence from today's lesson!

Charlotte instructed me to text that picture (above) to Granddaddy Andy, but I have a difficult time explaining to Charlotte that Granddaddy Andy doesn't text ;) so maybe Grandma could share that tidbit with him!

The most fun part of the final activity was the level of independence.

I traced waves for them, and Charlotte went to town cutting, glueing, etc.

Adelyn got a head start because I cut the waves for her 

(curves are actually difficult and she had already cut the 2, so I gave her a pass)

Again, I let them go to town with the glue themselves, being sure to not open the glue very much so they couldn't squeeze out too much at once!

I didn't write it above, but we learned the song for Day 2 while they were coloring in their books, just like Day 1.  Adelyn sings the Day 1 verse and Charlotte does Day 2.

Adelyn had to do her own writing after I did mine :)

Charlotte told me she wanted to share with Dad, Mom & Adelyn :)

As a side note, I'm using this video to support Adelyn learning her numbers 0-10.

Preschool Prep materials don't look super exciting to adults, but they use solid brain research and they are incredibly effective.  I let the girls watch it later in the day and Charlotte was just as happy to watch it as Adelyn was :)

Earlier, I had thought we'd finish the day by going to the park and watching clouds because I thought that would be fitting, right?

Well, this morning when we started talking about God making clouds, Adelyn started talking about how Little Bear got to bounce on clouds and she wanted to bounce on clouds too!

Although Charlotte explained that Little Bear was only dreaming (the fact that Little Bear is a work of fiction didn't seem to matter), it got me thinking that maybe a trip to a local trampoline park would be a more fitting end to the day :)

So we finished our day by bouncing on the clouds!

Creation - Day 1

I'm really loving the idea of teaching in more thematic units when it makes sense, but I'm not really big into pre-purchased curriculum.  Even in the classroom, I preferred to make most of my own stuff (or find) because even with a curriculum I felt I was always adapting everything.  

However, when my friend Kelly shared a unit that her curriculum started with (The 7 days of creation) it seemed like a great unit idea!  So I created my own unit with ideas from different blogs and people!

This blog had great ideas and I used most of them :)

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2011/02/day-1-of-creation-light/  

Charlotte's creation book

One of the ideas I was sure about from the start is the girls re-creating the story of creation for themselves through illustrations so they could read it again and again.

Because I wanted the girls to both draw pictures and write, I knew I should make the books on the larger side.  So, instead of folding 8.5x11 paper, I made these books the entire 8.5 x 11 with cardstock covers.  The bottoms of the picture pages have handwriting strips (2 of them) photocopied onto the bottom.

I also made copies of hollow numbers (1-7) for the girls to color, cut, then paste into their books!

Each girl started by coloring their number any way they wanted

While coloring, I read from the Bible about Day 1 of creation.

Then, each kiddo cut out the number 1

This is a cute song from the blog I linked above

After the fine motor work, we took a break to sing a song!

I looked specifically for songs for this unit because Adelyn is really into songs/singing and really retains information when it's in song form!

No surprise, Charlotte wanted to perform for the camera and her sister didn't :)

Then, we opened our blank books and colored a picture of what we thought the first day of creation looked like!

I used my own piece of lined paper to show where to write

 After we colored a picture, Charlotte wrote a simple sentence "God made light" while Adelyn practiced writing the number 1.

Finally, we pasted our number on the opposite page!

Here is Charlotte's final page (4 1/2)

I love that Charlotte included both the light and the dark!

Here is Adelyn's final page (3)

 We moved from the actual story of creation to talking about the number 1.

We talked about how you can draw a 1 two different ways.  The girls took turns coming and writing their favorite type of 1.

Adelyn made giant, long 1s :)

Charlotte chose to try the more difficult one.

I've been exciting about introducing ten frames to the girls and I'm stoked that this is the perfect introduction!

I bought this book back at Christmas, but have yet to use it.  There isn't any profound about it, but it has lots of fun graphics, so I knew both girls would like it!

I laminated 3 of the sheets at Lakeshore for a whopping 68 cents so they would last us awhile.  I cut off the squares and put them in a snack bag, but will use all different manipulatives with the 10-frames.

Today Charlotte chose a purple kitty (Adelyn a yellow bear)

 We talked about the ten-frames for a few minutes.  We started by counting how many squares there were total (10) and then how many were in each row (5) and that 5 on top and 5 on bottom make 10 altogether.  Then, we put our bear or kitty on the 10-frame anywhere we wanted.  We predicted how many empty spaces we thought there were if 1 was taken.  Then we counted to see that on a 10-frame if 1 space is taken, there are 9 empty spaces.

We made 1s with wiki sticks

Then, we came back to the topic for the day to make a craft (a light box).

It cost me $3 to make both of these (had the paint at home).

The blog I linked above does a great job of explaining step-by-step how to complete this!

I didn't have shoe boxes, so I used what we had!

Used a utility knife to make the holes!

The girls loved the painting part!

The $3 was spent at the Dollar tree on 2 flashlights and batteries!

Charlotte, seeing the "light"

Lastly, I used magnetic letters that I had put on the easel and had Charlotte try to spell out the sentence she had written.  Writing is really laborious at this age, so to add a spelling (or word study) element, I used the letters and just mixed them up! 

Obviously, I had to help with the silent "gh" but otherwise awesome :)

After reflecting, I'm really excited about this first day.  

It seemed to be a great balance of a little bit of scripture, a lot of hands-on fun, but a really big idea! 

The girls were engaged and got lots of repetitive practice in a ton of skills!