…He is a New Creation (Paul’s Conversion)

Posted on by

This past week was our official end of the year!  To finish our chronological walk through the Bible, we spent talked about the Apostle Paul’s conversion (found in Acts 9:1-22) and the idea of being a new creation in Christ.  (The final Bible story lesson of the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum was on the “Wordless Book,” but I just couldn’t get excited enough about it to end on that note.  It might work better for us when my kids are a little older.)  Paul was certainly a changed man after his encounter with Christ along the road to Damascus, and while my children may never have such a dramatic conversion experience, the truth is that we ALL become a new creation in Christ. I tied the Bible story into our book of the week, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle to help illustrate the idea of being changed.  Our memory verse was “If anyone is  in Christ, he is a new creation,” from 2 Corinthians 5:17.

We told the story with our flannel board set and read it in Ian’s ESV Seek and Find Bible, as well as The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley).  We also read The Very First Christians by Paul l Maier, which is full of beautiful illustrations and tells many of the major stories from the book of Acts.

Acts 9:8 says “Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened,  he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.” To help the boys get a sense of the story, I blindfolded them (one at a time) and led them around the room to try to find a specific object.  Ian loved this game and promptly had me blindfold myself so he could lead me around as well.

  

To finish odd our Bible notebook for the year, I did the laziest easiest page ever.  I  just printed off this fun page of the memory verse from Christian Preschool Printables.   Ian really liked just spending time reading this to himself.  Obviously not something we would do often, but once again, there’s room for grace.

Our iPod playlist was fun because we got to listen to a few songs from the old Bullfrogs & Butterflies albums, which went perfectly with our week:

Whew!  And that’s the end of our first full year of lessons!  We’re going to spend some time talking about the Fruit of the Spirit this summer and then we’ll plunge back into another chronological journey through the Bible!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Posted on by

Last week spent some time with one of Elijah’s favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  It was a great go-along for our Bible lesson on Paul’s conversion and how we become a new creation in Christ (post on that coming soon).  Everyone was already quite familiar with the story, so I got busy on the laminator to prepare some activities for extra interest.

We put these cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler in the correct order to retell the story

and then did the same with these days of the week sequencing cards from Making Learning Fun (lots of great ideas here!) while singing our song about the days of the week.

  

Maybe next year we’ll get our own butterfly garden, but this time we were content watching watched our friends’ caterpillars and chrysalises. (Thanks, Christine!)  Their butterflies weren’t out yet, but it was fascinating just seeing the first couple stages.  (Did you know they wiggle in the chrysalis?)  I was going to have the boys go through some life cycle cards but we never got to that.  We did watch a couple short videos on the subject though: “The Caterpillar and the Polliwog” (on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video); Wonder Pets episode “Save the Caterpillar” (from Season 1, available streaming free for Amazon Prime Members and on Netflix); and of course, The Very Hungry Caterpillar video itself.

I’m not really big on crafts, but we all love to paint around here so we did make some “butterfly prints.”  We started by putting drops of paint on the paper, then blew through a straw to move the paint around, and finished by folding the paper in half to make symmetrical “wings.”  I love how Elijah’s first one turned out!

  

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Night of the Moonjellies

Posted on by

Last week for Five in a Row we read Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha.  I chose it  to go along with our Sea World field trip on Wednesday, and I’m glad we started doing activities/discussions from the book over the weekend, because we were too wiped out to do much after that long day!

The one thing about the book that was a little hard to explain to Ian was identifying true moonjellies.  Mark Shasha used it as a nickname for comb jellies (ctenophores), but there actually is a different sea creature named a “moon jellyfish” (Aurelia aurita).  Since they’re not really fish, the new trend is to call them jellies, which means when you come across things labeled “moon jellies” (such as we did in an aquarium at Sea World, much to Ian’s delight), they may not be the same creatures you were reading about!  I decided it really didn’t matter.  Ian enjoyed the story and seeing the Aurelia aurita just as much as if it had been a ctenophore.   Still, we talked about the differences (comb jellies don’t sting) and enjoyed looking at online pictures of the ctenophores Shasha was remembering in his story.  There was a lot of good information on the author’s website, as well as fairly basic descriptions and good pictures from the Simple English Wikipedia and  earthlife.net.

