Little Hands to Heaven: Week 4

Isaac and His Sons (Dd)

Week 4 of Little Hands to Heaven was a fun one! Here's our week four in review!

We learned how Jacob lied to his father by pretending to be Isaac by acting out the Bible story, complete with hairy arms! Mason got a kick out of this...Max thought it would make a better hat! 

 The weekly math concept was general measuring and comparing distances. One day, we pulled out some yarn and I measured each of the boys. They practiced writing their names on notecards, then taped in up on the wall. They loved this activity and it stayed up as decoration all week!

We also used counting bears as a unit of measure. Mason collected items from the house and we measured how many counting bears "long" each item was.

This math activity below went along with our Bible story that day about how Jacob traveled a long distance before he met Rachel. The boys were pretending the bear was Rachel and we compared the jumps using words like shorter, farther, and closest.

This is one of the math activities we do every week. Mason practices drawing two items in each box and then counts by 2s. 

 We had our first rainy school day (definitely worth documenting here in Phoenix)!

 They love finding the letter of the week in the Hide and Seek pages.

We read about how Jacob wrestled with an angel all night to win God's blessing and then used stuffed animals to act out the scene. 

And more acting when Esau forgave Jacob and God blessed both brothers. I'm telling you, when these kids act out the Bible stories, they really do have a better understanding of it! It's also so much fun to watch them play. 

 Here is Mason doing the fingerplay for the week. He's pretending to hold the reins of a d-d-dusty camel!

 We are having a lot of fun with our letter activities each week. I think the highlight of the week is whatever day we make our crafty letter of the week. They just love this!

 We also have a good time with salt trays, wikki sticks, playdough, do-a-dot markers, books, and a whole bunch of fun letter activities to reinforce the letter each week.

And of course, they always love walking on our big letter of the week and practicing it's sound!

 My two little crazies are always bringing toys to school...and eating snacks!

We have been loving All About Reading, but I was having a hard time with the fact that AAR lessons (introduces all capital letters, then all lowercase, then sounds) weren't matching up to LHTH which introduces a letter a week. So this week, I decided to be crazy and do AAR out of order, so it went along up with LHTH better. Going out of order in AAR is somewhat challenging, especially since the curriculum is not designed for this. However, since he knows all his letters and the sounds they make I figured he would be up for a little challenge. I think it will work our nicely for him!

Little Hands to Heaven: Week 3

Week Three: God Blesses Abraham (Cc)

Welcome to week three of Little Hands to Heaven! Here are some of the highlights and favorite moments from our week!

Much to my surprise, we're still enjoying the fingerplay activity. This week it's all about the letter C and Abraham.

 We made our number 3 page to add to our number book.

We read about Abraham and Lot,

then acted out the story.

Some All About Reading activities with the letter H

We don't do a ton of structured math around here. Just lots of play!

This week the boys got to drive their cars on the large letter C.

In Bible, we learned that God promised Abraham a son and that he would have more children than stars in the sky. The craft below reflects this Bible story. This craft is a little different from what was in the lesson plans, but I liked how the boys were able to get a little fine motor skills practice in by peeling off their own stickers.

Here is Mason acting out the above story!

In week three we had our first official "school in pajamas day". Ha! In Bible, we read about the three men that visited Abraham and then pretended to have our own three guests. The boys were so excited to choose which "friends" they were doing to act out the story with. The boys had to get the right amount of plates, bowls, utensils, and napkins for their guests. We practiced being gracious and having good manners.

Some of the seat work for the the day. Mason's still working on counting by two's

and finding the Cc in the Hide and Seek fingerplay. As you can see, Maxden just enjoys finding alllll the letters. I help him find the C's, then he ends up dotting the rest of the letters.

This week we made our fun letter of the week craft...and boy, we're on a roll. PJ's and shirtless all in the same week! ;) No dress code at our school!

 On day 5, the boys had to go collect some of their favorite toys along with the Bible. I had the boys hug their toys (you can see Mason picked his two Hot Wheels cars), and say "I love you more than anything". Then they had to pick their Bible up and say, "I love you more than anything." 

We were able to discuss which attitude pleases God more. Love for our earthly possessions, or a deep love for him and his word. Then, we talked about how we can show God that we love him. Mason said, "We can talk to God and tell him we love him when we pray and when we read our Bible."

I am so thankful I decided to use Heart of Dakota this year. I love how every single thing we do points to God. For our family, that's the most important thing we can learn! 

We finished the week by looking at some baby pictures of the boys and talking about how they have grown up, just like Abraham's son, Isaac. They loved seeing how cute and tiny they were as babies! 

That's a wrap!

Little Hands to Heaven: Week 1

We started school on the 14th of July. I had lofty goals of having the entire year planned out, but well,  that didn't happen. My school room wasn't 100% organized, but there could be worse things. I didn't have all the logistics and daily schedule completely worked out, but we're finding our groove. 

My point is, you don't need the perfect conditions, plans, or supplies to get started with a successful school year at home. I've learned the hardest part is getting started, the rest is just beginning to fall into place. 

Our first week was full of so many great moments. Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven is a very active and engaging curriculum. It was actually a little challenging to get pictures of many of the neat things that the kids do, especially because I try participate right along with them! 

I'll continue sharing our weekly adventures with Little Hands, but future weeks will not be as detailed. You can view the entire first week of lesson plans (which is provided on their website) by clicking here! 

