K is for Kangaroo

Kangaroos have been the topic around here for the past couple days. We had a lot of fun learning various facts about them, particularly in the area of protecting their young. Just as baby kangaroo finds safety in its mother's pouch, we talked about how God wants to keep us safe too, especially from things that can hurt us spiritually. He wants us to stay close to Him so He can protect us.

We made kangaroo-shaped badges (sorry, no picture) with our words to remember written on them: "I am safe in God." We read verses on finding safety in God - Psalm 4:8, Psalm 16:1, and Psalm 31-29-20 - and talked about how they applied to our lesson.

Here are some highlights from of our kangaroo-themed lesson:

I had a couple of new students in my class yesterday!

One thing we learned about kangaroos is that they have the ability to jump up to 40 feet, in one bound. To demonstrate just how far that was, I measured how far the kids could jump. Madison went 4 feet, Noah 1.5 feet. Then we measured out 40 feet. See our marker just to the right of Madison's shoulder? That was 40 feet. The kids were amazed, and I was too! Forty feet is quite the distance!

We made kangaroo pencil holders using paper cups for the pouches, craft sticks for the feet and necks, and brown paper for the tails and faces. I probably should have just printed off a picture of a kangaroo to glue on as the head because as you can see, I'm no artist. I thought they turned out to look more like cats, but the kids were happy with them, so I left them as is.
(http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2009/10/k-is-for-kangaroo-weekly-homeschool.html)

We learned that kangaroos live in Australia, so we looked up where Australia is located on our globe, in our World Atlas, and then labeled it on our world map. We also read a fun story called "Who's Upside Down?" by Crockett Johnson. In the story, a kangaroo in Australia studies a picture of the earth in a geography book and decides she must be upside down.

We have some friends who are now missionaries in Australia, and we talked about how they probably see kangaroos on a frequent basis now. One of their girls was in my daughter's Awana and Sunday School classes, so it was neat to be able to add more of a personal connection to this lesson.

We read a cute story called "Joey Runs Away" and then made our foam lowercase "k" into a kangaroo.
(http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/02/now-i-know-my-abcs-k-is-for-kangaroo.html)

"The Kangaroo" by Sabrina Crewe
"Katy No-Pocket" by Emmy Payne

After reading "Katy No-Pocket", Madison illustrated her own picture of Katy the Kangaroo, and all the animals listed in the book.

"Guess Who Hops" by Sharon Gordon
"Young Kangaroo" by Margaret Wise Brown

After reading "Guess Who Hops", we talked about the various animals that can hop, and then Madison drew pictures of all that we came up with. She titled her picture "Hop and Hop Hop Hop". Along with a kangaroo, she thought of a frog, a grasshopper, a bunny, herself, a butterfly, and a bee. For those last two, she reasoned that they maybe hop while they are on the flowers, so I let her go with it.

Stay tuned for the Zebra lesson!