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.
