Days 1-3 of Creation

This week will kick off our "Creation Theme" for the year.  

Day 1

I started out by asking Parker if he knew any of the days of the week.  He said "no."  I said them in order and had him repeat after me.  I sang the "Days of the Week," song and had him clap along.  Then we said the date together.  We will be doing this almost everyday.

We reviewed the sounds for A-F, and he remembered them all!  Yay!  Then we learned the sounds for G-L and recited their verses.

Our new verse for this week was,

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." - Genesis 1:1

He ordered numbers 1-10.

We read the creation story in here,

We went back and looked at just Day 1, and sang this song to help us remember.

(To the tune of "Are you sleeping")

God created, God created,

Day and Night, Day and Night.

That was on the first day, That was on the first day.

It was good, It was good.

We went over to the table for our Day 1 craft.  Parker painted the bottom of the #1 with black water color to represent night, and the rest stayed white for day.

Day 2

After singing the days of the week and saying the date, we sang the Apples poem song from last week.  We reviewed sounds A-L, and then learned the sounds and read the verses for M-Q and reviewed our Genesis verse.

He sorted the shapes into two piles - shapes with straight sides and shapes with curvy sides.  

He made the straight-sided shapes out of popsicle sticks.

We sang the Day 1 of Creation song from yesterday, and then read the creation story in this Bible.

We figured out exactly what Day 2 was, and sang the next verse of the song.

God created, God created,

Sky and Clouds, Sky and Clouds.

That was on the second day, That was on the second day.
It was good, It was good.

Then he painted the  #2 with blue water colors.

 

After it dried, he pulled apart cotton balls and glued them on for clouds.

Day 3
We did the "Days of the Week" song, date, sounds and verses for R-W, Genesis verse,
and then he filled in the blanks of the alphabet.

I loved watching Parker do this.  When he wasn't sure, he went back to the beginning and sand the alphabet until he got to the blank. I think he sang it half a dozen times by the time he was done.  What a great way to figure out the right letter!

Next, he did some cutting strips.

I have to give a shout out to my neighbor for letting me borrow her camera until we purchase a new one.  I'm not quite a pro at it yet, hence some the blurry pictures.

He loves cutting! When he was done, we read the creation story out of our third and final Bible.

We sang the first two verses of our creation song, and then added this one.

God created, God created,

Land and Plants, Land and Plants.

That was on the third day, That was on the third day,

It was good, It was good.

Then he painted the #3 green for land.
I think he was kind of over the whole water color thing since it was our third day of doing it.

Then I gave him some squares of tissue paper, had him crumple them up, and then glue them to the #3  to represent more kinds of plants.

You're doing great, Parker!  I'm so glad we're off to a good start =)

Back to School

I wanted our first week back to preschool to be mostly review, just so Parker felt confident in what he already knew and was excited about what he might learn.  I chose to go with an Apple Theme, because that's the best unit ever.  What's not to love about apples?  Here's what we did.

Day 1

We started by having a little pep-talk about how preschool was starting and that I was really excited. We were going to have a lot of fun, I expected him to be a good listener and always try his best. Then we sang one of his favorite songs from last year, "I'm In The Lord's Army."

Then we went through the letter flashcards.  I intended to review these a few times over the summer.  Never once did it happen.  I remember wondering why it was so hard for parents to review things with their kids over the summer, and now I'm one of them.  I understand!! haha.  Lucky for me, he remembered all of them, so we didn't have to spend any extra time going back and re-learning them.  We reviewed the verses from last year, too.  (He didn't remember all of those, but we'll keep reviewing). Then he matched up the lowercase magnets to the uppercase letters.

   We reviewed number flashcards 1-10.  

I started three different patterns with the cubes and he finished them.

Then we read

We were supposed to go to the Apple Orchard, but it was cold and rainy, so we postponed it.

First day in the books.  Not too shabby.  

Day 2

We started with "Walk, Walk, Walk," and "5 Little Ducks."  

Then he put his name in order on the board,

and read over the letters.

We started learning the sounds for letters A-F.  When I was teaching Kindergarten, we would have the students say the picture and then say the sound of the letter.  I'm doing it that way with Parker, too.  He caught on really quickly!  Just as I suspected.  When you don't have to think about what the actual letter is, the sounds come rather easily.

Then we read

I made the different parts of the apple out of felt, and he put them all together to look like an apple. 

We learned the three main parts of an apple -  Peel, Flesh, and Core.  

I gave him two dice to roll.  He counted the dots and put that many seeds in the apple core.

 I just love this picture for some reason.  I feel so blessed to be able to do this with him!

 After he did this five or six times, we read,

I cannot say enough great things about this book!  It describes the parts of the apple and the parts of God in such a simple, yet tangible and real way.  I totally love it =)  I told my parents about the book...they said we had the same one growing up.  How funny!

We cut open an apple and he examined the three parts with his magnifying glass.
He thought that was the coolest thing ever!

We finished by reading

Tomorrow we finally go to the apple orchard!!

Day 3

We went to the orchard between days two and three of preschool.  

We had a great time playing,

 

picking as many colors of apples as we could,

 and eating doughnuts and drinking cider.  

The next day, we reviewed letter sounds and verses and we read through this apples poem.

Then we picked out the rhyming words, and I read it while he filled in the last word of each line.
We sang it to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle."

Next, we did a fine-motor, finger-strenghthening exercise to get him ready to hold a pencil correctly.  I set up the cork board like so...

He grabbed a large push-pin and punched around the lines of the apple.  He seemed to enjoy doing it, and he stayed on the line really well.  He completed the apple and we moved on.

Next, we got out our bowl of apples from the orchard and starting sorting them into categories - 

Small, Medium, Large, followed by
1 color, 2 colors, and 3 colors.

He used his magnifying glass to decide see all of the colors more accurately.

Parker chose an apple and tried to color one like it using various shades of greens and reds.
It was a pretty fun process to watch.

We read one of our favorite apple books from last year...

Then we tasted a bunch of different kinds of apples, and made apple cider waffles.  Mmmm!

That was a great start to our school year!  I'm excited to start digging into the "meat" next week!