BIBLE:

This week we continued reading through the Israelites in the Wilderness.

Aaron’s Rod – Cherry Blossom Art:

This was an art project that blended both Jordan’s FIAR study of Japan (A Pair of Red Clogs) and Parker’s Bible story of God making Aaron’s rod blossom.  Thus the “Cherry Blossom Rod” was born!

 

First, we used eleven rods of “wood” (brown rectangles) to frame our picture.  We talked about how these pieces represent eleven of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then we glued the larger branch which represented Aaron’s rod.  We retold how God asked them to place all twelve rods in the tabernacle, and He would show the people His choice.

The kids glued on green construction paper flowers.  We talked about how only Aaron’s rod blossomed to show the people God chose him as the high priest.

 

Then they glued light pink tissue flowers (crinkled tissue squares) to the top.

They turned out beautifuly!

The BEADED Brass Serpent:

I found this really cute activity to do during Bible.  I set out beads, pipe cleaners, red felt tongues, felt circles (green for the boys and red for Haley), and googly eyes.  They were going to make their own cute replicas of the brass serpent.

 

We read the story over breakfast and the kids strung their beads on the pipe cleaners.  I heated up the glue gun and helped glue the head.

They turned out adorable!  Haley hates snakes, but she told me this one was really cute!

Memory Verse:

 

Parker listened to the “Letter H” verse from his Sing the Word CD, traced his Bible Memory verse using our G-M Bible Verse Printable Pack.

 

Later in the week, we cut his tracer page apart and created a puzzle to put together in his Bible notebook.

HISTORY:

This week we read about traveling in Medieval Europe, the Incas, and Ancient China.  We watched coordinating videos from our Sonlight Core A playlist.

The Incas:

I prepared cornmeal for breakfast, put a “mountain” (slice of toast), and a piece of “corn” (candy corn…NOT healthy, but oh so much fun!).

We read through our Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia while we ate our Inca inspired breakfast.

Chinese Characters and Tea:

 

We read about the ancient Chinese growing tea leaves and we watched a short video about it from our Sonlight Core A playlist.

 

I brewed some Lemon Zinger tea, served it with a little half & half, Stevia Naturals packet, and a fortune cookie.

 

We read Tikki Tikki Tembo a Chinese folktale while the kids sipped their tea and ate their fortune cookie.

 

Afterward, the kids worked on a great Chinese character apple counting worksheet I found from Sue’s Study Room.

 

They chose two apple colors and marked each apple as even or odd.  The boys remembered some of the characters while working on our Japanese Kanji activities from our FIAR unit on Japan.

Language Arts:

Parker continued his letter of the week activities.

 

He listened to the letter “H” songs I added to our Core A playlist and practiced building and writing in his HWOT workbook.

 

This week we created a “H is for Han” character to add to his ABC Notebook.

We continued to work on our letter of the week using our Alphabet Tracing Cards and our fall counters.

Letter H Apple Sensory Bin:

I created a quick apple sensory bin with lentils, wood beads (red, yellow, and green) and our Letter H Apple Alphabet Sorting printable from Life Over Cs.

 

I buried the apples in the lentils and had him use training chopsticks to find them.  He LOVED this activity!  He even used his chopsticks to grab the wood beads….language arts and fine motor skills!

Measuring Up – Knuckles, Feet, & Body:

Our Language and Thinking lesson was about measurement – past and present.  We discussed how people used to measure things.   Long ago, people used their body parts to measure things….knuckles for inches, feet for feet, and body length for yards.

The boys and I used our knuckles to measure some of the smaller items and recorded them on the whiteboard.

 

Then we measured the slider frame with our feet and recorded those numbers on the board too.

We came up with 3 different answers for both units of measure.  We talked about how this would lead to problems since the farmer, baker, and blacksmith didn’t share the same shoe size so their measurements would never measure up!

Thus, the standardized units of measure were born…inches, feet, and yards!

Since it’s fall, I decided to collect a few fall items (pumpkin, apple, acorn, pinecone, and leaves) and placed them in a basket with a ruler and a piece of string.

 

Parker used the ruler to measure the acorn, pinecone, and leaves.

Using the apple, I showed him how to measure round objects using a string as instructed in our Language and Thinking book.

He tried it out on his pumpkin and with a little help he was able to measure it!

Making Words:

We spent some time making words with the letters we’ve learned so far (F, B, M, T, R, A, and H).  I grabbed my laminated apples and wrote a letter on each.

Parker moved them around to make hat, rat, art and even farm!

Ending Sounds

I grabbed my  pumpkin letter recognition cards (Aloha Kindergarten)and magnet letters and placed them in a tub for Parker to work on.  I instructed him to listen for the ending sound and match the letter to the picture on each pumpkin.

I warned him there were a couple of tricky ones, but he worked through the cards with ease!  Parker was an early reader like his sister, so sticking in a few “challenging” words doesn’t frustrate him.

 

 

SCIENCE:

Freezing Experiment Continued:

 

Last week we wrote down the six liquids we wanted to freeze and placed our ice cube tray in the freezer.

 

This week we wrote down our predictions and checked to see the actual result.  They really enjoyed this experiment.

 

SKILL BUILDER:

3D Apples:

Our skill builder this week was to build 3D sculptures from play dough.  Since it’s fall I decided to put an apple twist on this activity.

I laid out a 3D apple tray with 3D cards, pipe cleaner stems, felt leaves, and our apple play dough.

 

First, we talked about the difference between 2D and 3D shapes.  He wasn’t sure he could make 3D shapes, so we started making them together.  I told him how to roll it, press it against the table, use his fingers to mold it, etc.

 

He would ask when he got to a difficult shape and was so happy with the end result!

That’s all for week 8, but we’re ready for week 9!