E is for Elephant

Elephants are very smart, interesting, and humongous creatures. They have amazing trunks that they use to communicate with, but they also use their feet to communicate with through stomping and vibrations. Did you know that they are very sociable, loving creatures that bury their dead and have been seen to shed tears when separated from each other? So amazing. 

  We didn't even make it to the library for this unit, but I had an e-book about elephants, and a Zoo-book magazine Tobes has always loved from his great-grandparents. We are learning with this unit "I will remember what God has done for me." I had no idea that the reason we say that an elephant never forgets, is because it really is a very smart animal that never forgets its way around the jungle.

      We played a memory game, where I displayed 10 items for the boys to try and remember. We named off each item in a row, and then the boys turned around while I hid two of the items. Then, they turned around and tried to remember the missing items. They loved this game!

    I would make a horrible elephant, as I just forgot that I was browning hamburger meat. Oops....

Anyways, He thought this picture in his magazine of all the food an elephant eats in a year deserving of a school project... so we made a graph. No big surprise, elephants eat a lot.

Here he is writing "I will remember what God has done for me." We discussed the importance of remembering the blessings God has given us, and that we should give thanks and tell all people about the wonderful things He has done.

                                   

We read one of my favorite books from my childhood...

and then I amazed my kids with my tracing abilities,

 and we remade our favorite before and after scenes from the book:

We made elephant toothpaste:

 which became an elephant bath:

Finally, we listened to our weekly classical music: Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.4 in G Minor

and fingerpainted with pudding on a cookie sheet. 

Tobes (who had to make sure a bath was ready for him in order to get messy) 

loved moving the slime to the music.

Jones hardly made any art since he found the paint so tasty.

I had hoped to visit the Knoxville Zoo (since it has elephants), but it didn't happen. Weather wasn't good. Thankfully, we found lots of fun activities to do instead. There is A LOT of elephant ideas on pinterest and in the My Father's World Curriculum. We actually didn't even have time to do everything. Especially since the boys REALLY wanted to learn about foxes! So... instead of k for kangaroo (unit 17), we are moving on to x for fox (unit 23). 

H is for Horse

We focused on the words "I obey right away" with our H is for horse unit. These words are sooooooooooooooooooooo beyond needed in our family. I know training my kids to obey the FIRST time I tell them to do something is something that I have to train myself to expect from them. Not as easy as it sounds, though. We talked about Noah, Jonah, and Jesus as a child and how they obeyed (at least obeyed eventually).

Now, when my kids are not listening to instructions, I ask them "do you remember what we learned when we talked about H for Horse?" They are learning to reply... "I obey right away!"

I didn't really take many pictures for our horse unit. My boys just don't get excited about horses. That is fine by me, as it is a very expensive hobby:). 

We did make clay horses:

We enjoyed looking at books about wild horses, and we also read a children's storybook about Seabiscuit.

They had a blast pretending to be (Seabiscuit) racing horses:

Seabiscuit boys

We are also reading this classic:

We played a treasure hunt game to further teach the "obey right away" concept. I hid a treasure box of chocolate coins for both boys. I gave them step by step instructions, and they had to follow my directions exactly in order to find the hidden treasure.

After they found the hidden treasure and enjoyed the surprise,  I asked them "what would have happened if you had not listened and obeyed? Do you think God has wonderful surprises hidden for us, too, if we listen and obey?"

We read: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."- James 1:22

G is for Goat

Here are my boys holding a precious baby goat just two days after it was born!

 I couldn't have planned learning G for Goat better if I tried!

 The baby kid couldn't hardly walk yet, it was so new to this world. 

The combo of this sweet little baby and my yellow loving three year old has

 become some of my favorite photos ever!

Meet Farmer Tobes. He plans on taking all Grandpa's goats, pigs, and chickens to start his own farm. 

 We also enjoyed the goats at the petting zoo.

 Explorer Tobes is searching for new animals for his farm. Worksheets can take a long time to get through sometimes, but at least it is a lot of fun! 

Goats are not a new thing to my boys, since they enjoy visiting them at my parents' home. 

My  main focus was on the words "Jesus died for my sins." I explained  that goats and sheep were sacrificed for sins before Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins.

 I love how the My Father's World curriculum explains it, as this is a very delicate and scary concept for little ones: 

"Jesus never did anything wrong, but when He came to earth He was killed because we have done wrong. We don't kill animals now if people sin, because Jesus came and died for our sins. When we sin, God forgives us if we are His children because Jesus took the punishment that we deserve."

C is for Cow and Chick

I had planned on starting G for Goat, but then this happened:....

