The Grouchy Ladybug

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Our literature unit last week was on The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle.  I chose it to go along with our Fruit of the Spirit lesson on kindness (post coming soon), because while the main character isn’t terribly kind, the other ladybug in the story is a wonderful example of being kind even to those who treat you badly.  My 5-year old niece was staying with us last week, and she and Ian adored this story.  Not only did they think it was funny that the grouchy ladybug went around trying to pick fights with animals so much bigger than itself, they loved the repetition that allowed them to “read” along with me as soon as they caught on to the pattern.  Several times I caught both of them flipping through the pages saying the words out loud, so excited that they could read the story all by themselves.

Even though this story was just a part of our “Kindness” lesson, the kids enjoyed it so much I decided to throw in some extra learning about ladybugs.  I pulled out some books we happened to have in our home library: The Ladybug (Life Cycles)  by Sabrina Crewe, The Ladybug and Other Insects (a First Discovery Book) by Gallinard Jeunesse, and About Insects: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill, part of a series we love because of its simplicity (there are books on mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, etc. as well).  We found a few fun videos on YouTube, starting with a basic story video of the book.  I really liked this quiet, soothing reading of it.  We watched a Reading Rainbow episode called Bugs. and there was a fun Ladybug playlist someone had put together.  There were also some fun lapbook materials from Homeschool Share.  I only used a couple pages this time, but Ian got such a kick out of the story I think we’ll definitely come back to it when Elijah and Arianna get older!

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Music Review: Wee Sing America

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As we head towards 4th of July, I went searching for some kid-friendly versions of the patriotic songs that every American child should know.  I wasn’t thrilled with what I had in my own music collection (either they were on old worn out cassettes, or the versions just weren’t great for younger kids to sing along with), so I went to Amazon, as I do pretty much every day when I need something, whether it be a book, baby product, shampoo… I’m kind of addicted to having the exact item I want delivered to my door without dragging the kids around to various stores.  But I digress.

I had a vague recollection of a Wee Sing album along those lines, and sure enough, there was Wee Sing America.  I looked at some other options, but nothing seemed to compare.  Since I didn’t want to wait for a CD, I just bought the mp3s, downloaded it, and we were listening on my iPod within minutes.

I’ve always liked the Wee Sing series, and this one was no exception.  The songs are mostly sung by kids, so it appeals to my children, who readily join in to sing along.  Two things about this collection stood out for me to make it stand out:

1. The quotes.  Interspersed throughout the album are short quotes from various Presidents as well as important things like the Pledge of Allegiance, the preamble to the Constitution, etc.  I LOVE this.  I know some homeschools say the Pledge every day, but that’s just not our style (the formality, I mean; we’re all for patriotism).  Still, I do think it’s important to know, and I want my children to be able to say it when the opportunity arises.  So thumbs up!  If I had been assembling a “Listening Lesson” the way I usually do each week, it would have looked a lot like this album.  Only this time all the work was done for me!

2. The verses.  So often we only hear the first verses of songs like “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “Yankee Doodle,” or “God Bless America.”  I was surprised (and very pleased) to discover that this album included multiple verses of most of the songs that have them.  The lyrics of these later verses are often so rich in language and content, and even though it will be years before my kids can understand them all, I’m so glad they can learn the whole songs!

This is a great collection of patriotic songs, and if you’re looking for an easy way to teach your kids these American standards, I highly recommend Wee Sing America!

Posted in Homeschool Resources

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

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We continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit this past week talking about patience, which I defined for the boys as “waiting without complaining.”  There were two Bible verses we focused on:

“Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God…” Philippians 2:14-15

“Be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:2

Ian knows the first one well already from a song (see our iPod playlist below), and I was surprised how much he enjoyed the lesson all week.  I guess I thought it would come across as nagging, but that must be from my own childhood baggage (*grin*).  I must have been an impatient little girl, because I remember countless times when my mom broke into song:  “Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry…”  Quite the catchy tune.

Even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard the Music Machine album (I had the vinyl as a kid, but we do have a CD now), if you’re from my generation you’ve probably heard the song on it about patience.  It must have been a favorite, for most of my friends seem to know that one.  It tells the story of a snail called Herbert, who in his younger days was a little too speedy and wreaked havoc as he crashed through spider webs and collided with crickets.  But his wise father taught him a little ditty that helped him mend his ways and take his time crawling through life (though it made the ants mad and the beetles, well, “they would fume.”  The point of the song is that when you start to get impatient with other people, remember that not only is God patient, but there are times when other people have to wait for you as well.  (We watched this video on YouTube for more about Herbert.  If you like it, check out the newer version with modern animation on from the DVD set Character Builders.)