To add to our look at ocean creatures, we watched the Magic School Bus episode “Take a Dive” and read The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole.  Ian loves this series, and while I don’t read all the information on every page, he still learns a lot.

I’m sure we’ll come back to this book in a couple years and do some of the more advanced activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1).  Right now every book has something new and exciting for a 4-year old.  We’ve got lots of time to dive deeper into all there is to explore!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Peter and John Went to Pray…

Posted on by

“Peter and John went to pray. They met a lame man on the way.  He asked for alms and held out his palms, and this is what Peter did say: ‘Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!’ He went walking and leaping and praising God…”

Do you know that song?  The language may be archaic, but it sure sticks in your head!  It tells a wonderful story of how the Holy Spirit enabled two of Jesus’ disciples to walk in the same authority and power they had seen Christ exercise time and time again as he healed people. (Acts 3:1-10) It also included our memory verse: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” Acts 3:6

This is one of the best stories in the Bible for acting out.  What preschooler doesn’t love leaping and around the room?  And since I have a reputation for being “anti-fun” (I just don’t do silly very well), it was a wonderful opportunity for making my kids laugh.  They couldn’t get enough of me singing the song and bounding across the living room.

For our Bible notebook, we did a simple handprint print (I figured it could either be the beggar’s palm asking for alms, or else Peter taking him by the hand and helping him to stand.)

Here was our iPod playlist for this lesson:

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Make Way for Ducklings

Posted on by

This week for our Five in a Row (FIAR) studies we read Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.  I chose it because we’ve been enjoying watching the webcam of a hawk nest at Cornell University.  All three eggs hatched this week and we got to see them in almost every stage of the process.  It was amazing!  I left the site open on my computer and often we would just sit watching in awe.  It seemed like the perfect time for this story!  I know I saw this book as a child, but I don’t remember ever reading it.  I missed out!  Ian and I both enjoyed reading this one over and over throughout the week.

On Wednesday we went to a local park to try to find the mama duck and ducklings Grandma had spotted the day before, but to no avail.  Instead we just enjoyed watching the adult ducks and I taught the boys the differences between the males and females.  Ian was really disappointed not to see any ducklings, so we prayed that God would give a chance to see some.  On Friday morning as I was getting Arianna dressed, it occurred to me that we should try another park that day.  The boys were thrilled at the sudden plans (I am NOT a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type of person) until they found it we were returning to the scene of our unfortunate duck incident back in January.  (Elijah still reminds me at least once a week out of the blue, “Mommy, the duck ate my chicken.”)  Ian insisted as we drove there, “I do NOT like that park.  I don’t EVER want to go there again.”  Mean Mommy wasn’t giving in.  Thankfully, the ducks and geese were all on their best behavior.  The boys relaxed and we enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine along with the cool breeze as we walked along the water’s edge.  And lo, and behold…

Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!  Hello, Ducklings!  There were only 5, but of course Ian started to call them by name: “Jack! Kack!.. Mack!… Pack!… Quack!” We spent quite a bit of time watching the family before moving on towards the playground for lunch.  Needless to say, this is now Ian’s FAVORITE park.

  

Other things we did at home this week (in addition to many discussions out of the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2):

  • I found lots of ideas from this unit study, including a great collection of “uck” word family activities.
  • I also used some of the pages from the lapbook at HomeSchoolShare to do one of the math activities in the manual.
  • We watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones,” which talks about other animals that lay eggs.  Ian was so fascinated and delighted in telling all about how turtles lay eggs too!
  • For our mapping activity, we went on a Google Lit Trip, which was fabulous!  It was so much fun to see Boston on the map and “travel” around the city to all the places in the book with real pictures of what it looks like today.  (We first watched it on YouTube, but the pace was a little quick for me.)  Someday I hope we’ll make it to Boston to see the Public Garden in person!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

