We took a week off of our Letter of the Week curriculum to do Halloween themed activities. I was a little unsure what Bible theme I would tie in, but then a friend sent me a story for how to share the gospel while carving a pumpkin and "I am the vine" was included. The kids were really into talking about our pumpkins and the fact that they are no longer attached to a vine so, they will no longer grow and will slowly die. And then we talked about how we can stay connected to God by reading the Bible and praying, so we will continue to grow spiritually.
Verse: "I am the vine." John 15:5
Song: I am the vine
Rhyme: 5 Little Pumpkins
Things learned:
Some Halloween spelling words
Plant systems
Skip counting by 10s, -1 math facts, counting dimes
Worked on writing our last name
On our shelf this week, we had, wrapping bugs with spider webs, making patterns with halloween rings, counting/feeding pumkins to the toy story alien (parmesean container), uppercase/lowercase ABC card puzzle, halloween memory game, puzzles, lining up pumpkins (orange fuzzies) on a vine (green shoe lace), and dry erase color by number.
We had an extra guest for school and it made for lots of extra fun. It was neat for each of the girls to have a friend to play with. It did make for a little bit louder volume all morning, though.
I tried out Read and Write the Room with some halloween words. Basically, you just hide words around the room and as the student finds them, they write them on a clipboard worksheet. It makes it a more kinestetic experience.
I usually try to personalize all the ideas I find online to fit out needs, so here I am prepping for the activity the night before. Since I had four students at various levels, I prepped three age appropriate worksheets (Caroline had to trace the entire word, my older preschoolers traced the first letter of each word, and then Charlotte just had to get her sticker). Then, I made "stickers" by printing the pictures and sticking them to the back of the laminated words with double stick tape. The annoying part was that they didn't unstick from the cards as well as I would have liked.
All the work paid off because it was a big hit with the kids. They were excited to pose with their completed sheets.
After all the friends were gone, Caroline and I did a lesson on photosynthesis, transpiration, and respiration in plants. She learned that plants need water, sun, and air to make their food. We had set up some celery in colored water on Sunday afternoon and we recorded the results in her science journal during out lesson.
I'm still trying to prep a cut/glue activity for Charlotte each week. Some weeks she's more into it than others. I'd prepped four pumpkins for her to make faces for, but only had the attention span to do one.
Some school days are harder than others. Sometimes, I try to switch things up to get us in a different setting and hopefully in a better attitude. Here are the girls having a picnic in the garage so they could watch it rain.
I just don't know how I would homeschool without the internet and all of it's possibilities. During a Hooked on Phonics lesson, I decided we needed some reinforcing in identifying what words start with SH, CH, or TH and my google search did not dissapoint. So, Caroline and I spent a better part of our afternoon lesson creating The Around Town Digraphs game. We colored it together and then laminated it, and then the game was one. I'm sure the fact that we used starbursts as our game pieces added to the appeal.
0 comments:
Post a Comment