Ian loved the song, and I decided it would be fun to spend some time with snails up close.  So one morning we went out snail hunting.  The day was already hot and dry so it wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated, but at last we managed to find three little friends to join us for our morning lesson.  We put them on dark paper so we could see the slimy dotted trail they left behind them.  The boys were fascinated!  We talked about the different parts of the snails anatomy to squeeze in some “official” learning, but mostly we just had fun watching them.  Ian set up races (a great chance to practice patience!), had fun redirecting them whenever they’d get close to the edge of the paper, and really would have liked to keep them around a lot longer, but alas, Mama wasn’t really keen on that idea.

  

For more Bible connection, we also discussed the story of Simeon, the man who waited to see God’s promised Messiah (see Luke 2:22-35).  It was a story Ian had never heard before, which made him curious and therefore very attentive.

For literature, we read the book The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss (part of Before Five in a Row).  I asked Ian why he thought I had chosen that book to go along with our lesson. We had planted seeds a while back in anticipation of doing this book, so he had no problem connecting it to patience.  We were rewarded for ours by seeing our little green shoots and lots of roots!

Here’s what was playing all week for our “Listening Lesson”:

It will be two weeks before I write about our lesson on “Kindness.”  There’s lots of stuff going on around here (visitors, vacations, and of course, 4th of July), and since we’re halfway through the Fruit of the Spirit, it seemed like a good idea to take a break!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

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We didn’t do a lot of activities last week related to our Fruit of the Spirit unit, but Ian and I had some great conversations on the subject as we talked about “peace.” Last week I wish we’d talked more about “joy” as it relates to stories in the Bible, so this time I was very intentional about reading in the Bible, putting passages on our playlist, etc.

Our Bible story for the week was Jesus calming the storm from Mark 4:35-41.  It was a review for us, since we just covered this passage a few months ago, but it was neat to see how many of the details Ian remembered when I asked him about it on Monday.  When we got to the part where Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” I asked Ian what the word “peace” means.  He wasn’t sure.  I defined it as “not feeling worried but trusting God even when things around us seem bad.”  I asked him about times in his own life when it might seem like these were bad or crazy and could make him worry.  He immediately said, “When it’s dark.”  Like most kids his age, that’s a big one for him.  We talked about two of the Bible verses he knows songs for that can help him to find peace when he starts to get scared.

“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”  Psalm 4:8

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God whose word I praise.  In God I trust; I will not be afraid. ” Psalm 56:3-4

I loved watching peace come over him even as we talked about this.  Scripture is so powerful, and I will use any means possible to get it into my kids’ hearts and minds!

The other Bible passage I focused on was Matthew 6:25-33 where Jesus exhorts his listeners, “Do not be anxious…” about finding the clothes and food they need, because they can trust God to provide, just as he does for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.  What a gift, that we can set aside our worries and rest in the peace of God.

Our iPod playlist was rather long this week, but the boys were still very enthusiastic about it.  They really like the songs that list all the “fruit,” and they noticed that I’ve started taking a break from a couple each week.  (I figure we’ve got all summer, so let’s rotate a bit!)  Here’s what we had going this week:

That was about it for our week.  We read The Quiet Way Home by Bonny Becker (one of the books from Before Five in a Row), but we didn’t do anything besides some discussions from the B4FIAR manual.  We skipped our tattoos this time, though we did watch the “peacefulness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit and play the Fruit of the Spirit board game.

Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the Spirithttps://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnBdu-9DQu4BY8DFi4dydmMZBMI31G0txInCnZsRfq5julV29kHg

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

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This week for our Bible lessons we continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit by talking about joy.  I’m finding it hard to break out of the pattern of what we’ve been doing for Bible over the last year.  I really want this to be a simple, fun overview, not an in depth study.  So if all we do is listen to our songs about joy all week, I want that to be enough.  And actually, we did more than that this week, but I don’t want to feel like I have to do a lot for each “fruit,” especially since I know these first few weeks are the “easy” ones, for which I’ll be able to find lots of things to do.  So I have to keep reminding myself not to feel guilty if we don’t do anything but listen and sing!

On Monday we put on “joy” tattoos, but Ian didn’t want to wear one this week.  Instead he offered it to his sister.  Since our Arianna Joy does live up to her middle name, I went along with his idea.  She got it on her belly, where it made me smile every time I changed her over the next few days.