The Holy Spirit (Pentecost)

Posted on by

We’re almost through the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum, but I wasn’t ready to end our Bible lessons with Jesus returning to heaven, so for the next few weeks we’ll be on our own as we finish up the New Testament.  This week we talked about the disciples receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It’s a hard story for me as an adult to fully wrap my mind around, so my goal was just to present the whole event as told in Scripture, touch on some basic concepts, and then let it go.  Sometimes I’m content with just laying a foundation for future learning.  Here were the concepts I wanted Ian to understand:

  • Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to His followers.
  • If we follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts and helps us become more like Christ.
  • The Holy Spirit helped the disciples speak other languages so everyone could hear the good news about Jesus.

For our memory verse, I chose Romans 5:5, which we sang to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”:

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts, through the Holy Spi-rit. Romans chapter 5, verse 5; Romans chapter 5, verse 5. God’s love has been poured into our hearts, through the Holy Spi-rit.”

Most of my teaching centered around listening to our iPod playlist and having LOTS of discussions.  Here’s what was playing this week:

We talked about what languages are and I shared little bits of French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swahili with Ian.  (I SO wish I were fluent in another language, but unfortunately I just know a few basics in lots of languages.  Helpful for finding my way around in foreign countires, but it doesn’t exactly help me really communicate!)  He was really fascinated by the whole concept.  He’s heard people speaking Spanish and Korean, but I don’t think it really clicked with him what was going on until this week.

I’ve kind of slacked on our Bible Notebook with the last few lessons.  I hope to do a few more pages this year, but then I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.  I don’t like being so inconsistent, but neither do I want to let myself get so caught up in “producing” something tangible that our lessons suffer.

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Posted on by

Our Five in a Row (FIAR) time this week was sweet and simple.  The boys were already familiar with The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter because we listen to many of her stories from Lit2Go on a regular basis.  I’ve been saving the print version until this week, however, so they really enjoyed getting to see the illustrations.  I love Potter’s original pictures best, but I actually have 4 different versions.  It was fun looking at the differences.  We also got a lot of giggles out of the Peter Rabbit-Pop Out! Android app on my Kindle Fire (it was free at Easter time this year).  Just for a little change, we also listened to a different version of the audiobook from Tales from the Forest, along with The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies.  (Because these stories are in the public domain, there are several different readings available for free.  Ian can be rather particular about the readers, so we’ve tried a few.  He likes these best, but we usually do the ones from Lit2Go because we can get many other Beatrix Potter stories all by the same reader.)

We planted onions and spent the week water and watching, but it will be a while before there’s much to see.  The only other thing we did related to this story was listen to a Karen & Kids podcast on “Obeying Your Parents.”  It’s always an important topic of conversation in our house, as I’m sure it is in most of yours!  This book led to some great discussions on why God calls children to obey.  I liked having the story as a tool so I wasn’t just throwing Bible verses out.

Many of the activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2) will be better when my kids get a little older, so I know we’ll come back to this book.  We didn’t do a lot of extras, just rowed this one “conversationally.”  I love that FIAR can be so simple and yet so rich!

P.S. Just for fun, you might enjoy this little video clip from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown! I didn’t show it to my kids because we have trouble with the word “stupid” getting thrown around a little too carelessly, but it’s fun for Mom and Dad!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units

Jesus Returns to Heaven

Posted on by

We are rapidly coming to the end of the Bible lessons from the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum!  This was Week 34, covering the ascension of Jesus into heaven from Acts 1:8-11.  I also extended the lesson to talk about Jesus’ Second Coming and heaven in general, since the Bible memory verse was, “In my Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2.

