My Father's world - Ss is for Sun

So we are up to the third week of our new curriculum and we are still loving it!  This week was Ss is for Sun and our words to remember were "Jesus is the light of the world."

Here is a look at some of the things we got up to!

Our letter 's' book

Tracing the letter S

Tracing sandpaper letters for pre-writing.

Introduction to the letter of the week.  Samuel already knows all of his letters and sounds so we are focusing on identifying words that begin and end with the sounds.

Completing our bookwork!

Nathanael had his own activities to do while Samuel was doing "school" with Mummy.

Our Bible words to remember this week were, "Jesus is the light of the world!"  Part of the program is to make badges each week to help remember the words to remember.  We made ours into necklaces instead.

The topic for the week was the sun so we of course we made a sun!  We threaded yellow and orange straw pieces onto pipe cleaners to make the rays and then painted the plates.  Samuel decided to do his in an aba pattern without me even asking - that is maths done for day!  I love the tongue sticking out as Nathanael concentrates on his threading.  :)

Sun paintings.  There's that tongue again!!

We experimented by putting some objects on cardboard and leaving them out in the sun for an hour to see what would happen.  There wasn't much sun this week but it still works.  The boys were quite amazed at what happened.

I made some "space" playdough for the boys and added our space toob.  It was played with many times during the week.

Later in the week, the big kids joined in and together they all created a space station on the moon, complete with superhero and pirate peg people.  They are all having a nap in this photo!

Liam got out our space game and tried to teach the little ones how to play.  In the end they just made up their own version which just involved using the rocket playing pieces and making them blast off!

We had a great week and are looking forward to continuing with our space theme next week with Mm is for Moon.

Linking up at Homeschool Creations Preschool and Kindergarten Community

My Father's World - Creation Week 2

This week we finished up our introductory creation unit.  It was quite a short week with a public holiday Monday, our usual homeschool group on Wednesday and then visitors on Friday.  So only 2 days to finish up days 5, 6 and 7!!

DAY 5
On day 5, God made the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.

Our favourite activity to day was making nutella and cornflake bird feeders for our magpie friends.  We covered toilet rolls with nutella and then rolled them in crushed cornflakes and hung them outside in the trees.  Samuel decided he wanted to try and hand feed the magpies and spent quite a while sitting on the ground holding onto his feeder while 3 or 4 magpies took it in turns to come and take some of the food.  He was so excited!

After watching him do this for a while I though I would see if Nathanael wanted to join us.  Turns out he decided he quite liked the taste of the bird feeder and had licked his clean!!  Oh well, that was morning tea taken care of!

Day 5 also saw the fish being created so we did some crayon resist pictures.  the night before I drew some underwater scenes in white crayon and then had the boys paint over them with blue dye.  They were quite amazed to see the picture appearing as they painted.  After they finished painting we glued some fish onto their oceans.

For our sensory play today I made an ocean box with coloured gelatin fish, and starfish.  Both boys loved this and spent close to an hour scooping, pouring and squishing until we were left with a gooey, soggy gelatin mess!!

DAY 6 and DAY 7

On day 6, God made the land animals and man.  On day 7, God rested.

After a really busy week we didn't have much time to do much school work so our activity for day 6 was nice and simple.  I had some large animal stickers so we simply stuck them onto a piece of page.  Fast, simple but still fun for little ones!!  For Adam and Eve we used our foam "paper dolls" and made one man and one woman.

For day 7 we made a picture of a bed!!  We then played some games with our creation timeline and matching pictures of what was made each day.

We had a fun two weeks reviewing the creation story and are really looking forward to beginning the first of our unit studies next week!

Linking up at Homeschool Creations Preschool and Kindergarten community link up. 

What's On the Shelf - November - Farm

We had a break from themes during October and enjoyed the school holidays and a slow start back into some more structured learning.  We are all ready for a new theme for November though - Farms.

I am really excited about this theme as we have lots planned.  We kicked it off last week with a trip to Kelmscott High Farm.  It is quite an amazing school.  We got to hold and interact with chickens, rabbits, and sheep in the animal nursery.  Then we were taken to see a cow being milked and where they shear the sheep.  Outside we were able to feed the horses, goats and alpacas and then toured the veggie garden where we got to pick some oranges and lemons to bring home.  As we were leaving we were lucky enough to see them bring out a new calf and try and get it to feed off a surrogate cow!   Here a few photos from our day out.

This month, as well as our inside "school" we have new veggie gardens to plant and we are going to make a scarecrow to try and keep those pesky crows away.  Maybe we should put one in our chook pen so they will stop stealing all of our eggs!

Here is a sneak peek of what is on our shelves for out theme this month:

Firstly, our small world farm sensory table, complete with grain silo to practice scooping and pouring, pigs in mud, ducks in a pond and lots of animals to feed.

We also have a few different farms sets to play with including an Ikea farm, a Little People farm and  Mega Blocks Farm.

On our shelves we have:

Sunflower seeds to scoop and pour.

Animal magnets on a cookie sheet to sort as farm animals or not farm animals.

Our Leap Frog farm animal matching set.

Cotton reels to practice lacing

Our UNO moo game

Farm pictures of either 1 or 2 syllables and pegs to select the correct amount

Colour fun puzzles

Fruit and vegetables to sort into a three part tray with our kiddy tongs

Farm strips for cutting practice

What's in the Web?  Beginning sounds practice.

Pig Number Game.  Roll the dice, count the dots and find the matching number to cover with a magnet.

Some laminated farm tracing pages and whiteboard markers.

Another beginning sounds game.

Washing farm animals.  A spray bottle to wet them, toothbrush for scrubbing and cloth to dry.

Matching farm animal mothers and babies.  WE also have some plastic farm animals to match to the cards.

Matching the correct colour pegs to the horses.  Good for strengthening those little fingers!

And finally, some farm animal do-a-dot pictures and dot paints.

We are ready for a busy, busy month!!

Linking up to Tot School at 1+1+1=1