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 2

Week Two: The Earth and the Flood (Bb)

We had such a fun week learning about all about Noah and God's promises this week. Here are some of our favorite moments from our second week with Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven!

We learned a new finger play! Here is Mase showing us part of it:

And the boat did float...

/b/, /b/, /b/ (he's making the letter b sound while rocking back and forth...just like Noah might have on the ark!)

We pulled out the wikki sticks to have fun making letters.

We made another page to go in our number book. The two handprints were a reminder that Noah used his own two hands to build the ark.

We acted out all the different types of animals going on the ark. A lot of the Bible lesson plans involve acting out the story that was read each day. This is such a fun way to help the stories that they read in the Bible come to life.

We really do have a lot of fun in school. But, please don't think that our school is always perfect and my children love every single second of it, because we all know that would be a lie! Remember, we're talking about teaching a 4 year old and a 2 year old! There are plenty of moments that look like this. Just keeping it real for ya!

But, then I tell them it's time for "Ziggy school", and all is magically right in the world. They sure do love All About Reading lessons.

Here Mason was playing a game called "Get out of the wagon" I put three cards on the wagon, and he takes the card that does not rhyme with the others and tells it to, you guessed it, "get out of the wagon". He's super dramatic about it and literally throws the card that doesn't rhyme.

This week, we had some dear friends come over so their mama could get an idea of what a typical homeschool day looked like in our home before she began her homeschooling journey. She probably came away with three lessons:

1. Megan gets her children through their "school" time with lots of snacks. 
2. It's pretty chaotic...in an organized sort of way.
3. Have fun and go with the flow (seriously, it's only preschool).

We had a lot of fun with all four kiddos! 

Their favorite activity was the sink or float science experiment. The key idea for this lesson was that God told Noah how to build the ark so that it would float.

Every week we do a Hide and Seek page where they learn how to recognize the letter of the week within text. They also do a Count on Me page. Here, Mason drew 2 raindrops (since we were learning about the flood) so he can practice counting by twos. Younger kiddos can draw 1 item in each box to practice counting by 1s.

Each week, I've been trying get books that go along with the unit we are doing in Little Hands. We had Noah's ark from Sonlight P3/4, but found Big Bear Hug, The Busy Beaver, and letter Bb book at the library. All of these books went along perfectly with this week's fingerplay and theletter B theme.

Maxden's favorite part of school is our morning calendar time! And yes, this shows you all just how far behind on blogging I am...

The boys had fun building their own "ark" and bringing all of their stuffed animals into it.

We learned about rainbows and God's promise to never send another flood. I deviated a bit from the rainbow craft in the LHTH lesson plans, but I knew the boys would love painting their own rainbows. I think they turned out so cute!

Each week in little hands, there is a day where me make the masking tape letter on the floor. This is such a fun activity for the boys. It gets them moving and thinking about the letter of the week. They loved putting blocks on the letter B and I had them say the /b/ sound every time they placed a block.

Once they were finished, they wanted to continue playing with the B. I love how it became a race car track...

and then a church service! See Mason delivering the sermon?! ;) The things these kids think of!

We also made the cutest letter of the week craft! 

We really enjoyed our second week of school!