Retelling the story for Daddy

We had a great time discussing the lesson this week.  We started out bright and early Monday morning reading through the story in ALL our story Bibles: The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, The Rhyme Bible Storybook, Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury.  (Confession: the kids had woken me up much earlier than usual and I was just trying to fight off the grumpies.  Pulling them into my lap and reading Bible stories was the only “good mom” thing I could come up with in my drowsy state.  Luckily it satisfied them until I was more fully awake and in control of myself.) Later that day we listened to the actual Bible passage on our iPod playlist (see below) as we ran errands.  On Tuesday I retold the story from the ESV Seek and Find Bible using our flannel board set.

I loved the questions that came up this week!  Ian and I talked a lot about heaven.  He asked if I was going to be there, and I told him yes, because I love Jesus and follow Him.  I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but Ian expressed his own faith for the first time in course of that discussion.  He’s usually very reserved about making faith personal (doesn’t like praying on his own, at least out loud), so it was very sweet. We followed up on this discussion by reading Heaven is for Real For Kids.  I loved how it was full of Scripture, as well as being told from a child’s perspective. (There are some details that are extra-biblical, but they don’t contradict Scripture, so we just talked about what the Bible DOES say.)

One idea I liked for telling this story was releasing helium balloons and watching them ascend into the clouds like Jesus.   Sounds great, right?  Well, it helped the boys visualize what happened.  NOTE TO SELF: next time, buy balloons to KEEP as well.  Every time we read the story after this activity, Ian would comment, “I do NOT like letting balloons go.”

  

  

It would have been worth an extra $2 to have balloons to play with for a couple days rather than just two sad boys who associate the Ascension with losing balloons!

That was it for us this week (at least for our Bible lesson).  No notebook page, but here’s the Bible portion of our iPod playlist:

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Resurrection Day!

Posted on by

I think this was the most meaningful Easter I’ve ever celebrated, probably because we were so intentional about focusing on the story of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection all week with the children.  Actually, I think from now on I want to take more time (as in 2-3 weeks) to focus on it, the same way we do with Christmas.  There were so many things I wanted to pack into this past week, and we didn’t get to half of them because I wanted to take at least a bit of time to really enjoy what we did choose to include.  I’ll definitely have to keep a file full of ideas to use in years to come!

I’ve been timing our Bible lessons so that we would be on Week 32 of the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum, which covers the story.  However, I ended up pretty much just doing our own thing.  Not only did we not get to everything I planned, we ended up changing our focus completely.  I had intended to use The Parable of the Lily by Liz Curtis Higgs as our “book of the week”, but we never even got to it because Ian got so into Benjamin’s Box and “Resurrection Eggs.” (In case you’re not familiar with them, a Resurrection Eggs set is made up of a dozen plastic eggs, each a different color and each containing a small object that represents part of the Passion story–except for the last one, which is empty to represent the empty tomb.)

Resurrection Set

Resurrection set from Oriental Trading

Okay, confession time. I had heard of Resurrection Eggs before, but to be perfectly honest, I was skeptical of how well they’d be received.  It just seemed a little too commercial somehow.   I was SO wrong!  Something in me (hmm, Holy Spirit maybe?) prompted me to go ahead and buy some the week before.  (I know some people have put together their own sets, but I just wasn’t sold enough on the idea to devote that much time and energy to it.) I put them out on Monday with the resurrection scene I’d gotten from Oriental Trading Company and all our Easter books.  Ian was immediately intrigued and wanted to know more about them.  I had him come over to sit with me and told him he could open one egg at a time as we went through the book Benjamin’s Box.   (Another confession: I wasn’t so sure about this book either.  It seemed like a gimmick to get me to buy the eggs.  So I hadn’t bought it, just put it on my Paperback Swap wishlist after hearing people talk about it last year, and lo and behold, it became available and I thought, “Sure, why not?”  Again, SO glad we had it!)  I don’t think Ian would have sat through the book if it hadn’t been for the eggs, but having them there kept him engaged the whole time.  He really enjoyed getting out each object and talking about how it fit into the story of Passion Week.  Later, when we watched watched The Animated Passion video together, Ian kept the eggs with him and opened them as we got to each part of the story.  So I am now an avid fan of Resurrection Eggs!  They helped Ian grasp the details of the story in an incredible way, and he enjoyed using them to tell the story to himself and to others in our household over and over.  Even after Easter Sunday, he wanted to keep going through them.  (We’re taking a “Spring Break” this week so I hadn’t rushed to put away anything from last week.)Anyway, that became the main focus of our week.  (For our Bible notebook, I kept it pretty simple: “He Lives”  Cross Make-a-Sticker Scene sticker set from Oriental Trading Company.)  We did read through a few other books, though we didn’t get through everything on our list (but I’ll share the whole thing):

