Giving Thanks

Today we took a break from our "usual" school topics and learned about Thanksgiving. I started off our school time by reading a couple Psalms that dealt with giving God thanks and praise for all his blessings - Psalm 107:1 and Psalm 100:4. Then we did a variety of Thanksgiving-themed activities.

We read "A Children's Thanksgiving Story", which told the story of the first Thanksgiving in a very simplified way. I found the story on this website:
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/thanksgiving/short-stories/the-first-thanksgiving.html


"P is for Pilgrim" by Carol Crane
This had Thanksgiving related topics and stories for each letter of the alphabet. Some of it was a bit "wordy" for my kids so I just gave summaries of the stories, but it was still a very good book to learn about Thanksgiving in my opinion.

Madison made a turkey-shaped Thanksgiving book
(http://www.abcteach.com/free/members/21977.pdf)

My family...
a picture of Noah, Madison, Daddy, and Mommy

We will eat...
her pictures include a turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, corn, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

My favorite food is...
tacos

I am thankful for...
(our) house

A turkey dot-to-dot
(http://www.bigactivities.com/ctd/thanksgiving/turkeys/turkey.html)
and a turkey maze
(http://www.first-school.ws/t/preschool-mazes/turkey.html)

Thanksgiving Addition pages.
(http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm)

We read "Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks" by Margaret Sutherland. This book was about various things that a child was thankful for. After reading the book, we made a Giving Thanks Tree. I found a tree branch outside and put in a glass jar. I filled the jar with rocks so that it would stand upright. I had cut some leaves out of red, orange, and yellow construction paper, and the kids had to come up with things they were thankful for. We wrote those things on the leaves, punched holes in them, tied pieces of yarn to them, then hung them on the tree. The things they were thankful for ranged from apples, to birthdays, to rollerskating, to food, to Daddy. I tried not to let it bother me too much that Daddy made the thankful list, but Mommy didn't. :-)
(idea from http://familycrafts.about.com/od/thanksgiving/a/GivingThanksTree.htm)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jazzy Jewels

"Jesus is more valuable than anything else."

For our lesson on jewels, we talked about how expensive and valuable various gemstones are, and we also thought of other things that we considered valuable. After talking about our ideas, we discussed how Jesus is much more valuable than they are.

Philippians 3:8
"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ."

Matthew 16:26
"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Our jewel badge with our words to remember written on it.

For an art activity, the kids made their own jewelry from yarn, pieces of play dough, noodles, drinking straws, and aluminum foil.

The finished necklaces

We read "A Cache of Jewels" by Ruth Heller. (FYI: it did contain one reference to witches)

A couple nonfiction books that I used along with this lesson were "Gems and Minerals" by Susan Harris, and a book from the Childcraft collection (it's kind of like an encyclopedia for kids) that I got for free at a rummage sale this summer. This particular volume in the set was "World and Space" and it had a section on precious stones that we read.

We also read "Dave's Down-to-Earth Rock Shop" by Stuart J. Murphy. It did have a couple references to certain rocks being millions of years old, but I just omitted those parts. Although the book wasn't specifically about jewels or gems, what I liked about it was that in the story, the characters were sorting their rocks in various ways, just like we did last week with our rocks. It would have been nice to have read this book at that time, but it hadn't come in at the library yet. It was still a good review for us now, though.

We made our lowercase "j" into a sparkling jewel.

Here is the progress of our growing crystals.

We'll be doing a Thanksgiving lesson tomorrow, then we'll be headed out of town on Wednesday for our Thanksgiving celebration with extended family. I pray that you all have a blessed Thanksgiving Day!

Rockin' It

Continuing on with our unit study on rocks and minerals...


One of the features we discussed about rocks was that they are not alive. We talked about what it meant to be alive, gave examples of things that were alive and things that were not alive, then I had Madison draw pictures of both categories.

Not Alive
The things she came up with were a pencil, paper, a shirt, pants, shoes, a volcano, a car, a house, rocks, a chair, a dresser, and a TV.

