JSB: Week 3 - The Terrible Lie

"The Terrible Lie" (pgs. 28-37) continues the story of Adam and Eve in the garden and their interaction with the serpent.

The verse for the week was:

"Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" Genesis 3:1b

Our vocabulary for the week was: perfect, sin, promise and forever. Some of these ideas were hard for A and E to understand but it at least got us talking about some new topics.

For our math time we  used our Testament Cards and Creation Cards from the previous two weeks. (Part of our math was also tied into our science time.)

In science we learned about gardens. Watch Me Plant a Garden by Jack Otten and A Garden Full of Sizes by Simone T. Ribke were some books we read to learn about gardens. A Garden Full of Sizes talks about big and small, tall and short, thick and thin, etc. It was helpful to look around the house for items that fit these descriptions.

For our art project we cut out a tree and glued it down. The girls could then draw animals or Adam and Eve in the garden. It was a really easy art project but both girls seemed to have a great time drawing and coloring.

Valentine's Day

We took a little time out to celebrate Valentine's Day. (Sorry it is a little late, you can save it for another day if you want.) We started off the day by reading about Valentine's Day. Nancy Skarmeas has a beginners book about the Story of Valentine's Day. I also have a tradition of getting my husband a children's book on Valentine's Day so we read some of those too. Some of my favorites are: I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warburg and Jacqueline Chwast, How Do I Love You by Marion Dane Bauer, I Love You Through and Through by Bernadette Rossetti Shustak. Of course there is always You are Special by Max Lucado. (We have many others, but this gives you an idea!)

We then made cards to give to Daddy when he got home.

Next on our list of activities was to make a special treat for dinner that night. I took a 9" square pan and a 9" round pan and baked a cake. I took the square pan and put it on point. I then cut the circle cake in half and put a half circle on each side of the square. We made pink frosting and put on some  sprinkles in the shape of a heart. Voila!

Our heart cake creation to celebrate Valentine's Day! Yummy.

Earlier in the morning, before we got up, my sweet husband had set up a treasure hunt for the girls. However, they never noticed the first clue. So when he came home we told them about the first clue that was posted at the table. After we read it to them they slowly got the idea of what was happening and went to work looking for clues.( I am glad they never noticed that first clue so he was able to see them enjoy figuring out the clues to get their treasure.)

A pulling out the toaster to look for a clue.

A found a clue in the living room.

A and E with some of their clues and the treasure they found!

I had planned to make a salt dough necklace with them in the afternoon. However, we were having some behavior issues so we had to take a break from our activities. I guess it will have to be saved for another day.

What fun things were you up to this Valentine's Day?

JSB: Week 2 - The Beginning: A Perfect Home

 This week we started into the actual Bible stories. A Perfect Home (pgs. 18-27) deals with creation. The verse we did for the week was a paraphrase  from Genesis 1:

"In the beginning God created...and God saw that it was good."

Our vocabulary for the week was: life, create/creation.

The song we sang was For the Beauty of the Earth. Here is the first and second verse with the refrain in between. (This is one of my favorite hymns and I really enjoyed singing it with A and E.)

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.

Refrain

Lord of all, to Thee we raise,
This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of each hour,
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon, and stars of light.

For math time we worked on sequencing the days of creation. I made these Creation Cards to help A and E learn the order of creation. On the back of each card I wrote the day (numerical and word) and what was created. This allowed us to work on number recognition and ordering of the numbers along with what was created each day.

A and E putting the creation days in order.

For science we looked at animals, ocean, space and earth. We are big readers in our house and we found some pretty good books at our local library. Space by Penelope Arlon was pretty good. It was a little advanced for us and dealt with more than we wanted but it was a good start. We also enjoyed An Ocean of Animals by Janine Scott and The Ocean by Susan Ring.  These two books were more along our reading level and interest and gave us a good beginning on learning about the ocean. Day and Night by Robin Nelson was also good in learning about the sun, moon and stars. I also had A and E pick out some books about animals that we will be reading for the next few weeks too. A picked ladybugs and E pick out elephants. (I will share about those in the next post.)

We had another great art project this week. The website No Time for Flashcards has a great listing of ideas for making all sorts of different animals. You can go here to see all of her great projects. I picked panda bears because it looked fun and easy for us to do.

E coloring her panda.

A putting her panda together.

E finishing up her panda bear face.

JSB: Week 1 - The Story and the Song

Our first week doing our lessons went really well! We started off with The Story and the Song (pgs 12-17). For this week our verse was:

"The Heavens are singing about how great God is; and the skies are shouting it out, "See what God has made!"  Psalm 19:1

Our vocabulary for the week was: hero, mistake and rescue. We talked about these words before we read the story each day. I have them written on the wall so we can look at them and start working on word recognition.

The song we sang was All Things Bright and Beautiful. Here is the refrain:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

For our math time I took pictures of different people found in the Old Testament and New Testament. I printed off these Testament Cards and we worked on sorting them into their appropriate Testaments. We also practiced their names.

Here is A working on sorting some people.

We didn't do much with science or history this week (but next week is full of wonderful things).

Our art project was fun. I had A and E find some things that were "treasures" to them. We put them out and took a picture. I printed off one picture for each of the girls. They picked out a piece of construction paper to glue it to. We flipped it over and drew lines on the back and they practiced their cutting skills. We ended up with a picture puzzle of their treasures. They both had so much fun with this.

E gluing her picture down.

A cutting her picture into puzzle pieces.

E is ready to put her puzzle back together.

Jesus Storybook Bible Beginning

Last week we started working on some new lessons using the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. The art work in this Bible is beautiful and every story points back to Jesus as our Savior. I picked this particular children's Bible because A and E really like reading this one and I wanted to encourage them in their spiritual learning

When I first started brainstorming ideas for this unit I couldn't find much online. So, I decided to do my own. I was a teacher for awhile, so why not?!

When creating the lessons I wanted to include the following based on each story we read:
- A memory verse that relates back to the story.
- Some vocabulary from each story.
- At least one song. (I am trying to pick hymns because my kids listen to popular Christian songs on the radio and at church.)
- Something to tie to science, history and/or math.
-  An art project, of course!

We have done one week and will let you know all about it soon!