We also attempted to make “resurrection rolls,” which I’ve seen mentioned on more blogs than I can count.  We learned one very important lesson: USE FRESH MARSHMALLOWS.  At least I think that’s what went wrong.  (I thought I’d use up what we had in the cupboard. Oops.)  We had SO much fun “anointing” our marshmallows in melted butter, rolling them in cinnamon sugar, and wrapping them in crescent roll dough.  I didn’t do the greatest job at pressing the seams together, so a number of them split open.  But the bigger flop was that our marshmallows didn’t melt away the way they were supposed to!  They still tasted great, but I’m afraid the boys are going to be pretty disappointed next year when the “tombs” are actually empty!

  

I think my favorite thing about this week was listening to “Easter carols” on our iPod playlist.  Most of them were songs that have played a meaningful part in past Easter celebrations in my life, and I found myself tearing up several times throughout the week as we listened.  Do you have any favorite Resurrection-related hymns/songs that we can include in the future?  Here’s our playlist from the week (including our memory verse, John 3:16):

All the things we did this week created such anticipation for Sunday morning.  Some of the songs we sang at church were songs we’d been listening to.  Ian was so excited when he heard, “He is risen!” and he knew to respond, “He is risen, indeed!”  Worship with our congregation was a beautiful, joyous celebration.

I’m already excited about celebrating again next year. I’m hoping to incorporate a lot of the “Sense of the Resurrection” ideas Amanda posted over at impressyourkids.org.  (She also listed tons of other ideas to help you plan a “Meaningful Easter.”)  I also loved some of the ideas from Desiré at whenyourise.com.  What sort of things did you do with your kids to focus on Christ this Easter season?

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Jesus Rides on a Donkey (Palm Sunday)

Posted on by

A few years back, our church started what has become one of my favorite traditions.  On Palm Sunday all the children and youth come into the sanctuary toward the end of the music time waving palm branches as the entire congregation sings “Hosanna” and makes a joyful noise.  It is one of the few times throughout the year that we all worship together, and it is a beautiful experience every time.  So as we went through the Week 31 lesson plan from the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum I was not only trying to teach the Bible story but also prepare Ian and Elijah for this joyous Palm Sunday celebration.  I wanted them to know why we wave the palm branches and to be able to sing along because they had been hearing the song all week.

We kept things pretty simple.  I introduced the story by singing “Hosanna” to the boys.  They looked at me kind of funny, so then I told them it was part of our Bible story and they eagerly gathered around the flannel board to hear Mark 11:1-10.  To be honest, I think they still thought I was a little crazy, but they got into the story more as the week went on.  We read from The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, and The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers, as well as listening to our iPod playlist (see below) several times.  By the end of the week Ian was singing “Hosanna” at the top of his lungs as we drove in the car and asked me to stop singing so he could “do it by myself” (luckily he couldn’t see the Elijah was still singing quietly or I’m sure we would have had some issues).

Of course when Sunday came along, he was too shy to sing along with the congregation, but I think he was pleased that he could have done it if he had so chosen.  And Elijah knew just what to do with his palm branch when he heard the worship team start singing “Hosanna”  I didn’t take any pictures during the service, but the boys brought their branches home to play with later.

Here was our iPod playlist:

I also got out a few of our Easter books that mentioned Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, but I’ll include those in my post on what we do next week as we talk about the death, burial, and especially the resurrection of our Lord.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool
« Older Entries Recent Entries »