Week 1 - Creation and the Fall (Letter A)

Day 1 - We read about how God created the world from the New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. We learned a fingerplay called "Adam and the Animals" that we will do each day for the rest of the week that enforces both the Bible theme and the letter sound. Today's Bible activity involved us going into the closet, turning out the lights, and re-enacting the moment when God created light buy flipping on the lights! Simple, but fun.  Our first art activity involved drawing with a white crayon on white paper....Mason was NOT excited about this at all. 

 But, painting over the drawings with diluted tempera paint would make them appear and the whole point of the lesson (that God created all things from nothing) would make wonderful sense. If only that worked...see photos below.

 We had a hard time getting our drawings to show up. We tried different paint, crayons, etc. At this point, everyone is getting a little irritated at our failed art project...

 but we persevered and finally found the right combination!

 Oil pastels and a small, (I mean SMALL) drop of acrylic paint diluted in water did the trick.

 Maxden's was just an over saturated mess! But he enjoyed himself!

On days where HOD-LHTH seems pretty light, we do an AAR lesson. Right now we're working on finding rhyming words. The boys take turns picking up a card, while the other has to find the rhyming word. Max is getting better and Mason has turned in to quite the professional rhymer.

We also practiced making the letter D with playdough. 

HOD only does a math activity once a week, but I've decided to extend on the concept for the week and invite the boys to explore mostly though manipulates and play. This week our math concept was patterns and colors. Max is focusing on learning his colors and Mason is working on making and completing various patterns.

Day 2- Each day in LHTH we practice the weekly fingerplay. When I first was looking at the curriculum, I thought that this would be silly and the kids wouldn't really enjoy this part and I would have to find something else to take the place of the fingerplay. Oh, how I was wrong. They love it! They even find themselves randomly saying it throughout the day.

So here they are, cute as can be, doing their Adam and the Animals fingerplay:

"A-A-Adam!"

 "Can you believe? God made the animals for you and me?"

There are 6 verses to this fingerplay and each one is about a different animal that God made that starts with the letter A. They get to act out being the different animals and the love every minute of it!

Our Bible activity (which also doubles as a math activity) was a Count on Me page. This week, Mason was to draw two caterpillars in each box and then we practiced counting by 2's. Maxden was supposed to practice counting by 1s. The great thing about LHTH is they differentiate between young and older in the lesson plans (since the curriculum is written with an age range of 2-5 years in mind).

 However, Max just wasn't feeling it at all. So he just colored...

 The letter activity on day 2 was a masking tape A. They enjoyed walking on the big letter while saying the A sound. They also decided it would be fun to get some cars to trace the letter A.  Such boys!

 More AAR matching games. This time it was memory!

 Here is our craft for the AAR lesson. They're so nice and easy, but also really fun. The boys enjoyed making fingerprint "peanuts" for their elephant to eat!

 Day 3 - Here's a glimpse into our fingerplay. "God made the albatross to fly, you see?"

This particular consisted of a lot of activities that made it hard to take photos. We acted out Bible stories and read stories. I did get a cute photo of Mason's picture he drew while I was reading the days Bible story. He's really into making his picture look like the illustration in the book so I guess we turned Bible into an art lesson!  :)

 Day 4 - We had a busy, but fun day of learning!

 More Bible and drawings...

Our dramatic play activity was to lay a jump rope on the floor and pretend it was a snake. We practiced jumping over it multiple ways. The best part was when I wiggled the "snake" and they had to try to jump over without it touching them! The key idea for this activity was that Adam and Eve should have stayed away from the snake.

We made the first page of our number book. They boys picked out a tree to print, cut, and glue onto their page. The tree was symbolic of the one tree that Adam and Eve were to not eat from.

Next, we did our Hide and Seek 'A' page. The boys used do-a-dot markers to highlight all the A's they find in the text. Can you tell they're doing the fingerplay? I told you they love it!

LHTH has plans for a letter craft each week which seems to consist of gluing cereal, beans, cotton calls, or other objects onto whatever letter. While I think that's great, I've found so many cute letter crafts on Pinterest that I couldn't resist. So, we'll be doing a fun, crafty letter each week.

 For math we worked with unifix cubes. I started a pattern and had Mason finished it.

 Max sorted the cubes by color, then got to just play with them however he wanted. Unifix cube cupcakes, anyone?

The boys created their own random science experiment. The day before we were playing with water marbles and Mason said that we should put them in the freezer to see what happens. Bam! Science experiment. We talked about what a hypothesis was and each boy made their prediction about what they thought would happen. The next day, I pulled out the experiment for the boys to investigate while I got lunch ready!

Day 5 - This was another day of acting out Bible stories. Here. we were talking about how we can show how we're feeling with our faces, voices, and emotions.

We also did  dramatic play after learning about how Cain's emotions caused him to do bad things (killing Abel). Here, I was telling the boys to make mad faces, hit, and then throw their Spidermen on the floor and walk away. Then we acted out the right way to deal with someone who makes us angry...

We practiced saying "Please don't do that! It makes me upset. Let's get along." Aww, so sweet! They learned that Cain should not have hurt Abel, even though he was mad at him because God says to love one another.

The boys really like listening to The Singing Bible songs. They even request to listen to their "school music" while they're trying to fall asleep at night!

Mason really enjoys Mighty Mind, and wanted to play with it during math time. Max is just starting to understand how to play with this, so Mason is helping him out a bit.

But, Max lost interest and decided he wanted to play with the Teddy Mix & Match. Both Mighty Mind and the Teddy game were purchased in last year's Sonlight Core, but you can also find them on Amazon! 

Whew! What a week! If you're actually still reading this, you can go take a nap now. I promise, our future posts about our week won't be this long! If you are considering using Little Hands to Heaven, I hope this post can give you a better idea of how fun and hands on this curriculum can be for preschoolers.