In her Alive category, she drew pictures of girls, a flower, grass, a dog, a duck, and a bird.

For a fun art project the kids painted rocks, then I painted the letters of their names on them.

We are attempting to make rock candy. I realize that this project takes some time, and as you can see, our string only has a few little candy crystals on it. Hopefully they will grow larger because my kids are really excited about this!

The recipe we used for the rock candy came from this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Rock-Candy

We talked about crystals and about the various things that are made from crystals.

I found this crystal growing kit at our Family Dollar store, and like our rock candy, we are still in the process of seeing our crystals grow.

Here is what they look like as of today.

We spent one day discussing volcanoes in depth. We read through this book, "Volcanoes" and talked about how volcanoes are made of rock, and lava (magma) is hot, melted rock.

I really wanted to show the kids how a volcanic rock floats, and my husband thought he might have found a volcanic rock for us. It definitely looked like one, however, when we put it in water, it sunk. I guess looks can be deceiving.

We created our own volcano out of homemade play dough. We put baking soda inside it, then we poured tinted vinegar into it. The kids really had fun watching our volcano "erupt".

Here is the video of our volcano erupting.

One final rock-themed activity that I wanted to accomplish was reading the old folk story "Stone Soup" and then making our own stone soup for supper one day. I requested the book from the library quite some time ago but it still hasn't come in, and we are ready to move on from our rock lesson. I think what I might have to do is find the story online and read it to the kids, because I just don't know how much longer the book is going to take to come in at the library.

Our next theme is Jewels/Gems, so it should be a pretty easy transition from rocks and minerals.

Rock On!

"I listen and obey; I build my life on the Rock."

We have been learning about rocks and The Rock - Jesus Christ. There is so much to do in this unit that this is one that will actually take us all week to complete.

We started off the unit by learning the story of the wise and foolish builders from Matthew 7:24-27. Then I taught the kids the song "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock." We discussed why it was foolish for the man to build his house on the sand and how we can be more like the wise man who built his house on the rock. We talked about how when we listen to Jesus' words and obey Him, it is like we are building our house on the rock.

We headed outside to go on a "rock walk", but we didn't have to go far. Our driveway is made completely up of rocks, so we collected a bunch of them to use for various activities.

We first counted how many rocks we collected - there were 79 in all. Then we spent quite a bit of time examining the various colors, textures, sizes, and kinds of rocks. We briefly learned about the major kinds of rocks - igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. However, those are big words and big concepts for a Kindergarten class, so we didn't spend too much time on them. But we were able to compare some of the rocks that we had collected in our driveway, to some of the examples shown in the books we had read.

Then we did some sorting. We sorted them according to size, then we sorted them according to color. Each time we sorted them, we determined which group had the most rocks, and which group had the least amount of rocks.

We did a little science experiment called Sink or Float? I collected a variety of items and the kids had to guess whether they thought the item would sink or float when they put it in a container of water. Here you can see that the yellow ball floated.

But all of our rocks sank. We learned that there is only one type of rock that actually floats and that is a volcanic rock. However, since I'm fresh out of volcanic rocks, we weren't able to see the example of a floating rock.

I had the kids draw pictures of the items in the Float and Sink categories, based on what we found in the experiment.

Float
a yellow, plastic ball
a plastic spoon
a pine cone
a frog tub toy
a ping pong ball
*a pink Mega Block

Sink
a paperclip
a key
a plastic, toy ring
a toy dinosaur
a small rock
a large rock
*a pink Mega Block

*Did you notice the pink Mega Block ended up in both categories? That's because it initially floated, but once it filled up with water, it sank. So we decided to include it in both categories.

We spent some time arranging the rocks in fun shapes and designs.

And we even spelled Noah's name with them.

I loved this book, "Rocks! Rocks! Rocks!" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. It was perfect for explaining concepts like bedrock, erosion, and how rocks are formed, in a story format with language that was easy for the kids to understand.