And we watched the “joyfulness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit, as well as playing our Fruit of the Spirit board game and Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables.

Fruit Of The Spirit Faith PostersIan’s learned to read “love” and “joy,” and I’ve been hanging the appropriate poster each week from the set I got from Oriental Trading Company. Each poster has the word, followed by a related Bible verse. There are only these six, so there will be a few weeks we miss, but I still like having them on the boys’ bedroom door each week.

Thanks to our iPod playlist, both Ian and Elijah have pretty much memorized Galatians 5:22-23 (But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.)  We had lots of fun songs to add about “joy” this week, and one of our favorite joyful activities was breaking out the rhythym instruments to play along.

  

We also did lots of joyful dancing (like Gerald in Giraffe’s Can’t Dance, our book of the week)

  

They requested “our lesson” over and over this week, both in the car and at home with the instruments, so I’d say it was a hit!  Here’s what it included:

Coming up next, peace!  I think we should just nap all week.  In a hammock.  By a bubbling brook with a gentle breeze blowing over us as we rest.  Somehow I have a feeling our lesson won’t quite look like that though.  Stay tuned!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Giraffes Can’t Dance

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By Giles Andreae: Giraffes Can't Dance

Our story this week, Giraffe’s Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae, wasn’t exactly a classic of children’s literature, but it was still a fun book to go along with our Bible lesson on “joy.”The story is about Gerald, a giraffe who wants to join in the annual Jungle Dance, in which all the African animals show off their fabulous dancing abilities.  Gerald, however, is a bit clumsy and gets teased when he attempts to participate.  After he slinks away in embarrassment, a wise friend encourages him to listen to the music around him in nature, and he ends up dancing from his heart, impressing all who see him.

The book was sure to be a hit in our house, as Elijah especially loves animals.  I was surprised to find it also also sparked a lot of questions from Ian, which led to a great learning experience!  I wasn’t planning to do much with this story other than read it, but here were a few of the places Ian’s questions led us:

What’s a cha-cha?

Several different dances are mentioned, but the “cha-cha” was the one Ian noticed.  I found a clip on YouTube that demontrated what it looks like.

what kind of sounds to baboons make?

When I lived out in the Kenyan bush I was often awakened by baboons, so I know the sound all too well.  But I didn’t think I’d be able to demonstrate very accurately, so we headed back to YouTube.  Which led to the next question:

 What do baboons eat?

This fun clip showed us the answer to that one.

I’ve been marveling at what a wonderful resource we have in the Internet.  Ian loves listening to Old Mother West Wind and other animal stories by Thornton W. Burgess (all of which we downloaded for free from Librivox, as well as free Kindle editions so I can read them out loud to him).  These books really expand his vocabulary, but when it comes to plants and animals, he often doesn’t have any frame of reference for understanding.  Here are a few of things he asked about this week: bulrushes, red-wings (birds), grouse, woodchucks, possums, and yellow-jackets.  I just went to Google Images and we found all sorts of great pictures to help him understand these new vocabulary words.  Twenty years ago we would have had to go to the library just to find the stories, and then we’d have to keep a list to look up pictures on our next trip.  How blessed we are to have so much information right at our fingertips!

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Love

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When I first starting putting this Fruit of the Spirit unit together in my mind I planned to use one Bible story each week to help illustrate whichever “fruit” we were discussing, covering it in a way similar to what we’ve been doing.  However, as I started planning, I realized that was going to draw the focus away from the point I was trying to make.  This week, for instance, I want Ian to know that our Bible lesson is about “Love,” not about Mary anointing Jesus with perfume.  So while I do plan to use Bible stories throughout this unit, I won’t be covering them as in depth as I usually do since we’re using them mainly to make a point.  In addition to a Bible story and a children’s book (this week we read The Little Rabbit, which I posted about separately), there are also a few things I found that we’ll be doing for each week throughout the whole unit.  We put on “tattoos” to help remind us about “Love” all week.  And we watched the episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit that had to do with love.  (The boys really enjoy this show!)

  Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the Spirit

As I thought about the broad topic of love I wanted to narrow our discussion down a bit.  Since the fruit of the Spirit is about what’s being produced in our hearts, I decided to steer away from talking about God’s love, except as it is the basis for the love we show to others.  Mary showed love for Jesus by using her expensive perfume to anoint him.  Sarah (in The Little Rabbit) shows love for Buttercup by providing for her, spending time with her, and caring for her.  Ian and Elijah show love for each other by sharing things, speaking respectfully to each other, and helping one another.  (Okay, so we’re still working on all that.  But really, they do have a wonderfully loving relationship.)