We actually got 6 chicks. You know how Tobin was SO obsessed with taking care of that egg? This is a prime example of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Plus, we know several families willing to take these critters off our hands once they are grown. In the meantime, we will pretend to be farmers together.

Back to the unit study at hand, Tobin decided we needed to do C for Cow... and chick, so we did. Good chance to learn about the "ch" and "ck" sounds too. 

This unit's poem:

I never saw a purple cow,

I never hope to see one,

but I can tell you anyhow,

I'd rather see than be one!

And I found a chick poem:

Peck, peck, peck

on the warm, brown egg.

Out comes a neck,

out comes a leg.

How does a chick,

who's not been about,

discover the trick

of how to get out?

making up cool patterns:

We made butter, which took A LOT of perseverance (see T for Turtle week). Tobin even gave me a little trophy for my hard work, since I did most of the work.

Love this worksheet we do each week. He thinks of what he wants to draw that starts with this weeks letter, and then comes up with words/pictures that go with past letters too. So simple, yet so effective.

 We make letter envelopes each week with pictures of things that start with the same letter. He is suppose to play a game where we compare two of the letters and he matches the cards to the appropriate envelope. He likes to make things more exciting, so we compared 5 letters. He got every card correct too!

 I'm so glad we found this supplement to go with MFW kindergarten from this website: http://mamajenn.com/blog/2010/08/words-to-remember-mfw-kindergarten.html

Now that he can write sentences so well, we will be doing this weekly in lieu of making a badge. 

As you can read above, we focused on the phrase "God's Word helps me grow." This reinforced the reason we read the Bible every day. 

"Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have a taste of the Lord's kindness."-1Peter 2:2-3

We sat outside under the tree with our pretend flowers, and read the story of Ferdinand, the bull who loved to sit under his tree and smell flowers. I love that story! I always use him as an example when the boys just want to wrestle and be rough (at inappropriate times).

 We then had a dairy party:cheese, almond milk (shhhh!), yogurt, and poppy seed chicken casserole since it contains sour cream and cream of chicken soup.

We played farm,

The Cow Jumped Over the Moon,

 and even enjoyed carrots that looked like they were straight from the farm. He chopped up the carrots, made a farmer's market table outside, and sold (gave) them to the neighbors. He's such a good little farmer.

We LOVED this book:

It's about cows that type demands to the farmer and go on strike until the demands are met. It's really funny.

Here's Tobin's creative idea for the cows to demand next time:

Since we have had the chicks and learned so much about farm animals, Tobin has announced he will be a farmer when he grows up. He already has his grandpa promising to give him pigs, goats, and chickens! Life with my boys is always an adventure, and I love it!

P is for Penguin

   Since we took a break from My Father's World K curriculum to do the Olympics study, I decided to skip ahead to the penguin unit while it was still cold outside. Honestly, Tobin could skip to the last unit and do just fine keeping up with the phonics and math. I love it that kindergarten is so easy for him now. We are working on doing the units in 5 days instead of 6, just because he needed the difficulty kicked up a notch. We are also getting more library info books as he loves learning facts about the different animals.


I found this craft idea on pinterest. What better way to get the phrase "I show love to everyone, especially my family" into his head than to make a loving penguin family? Each unit we are suppose to make a "badge" where we cut a little figure for the unit and write the phrase we are learning on it. He has decided that they are too silly for him to wear, so I am trying to find other creative ways of learning through crafts.
   

We learned about Emporer penguins, and that the Daddy actually takes care of the egg. This is how penguins tie into the character learning of loving your family. My 6 year old (he just had a birthday!) is a naturally nurturing child. He LOVES babies. If you need proof, here is the journal entry he did for the week:

I always have him draw and write a sentence each Monday about something cool that happened the week before. Meeting his new nephew trumped a huge snow storm and his birthday!! 

Here they are practicing being Daddy penguins. This didn't last long, but Tobes got OBSESSED about taking care of that egg.

HE put them both in a nest, aka basket of weeds

 My three year old's egg turned into this within minutes:

Tobes made a "don't touch" sign, a little nest, and was listening for babies heartbeat. I told him that it was hard boiled and there was no baby inside, but he insisted that there was. 

Emperor penguins are almost as tall as Tobin! But Fairy penguins are no where near as tall as Jonah.

It's sad, but the only penguin toys we have are Batman related.

 He did this painting without a picture reference to look at. I was impressed.

Our favorite books were about Tacky the Penguin. We found one about the Winter Games even!

We watched Mr. Popper's Penguins....3 times!!!! They LOVED this movie.

As I type this, it is now in the 70's and the windows are open. We finished this unit just before the warmth, though they say another cold front is expected soon. Even so, we are ready to learn more about farm animals now. Bring on the cows, goats, and horses!