Noah's Ark, Rain and Rainbows

I took a little break from blogging while life became a whirlwind. While I endured the craziness, I realized how much I missed blogging about the fun things we are doing with Little Miss and Mister Man. So, now that things have slowed down a bit, I am back!

While I wasn't blogging, we were still learning at home, although I must admit, not nearly as organized as I hope to be again. But we finished up the alphabet, both kiddos now know all their letters and Little Miss is reading! So very big steps in a few months!

Last week, we talked about Noah and the Ark, as well as rain and rainbows, since they seemed fitting within the context.

Both kiddos loved the work we did, and had fun singing songs as well.

We started by reading the story of Noah in our Children's Bible.The kids love this bible. The stories are illustrated so wonderfully and the stories are written in an easy to understand format.

We used the animals from Learning 4 Fun, and added them to a rainbow cutout to show the animals under the rainbow. The kids thought this was really fun. Mister Man is into anything that involves scissors or glue and Little Miss loves art projects in general.

Mister Man did a great job sequencing the story and coloring the pictures from Ministry-To-Children.

We also did a few of the worksheets from Teaching Heart. They each did a few different sheets, but Mister Man really surprised me with his ability to count and locate the correct written number to match. I expected to have to help him more with this task and he did it almost entirely on his own!

They practiced counting by twos with a fun activity from Bible Based Homeschooling. They both did pretty well with this.

And just counting in general. There were so many great activities in the Bible Based Homeschooling Noah's Ark Mega Pack!

We did the letter assessment rainbow with do-a-dot markers. These were from a great letter pack that has a large number of themed letter assessment printouts from 2 Teaching Mommas. I knew Little Miss was way past this exercise, but it was good practice for letter sounds as well. I would make the sound and she found the letter. Mister Man I was trying to see how many of the letters he was comfortable with. Come to find out it was most of them. 

We did a rain activity with water, shaving cream and food coloring. It was a fun experiment that kept the kids attention so much they wanted me to leave it on the counter so they could look at it all day.

They put together their own Noah's Ark Story Mini Book, which they loved creating. Little Miss is very into putting together books so this was a perfect project for her.

I made them both a lapbook filled with fun activities. There were a ton of other printouts we used from the above sites and you can see more ideas on my pinterest page.  I found things that would work in the lapbook from a mix of sites including rainbow and rain ideas as well.

Overall a good lesson on Noah's Ark. We are now talking about Creation and the Dinosaurs. More on that soon!

A Passionate Mom - Book Review

I must admit I am a sucker for parenting books. It seems that no matter what I am immediately drawn to them at a bookstore or within my Kindle. I'm sure this is because I love learning and my kids are the center of my life. So being interested in something that involves them seems perfect. I've read some that I put down within a few chapters, then there are always those great ones that stay on your shelf for reference and also get passed on to new moms and friends.

It seems that many parenting books preach the same types of things; discipline, patience, listening, etc. The backbone to parenting, if you are like me and read a ton of these types of books, it seems that you can get on information overload very quickly.

I was lucky enough to be able to review the new book by Susan Merrill, The Passionate Mom: Dare to Parent in Today's World. This is definitely a book I will be passing on to friends.

Instead of preaching, this was written to help moms find a way to parent by thinking and praying. The Passionate Mom is written based on the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. Merrill did a great job laying out the "bricks" and "mortar" while including great examples, confessions and prayers within. Throughout the book, I had a picture of a wall around my kids. I felt connected to the book and what it was saying throughout. I can honestly say I was hooked and did not want to put it down.

It was a very different perspective on parenting and presented a great visual while reading. I found myself taking notes and really thinking and praying about each chapter. Something I had never done with any other parenting book.

I highly recommend this book to moms especially those struggling. It really makes you think, pray and implement. Which will in turn, give you hope that you can do it! Every mom can parent well, even if we aren't perfect.

Disclaimer - I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson Publishing Group for this review. The opinions stated above are my own.  