We also wanted to practice showing love to others by reaching out.  I loved what Amanda at Impress Your Kids did for this by sending something to their sponsor child.  This spring when we decided to sponsor a child, I looked for one who shared Ian’s birthday so he could feel some connection.  We were blessed to find a little boy in Brazil who is the exact same age as Ian (and he even had on a Lightning McQueen shirt in his picture, so Ian liked him right away)!  We haven’t yet taken the time to write to him, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.  We made “scratch and sniff” paint from unsweetened Kool-aid powder and used it to paint a picture of a heart.  I looked up our Bible verse on BibleGateway so we could write “God is love,” on it in Portuguese.   “Deus é amor” 1 João 4:8  I hope he enjoys his sweet-smelling picture!  A word of warning if you want to try this activity: let the “paint” sit for a while so ALL the powder dissolves.  I only waited about five minutes, and it made kind of grainy pictures.  Also, I would water them down quite a bit.  Ours took a few days to dry to the point of not being sticky!

  

We also made pictures for our own “Fruit of the Spirit” notebook, though I haven’t quite decided how I’m doing that.  For now, I’ll just save the pictures.  In addition to reading the story about Mary in The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), we also read The Best Thing is Love by Dandi Daley Mackall , which is based on 1 Corinthians 13.  Ian really liked the repetition on each page and read it with me after he’d caught on to the patter.

Throughout this unit, the only real “memory verse” I expect Ian and Elijah to have down is Galatians 5:22-23 (But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.)  Still, I am planning on have a verse the relates specifically to the “fruit” of the week, especially if I can find a song about it.  So this week we did 1 John 4:7-8, which I will forever know in the King James Version because of this song.  “Beloved, let us love one another.  For love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love.”

The boys have really been enjoying the songs for this unit, so I kept most of the general “Fruit” songs around to help them memorize the verse and mixed them in with some new ones related to Love:

We listen through the list at least once a day, and I’m often getting requests to “do that one again,” especially from Elijah.  They really like singing along, and I think both of them will definitely have their memory verse down by the end of this unit!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Little Rabbit

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Last week we very lightly “rowed” The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn (from Before Five in a Row).  I chose it to go along with our “Fruit of the Spirit” study, in which we were talking about love.  Since we were focusing on the kind of love that entails doing what’s best for someone else even when they can’t give anything back, a book about caring for a pet seemed appropriate.100_7213

This really is such a sweet story about a girl and her rabbit.  We didn’t do a whole lot of “extras” beyond some of the discussions from the Before Five in a Row manual.  One thing Ian specifically requested was to make bunny masks like we did back when we rowed The Runaway Bunny.  (For some reason, he really wanted his bunny to look angry.)

I also found a Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood episode “Pets: Children Take Care of Their Pets” which goes along well with this book.   It even has a little segment comparing a drawing with a photograph, which was great since this story uses photos instead of drawings or paintings for illustrations.

And that was pretty much it for this book!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units

Fruit of the Spirit: Introduction

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Over the summer  our Bible lessons will be about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things there is no law.”  Before we start focusing on each of the traits Paul wrote about, I wanted to spend a week introducing the whole idea.

I think the most important thing to remember about the fruit of the Spirit is that we can’t “make” them grow in us any more than we can “make” apples grow on a tree.  The first step is planting the seed in the ground.  Is the Spirit living in us?  I honestly don’t know how to answer that for my kids.  I’ve taught them about Jesus and they believe the truth of the gospel, but they haven’t come to a point of decision saying, “Yes, I want Jesus to be my Lord.  I want to follow Him.”  Still I think their faith is true, if immature.  So I do believe the Holy Spirit can work in their hearts.

Our job is to carefully tend our hearts (and those of our children).  If we were trying to help a tree produce apples we would clear away any weeds that might hinder its growth, fertilize the soil, and make sure it got plenty of water and sunshine.   With regards to the “fruit” of the Spirit, we carefully monitor the influences around them, feed them a steady diet of Scripture, and bring them to church with us so they can experience the presence of the Lord as we worship.

If Jesus Lived Inside My HeartOn our own we can only go so far in trying to exhibit the love, joy, etc. that naturally grow when we surrender our lives to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts.  I want to be be careful throughout this series to make it clear that these virtues aren’t the result of our efforts; they come when we humble ourselves and let Jesus truly be our Lord.  Along these lines, we read If Jesus Lived in My Heart by Jill Roman Lord, which talks about how having Jesus in us affects way we treat others and the choices we make.

