Isaac is 43 months

Miriam is 26 months

Circle Time

We have been starting off our times together by reading our Bible story for the week, working on our memory verse, and singing songs relating to the theme for the week.  The kids and I both love this time, and it is so neat to sit down with my kids and tell them stories from the Bible and explain it to them!   Isaac and Miriam love music and so does Mommy!  I would love to learn to play the guitar and be able to lead them in worship during these special times in the morning.  (A goal for mommy to work on, in my spare time ;-)

Creation Activities

On day 4, God made the sun, moon, and stars.  So to help us learn that, the kids painted some wooden stars that I had picked up from a craft store a few years back!

I found these in my craft bin and was so excited that I had them! 

This was their first time painting and they loved it!

We then used some of the stars to work on counting and number recognition.  I told Isaac to put the correct number of stars “underneath” each number.  Well, he did exactly that!  It wasn’t quite what I meant, but hey, he followed directions!  (He also wanted to put the paper stars on top of the wooden ones!)

The he had fun standing the fat wooden stars up.

We also had fun with a creation clothespin game from Hubbard’s Cupboard.

I printed the pictures off of their website, cut them out, and glued the smaller pictures to clothespins.  Isaac then clipped the smaller pictures onto the bigger pictures that matched!

He was quite proud of his work and had lots of fun doing it!

We also sorted animals that flew and animals that swam in water. 

I also found some foam stars and flowers in my craft bin!  They were perfect to add to our creation week!  Isaac sorted the stars from the flowers.  Another option was to sort them by color also. 

Miriam had lots of fun playing with this and poured the shapes back and forth between the cups.  I showed her the difference between the flower and the star and tried to get her to sort them, but she was much more interested in just dumping them out.  ;-)

Creation Sensory Bin

I am so excited about this sensory bin and the kids loved it!  They had so much fun playing with it and it held their attention for a LONG time!

Included in our sensory bin was:

• Day 1 ~  Light and Darkness:  some electronic candles from the dollar tree
• Day 2 ~  Separated the Waters:  rice dyed blue to represent water
• Day 3  ~  Land and Vegetation:  Tree figures, some strange grassy feeling round things from the Dollar Tree ;-) and some foam flowers
• Day 4 ~ Sun, Moon, and Stars:  the stars that the kids painted earlier in the week
• Day 5  ~  Animals of the Sky and Sea:  some plastic water animals from the Dollar Tree
• Day 6  ~  Animals of the Land and Man:  Dinosaurs from the Dollar Tree (I didn’t have anything to represent man)
• Day 7  ~  Rest (I thought about putting in a bed from a dollhouse they had)

I gave each of the kids a cookie sheet to spread their treasures out on.  Isaac decided that each of his sea animals needed some rice.  Haha!

Other Fun Stuff

I originally got this idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  I made circles out of pipe cleaners and painted the ends of the clothespins to match the colors of the pipes.  Isaac then matched up the colors.  ;-)

Miriam had fun playing with the wooden magnetic blocks.  She mostly liked taking them out of their bin and onto her tray and back again.

Just Because

I absolutely LOVE this pic of my two girls!  It is too cute!

Hannah is all smiles these days!  I love it!

I had to throw this one in.  Here are two of my cuties and Miriam in her cowgirl boots! 

We had the chance last week to go and visit my family in WV for a few days.  Isaac got to ride on the tractor with Grandpa!

Hannah hanging out with Grandpa.

Hannah all comfy with Aunt Hollie.

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School blog!

Linking up to Tot School and Preschool Corner.

Isaac is 43 months

Miriam is 26 months

My first Tot School/Preschool post of the new school year!!!  Hooray!  I’m starting to get into the routine of things again with the precious addition of Hannah to our family.  We have “unofficially” been doing Tot School on and off this summer, but now we are getting a bit more serious and organized. (Which this mommy thrives on!)  This will also be my first time linking up to the Preschool Corner with Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations!  I can’t believe how quickly the time is flying by! Isaac is 3 1/2 and it just blows my mind! 

  This week was our first week back, and unfortunately, the camera was at Aaron’s office most of the week :(  So I have VERY few pictures from this week.  But I am happy to say that the camera is back home now and I found the cord (again ;-)  to get the pictures downloaded. 

Circle Time

We are beginning are time with “Circle Time”  where we pray, read our Bible story for the week, and sing a mix of “Bible songs” as Isaac likes to call them and also hymns that tie in with our story focus for the week.  We also play our instruments while we sing, which the kids LOVE! Eventually, in the next few weeks, we’ll also be adding in calendar time to this.  A Few of our songs that we learned this week were:

• God Made Me
• He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
• All Creatures of Our God and King 

Fun Play

Our Bible story this week was on Creation.  We also focused on colors and number recognition (1-3).   Here Isaac and Miriam were practicing drawing the #1 in a plate of flour.   Um yea. . . . it got a little messy.  But thankfully it was very easy to clean ;-)  Our color for that day was “white”.

On the 1st Day of Creation, God created light and made “night” and “day”.  Here Isaac is sorting cards as to whether the pictures depicts night or day.  He caught on really quickly with this. 