ABC Fun - Letter H

The letter "H" made for a fun few weeks. We had a few random things happen within the family that made it a bit more difficult to do our tot school work, but I tried to work it in as much as possible.

We had our "H" bin. Mister Man really enjoyed playing with the hot dog and horse. Little Miss wasn't interested in more than the horse.

 
We worked on some worksheets. Little Miss wrote the letter "H" many times and did a great job as well!

Mister Man had fun coloring his "H" sheets.

Little Miss also did some connect the dots which is relatively new to her. She seemed to enjoy it and did a great job following directions.

We colored our own houses. Mister Man liked tracing his hand on the house and just coloring. While Little Miss decided to make the house her own, adding doors and windows! It was fun to watch their little minds work when looking at a simple few lines that I called a house...

H came at a great time, because I took out all of our Halloween decorations and activities. So we spent a lot of time working with those, because they were fresh and fun.

We also did some sorting of colored skeletons, puzzles, and coloring pages. But their favorites were matching the tiles

picking up the erasers with tongs and sorting them in the container

and of course anytime there is a pouring or scooping activity, Mister Man is all over it!

In addition to the H activities, Little Miss has been really interested in sight words and writing, so we combined the two and had her write, find, and circle her sight words. She did wonderfully. At last count she knows and can write 20 sight words!

For Mister Man and Little Miss, I also made a fun wall art project that they can color on whenever they feel like it. They have been randomly going and making a mark or two lately. But it's kind of a fun extra....they don't normally get to draw on the walls so this is a treat!

They also had a lot of fun with pretend play this week. They did a great job playing together and taking turns being the chef and customer.

I just love watching them grow, learn and play together and individually.  It was a crazy week, but we got a few things in and we are reviewing this week so we may work a bit more on H if needed.

Linking up to 1+1+1=1

and No Time For Flashcards

ABC Fun - Letter G

We had some fun with the letter G the past few weeks.

We had our G box of course. The kiddos loved pretending with the goat and giraffe. Completely forgot to take a picture, sorry!

We made grass G's with glue.

Wrote some words with sidewalk chalk (although I of course have no picture of this).

Did some fun worksheets.

Made grape bunches by gluing pom poms to construction paper.

Hung gloves with clothspins - they loved this!!!

Tossed golf balls into a bin. Another hit!

We talked a lot about the letter g but I didn't get many pictures.  Overall, it was a good few weeks! On to the letter H this week!

Linking up to 1+1+1=1

and No Time For Flashcards

 

ABC Fun - Letter F

We are continuing as normal on our letters again. We focused on the letter "F" for the past few weeks.

Of course we had the letter f box.

The kids enjoyed this, especially the fish puzzle, Mister Man in particular loved the puzzle.

We wrote out a few "F" words on the chalkboard.

We painted flowers with our fingers.

Made a fish craft with, construction paper, old cd, and glitter. The kids had a blast with this, cause they got to get super messy!

I put out a flower arrangement tray, which they both loved. Little Miss would do this at least once a day and then would be so proud of her arrangement!

Little Miss drew a picture of her family.

We drew faces.

All in all I think we had a lot of fun with the letter F.

In addition to the "F" activities, we also did some extra learning activities.

Little Miss worked on her alphabet order. She's now figured out how to slow down, repeat the previous letters and figure out the one that comes next!

Mister Man worked on his color matching. I used a wood block from Hobby Lobby and wrote the colors on each side with markers. Then I put the corresponding colored buttons in a container. He had a blast rolling the dice and finding the right color.

Little Miss is also working on her sight words. On a tray, I put our alphabet circles and printed off sheets with the sight words we are working on right now. She surprised me by saying all the words on the first page without any help. I love being surprised like that! She really enjoyed spelling them out.

We also worked on finding them in books. She was so excited to realize she was reading!

Overall, I think it was a good few weeks! Now onto the letter G.

 

Linking up to 1+1+1=1

and No Time For Flashcards