My objective this first week was simply to familiarize the boys (especially Ian) with the names of all nine “fruit” in preparation for talking about them in greater detail over the next couple months.  As usual, one of the most effective tools was music.  We listened to our iPod playlist throughout the week as we played at home and drove in the car.  By Friday Ian was singing along to most of the songs, so I’d say I met my objective!  Here’s what was playing this week:

We also read two books that briefly go through the list of the fruit of the Spirit: 9 Fruits Alive by Mindy MacDonald and Jesus in Me by Dandi Daley Mackall.

 

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnBdu-9DQu4BY8DFi4dydmMZBMI31G0txInCnZsRfq5julV29kHgWe played two games that helped plant the names of the fruit in Ian’s head.  The first was a Fruit of the Spirit board game that is played just like Candyland.  I just casually commented on what the pictures showed and how they related to the areas of love, joy, peace, etc. as we passed through.  The second was a Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables which I printed and laminated.  Elijah was able to match up the pairs.  With Ian, we laid them all out upside down and played “memory.”  He loves this type of game.

  

As we start exploring the individual “fruit,” each week we’ll focus on a particular Bible story as well as children’s literature that that help illustrate the concept.  (I want to try to hit most of the Before Five in a Row  books that we haven’t gotten to, but there are a few others as well.) I don’t think we’ll go quite as in depth as we have been during the regular “school year,” but we’ll see.  I’m just trying to give myself permission to relax a little.  Coming up next week: LOVE!

Posts on each week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Blueberries for Sal

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This week we “rowed” Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.  In my opinion, if you can only do one book from from Before Five in a Row, this is the one to pick.  There are so many wonderful discussions and activities that can flow out of this story!  I’ve been holding off on it until the right time of year, and it seemed like a good complement to our Bible lesson introducing the Fruit of the Spirit, which just happened to coincide with the beginning of berry-picking season around here.  This was one book that had really made an impression on Ian when we first went through all the Before Five in a Row stories back when he was two.  He’s requested it several times since, so when he saw me bringing out our little tin pails, he was really excited about this week.

After reading through the story on Monday, I broke out several types of blueberries for our afternoon snack: fresh, frozen, dried (chewy, like raisins), and freeze-dried (crunchy, like cereal).  They loved making them go “kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!” in their pails before they ate them.  I had them try all four kinds, but Ian’s favorites were the frozen ones and the dried, while Elijah preferred the dried and freeze-dried.  Only Mama kept going back to the fresh ones.  We enjoyed snacking on blueberries every day this week!

  

Blueberry pancakes are a regular occurence in our family, so to do something special we made blueberry muffins from a boxed mix, which included canned blueberries.  I saved the juice when we drained them and the boys made blueberry paintings before drinking the rest of the “paint.”  (They really enjoyed this activity, and it was less messy than I had anticipated.  Still, I think next time I might try thickening up the paint with some corn starch, though then it wouldn’t be so tasty to clean up.)

For Ian’s “workbook,” I printed out several of the pages from Homeschool Creations‘ printable pack.  I also printed and laminated the math activity. (I was impressed with how well Ian did equations in his head.  I think it’s because of the Inchimals we’ve been using to explore the concept of addition.) I even found some worksheets for older kids that I printed to save in my file since I know we’ll be doing this book again in years to come.

As I said before, this book lends itself to lots of fun conversations.  We talked about canning (I’m going to have to learn more about it for the next time we row), bears storing up food for hibernation, and the dangers of meeting a bear (especially a mama and baby) and wandering off alone in the wilderness.  We also read One Morning in Maine, another favorite by Robert McCloskey.  It features Sal when she’s a little older and loses her first tooth.  Right away Ian asked, “Hey! Is that ‘Little Sal’ in this book?”  Ian’s not quite to the tooth-losing stage, so he was quite intrigued by the story.  I read it several times with him, though it was a bit long for Elijah.  By the time we row Blueberries for Sal with Arianna, Ian should have lost a tooth or two and I’m sure Elijah will love this book too.

To finish off our week, we went out in our backyard and picked berries in our tin pails.  No blueberries, but we are blessed to have an abundance of blackberries at hand!  We’ll go picking once or twice a week for the next month or so and then make jelly to give as gifts and hopefully last us through the year!

     

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool
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