Creation Days 2 and 3

So, we started off our learning about the Creation week with a bang! First we learned about light and dark in day 1 and then painted about it.

We kept up with our crazy Creation book, so here goes.

Day 2 God created separated the sky from the waters, so I followed the instructions in the "My Father's World" curriculum to make the craft, and have suggestions for changing it if you do this.

Here's what we did:

Get paper, blue and green.


Tear blue and green papers in half. Glue the blue on the top half and the green on the bottom. Then color blue all over the green paper. This didn't turn out well.

Instead I'd suggest a piece of blue paper and you color the bottom half with paint and crayons. Coloring with the crayons first and then using water colors afterwards to do a crayon resist.

What did work for us: We added cotton balls at the top to represent the clouds that formed.



Day 3

So on Day 3 God made separated the waters from the land and made all of the plants and stuff. This takes a little prep ahead of time.



A couple of days beforehand pick some leaves. Find a nice big phonebook and stick them in there between some paper towels.

The day of gather cardstock, blue and green construction paper (use the other half of the sheet from Day 2), glue, markers, and a small cup or bucket of dirt.


Glue the blue paper on the bottom, cover part of the blue with the green for the land.


If you're Batman, you need all of your green paper, and then all scraps of your brother and sister. It took a lot of glue for that all to stick down.

Now take your papers, a bottle of glue and go outside for the dirt. Paint glue randomly on the green area.


Then happily sprinkle as much dirt on your paper as you can.




Show off what you've done so far.

Then, while they're napping, you come in with the super breakable plants, why did I pick feverfew? It'd break into little bitty pieces if I let them do this part. Spread the glue all over and put the little pieces of plants on. Actually I know why I picked it, because I think it looks like a tree on the paper.


For more great kid crafts go to Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

For the last part go here.

Finishing up the Summer Swap stuff

I posted earlier about making our Texas books.

Now, I'm going to show you the games. To get the printables, go to the above link.

First we colored the file folders, why? Because Superman loves to color, and needs to color EVERYTHING!


Does anyone else think it's weird that Batman is super focused in the picture but everything else is slightly blurry? I think it looks cool, but I have no idea how I did it.

 

Now glue on the pictures. If you have older kids they could cut it out by themselves, but my little guys I didn't want to try and do that, so I cut it out.

Now for the Mommy parts of the putting together. Laminate, then cut out again. Then you get velcro dots or velcro strips cut into squares and stick them all on. I did this while watching TV with my husband as the kids slept. This works much better with no kids awake.


Completed Game

Oh, and important thing I learned. Markers will blur the words slightly, so you might want to color with crayon. That and sometimes the marker is so dark you can't see what the word says.

We have one other item we made for the swap, but I'm not going to post that until next week, so the people getting them see it first.

Who will I marry

Now that I've got your attention, let me tell you a funny story, that really shows a lot of thinking skills from Batman. Or maybe this is just an excuse to post a wedding photo

As we sat at dinner on Monday talking over the day and such things the kids started going back over again the different family relationships. Jeff said that I was his wife, so then they started trying to figure out what that means. So Batman said, "and Mommy is my wife too?" Well, this could be a slight problem, so we explained I couldn't be his wife because I'm married to Daddy.

The next natural question came, "then who will I marry?" I don't know, you don't get married for a very long time.

So, he thinks on this a little bit, and then comes up with a brilliant plan! Obviously if he can't marry Mommy, then he should marry Princess! He was very disappointed when he learned he couldn't marry his sister.

The conversation eventually dropped, and I thought it was all over...... Little did I know.



So, yesterday they were playing with a neighbor girl and got into their closet. At this point the only thing we store in their closet is outgrown clothes. He found his ring bearer outfit from when his Uncle Sean and Aunt Jenn got married. So he puts it on and shows it to me. I say, "That's what you wore when Uncle Sean and Aunt Jenn got married."

"Oh, I got married?"

"No, you helped when Uncle Sean got married."

"Oh, I wear this when I get married?"



Sigh, I can see he's still working through this, but it'll get there soon. I'm sure. Or at least I hope so, it did take about 2 weeks for them to work through about my Dad being dead, so I foresee another long 2 weeks.

Hey, I've done pretty good, 2 posts, emails answered, and checked a few things on facebook, all within a few minutes of my 30 minute goal

Great Read Alouds

This is going to be a quick post, but I love storytelling and reading aloud, so I wanted to join this week's picnic talk

Here's my favorite read alouds:

Bear Snores On, Karma Wilson (the entire series is great)
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night, Jane Yolen (who has some excellent young adult novels)
Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat
Monster Musical Chairs, Stuart J Murphy
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Goodnight Moon, Margaret Brown (okay, I think I like that one more than my kids do)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The Very Busy Spider
The Very Quiet Cricket

Admittedly those are all books you've probably read to your kids a thousand times as well, but there's a reason for that. They're well crafted and the pictures are great. It's fun to read it out loud, and it's fun to listen to it being read.

Some less known ones, that are good as well, that I just thought of (sorry, I'm adding these as I think of them).

Stellaluna, __________Cannon (I think Jannell, no guarantees)
Crickwing, ____________ Cannon (these are both longer, so think older preschool or a 2 year old with a longer attention span)
The Poky Little Puppy
The Tawny Scrawny Lion
The Saggy Baggy Elephant (these last 3 are all classic Golden Books, again there's a reason they're a classic)


As to oral storytelling, I tend to use this as a way to entertain my kids in long lines. Recently our obsession has been with "Going on a Bear Hunt," which I learned originally as a chant to do at camp with lots of actions. I was a little confused as a teenager to discover that it's a book also.

A great game for when your kids are elementary age, or are starting to write stories is Once Upon a Time. I'm horrid at it, but it has fabulous pictures and is a great way to work on your storytelling.

Well, I was going to include a link to the "book" I wrote for the kids about their adventures as superheroes..... But, I can't find it, and since I have like 5 minutes left on my self-imposed timer, you'll have to miss out for now. For all I know it's timed out of their files because it was a year or so ago.

That's what I have to say about storytelling in this short amount of time. For more great ideas and picnic talk go to ABC and 123.

Giveaway: Hands on Homeschooling year 2

This is a great curriculum for 2 year olds!

I used it with my boys, and kept with some of the ideas with Princess.

Here's a link to the Curriculum itself: Hands on Homeschooling.

This is great even if you're not homeschooling, just looking for some fun ides to do with your kids. This is a great bargain for you because this curriculum is selling for $80!

Here's how to enter:

1. First entry. Tell me about your favorite learning website.
2. Follow me.
3. F- okay that's just because the first two started with F, seriously find something I've talked about you'd love to know more about.

For more great giveaways go to Curriculum Clean-Out