Since we were also focusing on the #1, we played this easy and fun game with an egg carton and some printed numbers that helped with number recognition.  We placed a number/letter in each section, put a button object in the carton, closed the lid, shook it up, and then opened it to see what letter or number our button had landed on.  This would also be a great activity to use for graphing.  I might have to try that this week with Isaac!

And this is what our sweet Hannah was up to during Tot School.  :)

This week we also;

• put blue shampoo in ziploc bags and let them practice writing the #2.  (I also drew a barely recognizable Bob and Larry, and Jr. Asparagus, at Isaac’s request ;-)
• worked on Animal lacing cards
• played with our magnetic color cubes (a few times!)
• played Candy Land (again, a few times!)
• went and gathered leaves, grass, and flowers in our boxes as we learned about the 3rd day of Creation
• watched a LeapFrog video (Love those!)
• and read quite a bit!

Our Resources:

This year I will be pulling from a few different places to get my main ideas for our school times.  I have also intentionally limited my “surfing” of other early childhood education sites just for the purpose of guarding my time.  I could spent ALOT of time looking up online for fun things to do with my kids, but I don’t feel I would be a good steward of my time.  Plus it keeps things simpler for me, and we always have PLENTY to do! 

•  Hubbard’s Cupboard:  I sweet lady from church sent me this link a few months back and as soon as I saw it, I thought, this is what we are doing this year! The 3 year old curriculum is based on a Bible story each week.  The majority of activities for the week are based off of the Bible story that you are learning.   Incorporated in this is also learning a letter a week, along with shapes, colors, numbers, etc.  Everything is laid out for you, including an overview of the year, lesson plans, and all the links needed for all the activities.  All the activities pictured this week are from Hubbard’s Cupboard.  :-) 

•  Letter of the Week Curriculum:  We are going to be using this again this year along with Hubbard’s Cupboard.  These two combined will be making of the bulk of what we do.  This will be Miriam’s first time going through it, and I will be stepping things up a bit for Isaac (probably right after Miriam goes down for a nap ;-)   

• 1+1+1=1:  So here is to the website that started me on this journey :)  Over a year ago Aaron and I had been talking about being more intentional about teaching Isaac.  One night I was searching for early childhood resources and “ran across” this treasure.  It has been such a blessing.  She has tons of great ideas and free printables that I will be using from time to time.

• Homeschool Creations:  I will be supplementing with some of the fun free printables that Jolanthe has on her blog.  We will also be linking up to her Preschool Corner too!

Coming Up . . .

Hopefully at least more pictures!!  We will be doing Days 3-7 of Creation with lots of fun activities.  I’m on my way to gather my supplies for the week as soon as I finish this!  I’ve also got a Creation Sensory bin planned too! I’m sure I will be more excited about it than the kids! 

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School and Preschool Corner this week, click on the buttons to check out the official sites!

This Tot School post is going to be a bit random :-)  There is no real theme, and it is a few weeks worth of fun all rolled into one post.  We have been busy already this summer (hence not much blogging) and had about 10 days at the beginning of May/end of June when we were on vacation to see family.  But here’s just a sneak peak at a few of the thing we’ve been up to in the last few weeks :)

The Little Touch Leap Pad continues to be a hit!  We found a new book for it at a flea market while we were visiting family.  It is The Little Blue Engine that Could, which is one of Isaac’s favorite movies!!  And at $5 for a new LeapPad book, I couldn’t pass it up!  Needless to say he was very excited to try it out!

We have been working on the letters I and J  the past few weeks.  Here is Isaac working on matching up his shapes.

He also breezed through sorting the capital and lower case “Jj”.

Isaac is learning to play games for the first time! We had finished watching Jonah: A Veggie Tales movie when I remembered that we had the Jonah Go Fish cards! 

So I set both of our hands face up on the table and taught him how to play.  It was so cute to hear him say, “Go fish mommy!”

I combined the themes of I for Inchworm and J for Jellybean to play this number/counting game ;-)  We used our jelly beans to place on the white circles on the leaves to work on our counting, and then used our inchworm numbers to match up the correct number.  I think Isaac’s favorite part was eating the jelly beans afterwards though ;-)

One of the sweet ladies from the church blessed us with some fun treasures from her teaching days!  Here is a Melissa and Doug Alphabet train floor puzzle.  Isaac absolutely loves trains, so this was a huge hit and he wanted to play with it as soon as he saw me bring it out!

Sister got in on the fun too.  And it was all good until she decided to tear it all apart, which um . . ended with both kids on the couch until they could cool down and mommy could put the puzzle back together again :)  (Yea, there was a bit of screaming going on . . . it could have gotten violent!)

Putting in the last piece!!

In one of the boxes of treasures I also found this Hi-Ho Cherry-O game!!!  We have had fun playing it and learning number recognition and counting!

Isaac also likes to put his cherries on his tree with the stems upside down.  It cracks me up!

That’s all for now.  I have lots more pictures from the past few weeks, but I’ll take a break for now. :) 

All the printables were from Erica’s Letter of the Week Curriculum!

To see what other Tots and their moms are up to this week, visit Carisa and the official Tot School Blog!