Here are a couple other books we read:
"The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth" by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen (It did briefly mention that seas and rock layers were formed millions or billions of years ago, but I just skipped over that portion.)
"Rocks & Minerals" by Dr. R. F. Symes (This book is for older students because it is more "wordy", but we have been looking at pictures of the various kinds of rocks in it.)

We read "A Rock Grows Up" by Randi and Michael Goodrich, which again, is probably geared more towards older kids. There was a storyline to the book though, and even though there were some big words and concepts in the book, the kids enjoyed hearing the story and looking at the pictures.

We also decorated our lowercase "r" by hot gluing rocks to it.

More on rocks in the days to come!

More Than Just Crafts

As you may have noticed in my posts, we do a lot of artsy-crafty projects in our lessons. I have a very crafty, hands-on-learning daughter, and I knew when I first started considering homeschooling, that in order for it to work for her, I would need to have plenty of art projects worked into our studies. However, I don't want you think that is all we do here. Yes, those are the things I tend to feature in my posts, but just so you know, we do some of the "usual" worksheet-type learning as well. I try to mix them in and around other fun activities because I have found with Madison, if I do too many worksheets, she becomes bored, distracted, and frustrated with school. Then, when that happens, the learning isn't taking place, and I am failing at my "job". I realize that our methods of schooling don't work for everyone, but here is what I have found to work for us, and I have been happy with our system, thus far. I'm confident that as we continue on this homeschooling journey, things will likely be tweaked. But I'm okay with that.

This is a real example of what I do for my lesson planning each day. I make a general outline of the things I want to accomplish in school that day, then I mark them off as we do them. Sometimes, not all the items get check-marked. Those items just get carried over to the next day then. I don't assign specific times to our activities and I definitely don't do things in the same order every day, with the exception of Bible time. I always start off our school day with Bible time. I also make note of any other extra activities we have going on that day, just to help me remember them.

The curriculum for My Father's World is pretty well laid out, and although I do not follow it exactly, I like to use it as a springboard for our lessons. They have things planned out over the course of an entire week, but for us, I have condensed the material into 2-3 days per lesson. It's a good pace for us, even though we are getting through the material much quicker than is intended.

(Click to enlarge the image)

I try to get at least one of the recommended reading books for each lesson. Sometimes I am unable to find any of their suggested books at our library, so I'll try to find something similar to substitute with. Other times, I am able to find more than one book that they suggest, and I'll do all the books I have found.

Our curriculum comes with several worksheets to complete with each lesson. The following worksheets shown, with the exception of the letter tracing sheet, are the standard worksheets in each lesson. They change with each letter we work on, of course, but otherwise they are basically the same.

She has to determine which pictures begin with the letter we are working on. The pictures that don't begin with that letter get marked.

She cuts out the word strips, reads the word, then glues it on the correct picture.

A short story that she has to read

This is kind of like a spelling test. I tell her a word to spell, she has to determine which row it goes on (because the vowels are already printed on the sheet), then she writes the entire word on the line.

For this page, Madison reads me the words in each row, then I pick one of the words and tell her to circle it (or mark it some other way).

Letter Envelopes - each picture shown begins with the letter that we are working on for that lesson. She cuts the pictures out and puts them in an envelope with the specific letter taped to the front. We have played a game where I will take all the pictures out from all the letters we have worked on up to that point, and she has to sort them in groups with the same beginning letter.

I usually have some sort of letter tracing sheet for each letter we do.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we LOVE Bob books! They have really helped Madison along in her reading abilities, and we try to have her read a book or two each day as a part of our schooling.

During our math time, we use craft sticks to help Madison learn to count to 100. Each day she counts the number of sticks we have in a jar, and then we add one more stick to the jar. The number of sticks that we have for that day is recorded on the chart below. Every time we get 10 sticks, we bundle them together. This has helped her learn how to count by 10's.

And that, combined with our art projects, pretty much sums up our lessons in their entirety. If you have any questions or want me to clarify anything, leave me a comment!