Q: Quail

Our letter Q unit dealt with birds, particularly quails. We read the Bible story from Numbers 11 about how the Israelites wailed and complained because they didn't have the kind of food they wanted. God was very angry with them and even though he sent them quail to eat, he also sent a plague on them where many of them died. We talked about how God does not like complaining and that we need to learn to be thankful and content with whatever God gives us.

Our words to remember were "I don't grumble or complain; I am thankful" and we made quail-shaped badges with those words on them. We also read the following verses from the Bible:

"...I have learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:11-13

"Do everything without complaining or arguing." Philippians 2:14


We weren't able to do all the activities recommended in the curriculum for this unit, such as going outside and looking for feathers and listening for different types of birds. Most of the birds around here are gone for the Winter, so that makes it a little difficult. We were able to do a few fun bird-related activities though...

We talked about how feathers have a protective oil on them. To demonstrate this, we made two feather out of construction paper. With the green feather, we just put water on it and watched the water soak into the paper. With the red feather, we first coated it with cooking oil and then dropped some water on it.

See how the water on the red paper feather beaded up? We discussed why this would be beneficial and helpful for birds.

A letter Q dot to dot page
(www.makinglearningfun.com)

A letter Q/q tracing page
(http://www.dltk-teach.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/image/btraceq.gif)

We read "The Biggest House in the World" by Leo Lionni, which was a sad story of a snail who was not content. After reading the story, Madison painted two pictures of the snail. One of the little snail and his house (the one on the right side), and another of the little snail with the biggest house in the world (the one on the left side). We talked about which snail was content and what happened to both snails.

"Even an Ostrich Needs a Nest" by Irene Kelly was a fun book describing all the various types of nests that birds build, and the various materials they use to build them. There were so many fascinating and interesting nests that I never knew about. Look up sometime how a female tailorbird sews a leaf together to make a tiny pouch for her nest. It's amazing!

In "Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories" by Dr. Seuss, we read the story of Gertrude McFuzz. Gertrude has only one feather and is not happy. She eats greedily from a pill-berry vine and ends up with so many feathers that she can't fly. Therefore, she learns to be content. After reading the story, we compared it to the story we read in Numbers 11 and then I had Madison illustrate the story of Gertrude McFuzz.

Madison's illustrations.

The Eyewitness Book "Bird" by David Burnie had a great deal of information about birds (and every aspect pertaining to them). It was a bit wordy so we just looked through some of the pictures and talked about them.

We read "Birds" by Kevin Henkes and attempted to make our foam lowercase "q" into a quail. (See? It's a quail. Really it is. Just squint a little. And maybe tilting your head slightly will help.)

The kids really enjoyed playing a Name-the-Bird game together. We sat in a circle and one person had a ball. That person had to say the name of a bird and then throw the ball to someone else. The person who caught the ball had to say the name of a bird and throw it, and so on. It was fun hearing the various types of birds that they came up with, and it was a game they wanted to play for several days. (It worked well to do this game after we had read some books on the different types of birds.)


We only have one more lesson in this curriculum and then we will have reached the end. We have decided to move on with 1st Grade material, even though the school year is only half over. I know it seems crazy to have moved through Kindergarten in just four months, but in our defense, Madison already had a jump-start on a lot of the things emphasized in this curriculum, so we ended up skipping much of it. I have a feeling that the 1st Grade material will be a good level for her to be at, and I honestly doubt that we will make it through 1st Grade in as fast a time that we did Kindergarten. We'll be continuing on with My Father's World, and I look forward to seeing my daughter continuing to excel in school. I'm so proud of what she has accomplished and learned, and I definitely consider our homeschooling journey a success, thus far.

So stay tuned for our final Kindergarten lesson to come!