Homeschooling November 2013 Part 5

Inspiration...

Insanity! Yes, this workout is pure Insanity (that's its name).  My kids love "doing" it with me. It is part of our homeschooling schedule at least once a week. I really try to do it more, but at this time, it would be very unrealistic, so we are happy with what we can do.

We have wildlife around here and that includes coyotes, scorpions, rattlesnakes and wild burros! Yes, wild burros! Can you believe it?  I was driving by the other day and these people were wanting to feed them. Are they serious? Do they understand that if they get fed, they will keep coming back? Wild burros are dirty and they leave traces of where they've been all over the roads. Gross.

Fun

These are the sweet potato rolls that I made for the women's Bible study. They were delicious! For the recipe, click here.

Sending Christmas cards to deployed troops is fun. You never know who will be blessed by them, but we do know that they will enjoy reading the cards. One movie I like to watch every winter is called "The Christmas Card" and how blessed the soldier was by receiving a card from back home.

Bible: God made all flowers (craft for toddlers and preschoolers)

To see and share just this post, click here.
Are you looking for a super fun, quick, cheap and meaningful craft for a rainy day (like in our case)?
Look no further! Here it is! "God Made All Flowers"

Materials:
- 1 sheet of construction paper or card stock for each child
- liquid glue
- markers, crayons or both
- cupcake liners (solid colors, with patterns, whatever you have)

Most important step: Talk with the children about God and how He created all flowers in the world.

Optional: Show children pictures of different kinds of flowers or take a nature walk and play the iSpy Flowers Game. Smell the flowers that you find.

For the craft:

1.  Have child pick a cupcake liner. 

2.  Help him/her turn it over so the colored part is on the inside.

3.  Put one drop of liquid glue on back and put on construction paper.

4.  Help child draw stems and leaves, if needed.

5.  Repeat steps 1-4 a few more times. You can add as many flowers as they'd like.

6.  If children can, help them write "God made flowers" at the top.

Tips:
-  Put on drop of essential oils in the middle of each flower for the children to smell. Using different essential oils for each flower would be super fun.   

-  Glue the cupcake liners in a straight line or in varying heights.

-  Let them use both markers and crayons for the fun of it.

-  For the white liners, I let them get creative and make their own designs.

-  I didn't have any, but I am sure that the tin foil liners would be a huge hit.

-  You can even let the children glue stuff in the middle of each flower (pompoms, glitter, stickers, rhinestones or whatever you have on hand).

-  You can use pipe cleaners for stems, if you'd like. I personally find them annoying to glue, but they do add wonderful texture to the picture.

-  Rolled up tissue paper can also be used as stems and leaves.

-  Play fun music in the background. I like Karyn Henley's Bible curriculum music CD (for toddlers).

A's finished craft (almost 2 years old)

K's finished craft (almost 4)

Bible: Miracles of Jesus

Field Trip: Balloon Festival

Ballet: New Students  :)

The girls did great and we had lots of fun. S was my teacher's assistant and loved it.

It's finally cold enough to wear leg warmers! Yes!

                     

                     

French: Jour de l'action de Grâce

In French, we reviewed our greetings, colors and numbers. Then we made this activity for Thanksgiving. :) Joyeux Jour de l'action de Grâce!

To find the link to this printable, click here.

Gym: Hoola Hoops!

No pictures from gym time today, but we had fun playing with hula hoops. We used them as they were meant to be used, trying them around our waists, arms and necks. We jumped through them. We rolled them across the floor. We attempted to ring each other with them :) It was a lot of fun, and the hula hoops will be coming back for an encore performance I'm sure!

Spanish: Yo Doy Gracias Por... (I am thankful for...)

In Spanish, we did "Yo doy gracias por..."(I give thanks for) and the kids thought of 4 things they are thankful for and I wrote those down in Spanish. 
Then I laminated them so they can use them as placemats on Thanksgiving. They turned out great and I think I am now addicted to laminating! Ha!
PS The letter I wrote for them on the back says that I am very thankful to God for their lives. ;)

Art: Celebrating Fall

We celebrated fall in art today by creating Falling Leaves Trees. The goal of this lesson was scissor and glue work. When the kids arrived they were given their template which had the background, grass and tree trunk glued together. They were then given strips of brown to create their branches, and longer strips of colored paper to cut into leaves. The bigger kids did really well even if they are a bit glue happy (I can tell I'm going to need to buy stock in Elmers!), and G did a lot of cutting while I glued his tree together :)