Week in Review - Week 6ish

As life gets back to normal, we're once again getting our school routine back.  Daddy is home, grandparents are gone and life is looking more familiar.  I like routine.  I like doing things differently for a while, but it's comforting to me to have a routine to which we can return.  Routine helps me feel less overwhelmed.

So, we only officially did school (besides Monday school) one day this week, and it was Saturday! (oh, the horror!)  It worked well in our schedule though, and the kids don't really know the difference.  The rain has definitely become the norm in the Pacific Northwest, so we needed some fun indoor Saturday things to do any way.

Here's the lesson plan, in case you're interested.

Theme/Lesson:  God Made the Animals

Bible Story:  Creation - Day 6 (zoo animals)

Memory Verse:  Give thanks to God.  - I Thessalonians 2:13

Poem:  The Itsy, Bitsy Spider

Song:  Praise Him

Book of the Week:  Good Night, Gorilla

Letter:  H-K

Number: 1-3

Color:  Green

Shape:  Square

Self-care & Manners:  Place dirty clothes in laundry

Information:  First and Last Name

Fine Motor:  Play with play dough

Gross Motor:  Jump up to hit balloon

We got a head start on this theme a couple weeks ago with Grandpa and Gran when we enjoyed a trip to the Portland Zoo.  The kids are both getting really good at identifying their animals.  I also found this great book A Children's Zoo by Tana Hoban at the library.  Both the kids really enjoy this book.  We've already renewed it once!  The pictures are fantastic and there are very few words.  The back page is a chart of each animal with more specific information for parents.  This is definitely going on the Christmas wish list.

For our Day 6 craft we continued with the circles, but we were able to "multi-learn" as we used Green circles, introducing our color of the week.  I found some old stickers of different animals, so we took a break from glue and enjoyed some sticker action.

Nadia had to be right beside brother.  Thankfully he tolerated her attentions well for a while.

Showing off their work

Not all the stickers were completely accurate portrayals of what animals look like, but I think the kids got the general idea as they successfully identified each animal.

Next they colored their circles a little bit.  Isaiah has been working really hard in OT.  He seems to genuinely enjoy doing more with his hands in the fine motor skills area.

Isaiah decided he needed some space, and he wanted his own tray

 Nadia decided to color a giraffe instead of her circle.  She was quite intent on coloring his nose.  Giraffes are definitely her favorite animal right now.

Both kids enjoy Good Night, Gorilla, which I am pleased to report I found at one of those mega kid sales for a great deal!  We name the animals as they follow the night guard out of the zoo and then his wife back into the zoo.  Besides the armadillo and the hyena, they both have all the animals down cold. Yeah, armadillo and hyena weren't really on my priority list of animals to learn right away.

While they've both enjoyed me singing our memory verse the past several weeks, this week I'm very proud to say that they are both joining me in singing our new verse!  Nadia can almost sing the whole thing, and they both do a great job adding "God" when I wait for them at the end of the line!  Woohoo!

I'm enjoying teaching the kids the "old" songs (as my mama likes to call them), the songs I learned growing up, like Praise Him.  They're getting the rhythm of it even if they don't sing along, and they request for me to sing it again and again and again, and, well, you get the idea.

Nadia loves to take the laundry to the washing machine for me, and both kids help get the clean clothes out of the dryer.  We've been working on that for a while, so I think we can mark that as "successful".

I'm still not great at introducing so many letters at one time, but I'm getting some ideas.  We have been working on our counting though.  Both the kids did well gluing on their 3 apples to our apple tree number worksheet.

To finish the day yesterday, we made a tent with chairs and a quilt in our living room.  And of course when you're camping you must have marshmallows!  I gave each kid a cup and they could have as many marshmallows as they could count, but I only let them count to 3.  I mean, we still had supper to eat after all.

So that was our week, though mostly in a couple days.  I think we'll go ahead and move on to Week 7, since it's several of the same tasks, and both the kids are doing really well with this material.

Have fun learning, and if you want, find lots of great ideas at ABC Jesus Loves Me!