Friday, August 23, 2013

First Week of Pre-K! My Father's World: Creation and Sonlight P4/5

Blue Rock's first week of Pre-K went really well. I'm so glad we are homeschooling this year. Not that everyday is super easy as my child does tend to test my patients, quite a bit! However, I wouldn't trade the extra time with him for anything. He's such a sweet kid and I love watching him learn something new and am enjoying hearing him tell his dad what he's done and learned during his school time.

Our focus for My Father's World Kindergarten this week and next is Creation. Here are the activities we did. I didn't take pictures of everything we did with Sonlight but I included a few pictures of some of activities we did as well as a few extra things I came up with.

Our verse of the week was: Proverbs 4:20: Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully. (NLT adapted). Attentiveness: I listen with my eyes, ears, and heart.

This weeks songs: Jesus Loves Me and This is My Father's World.

Skills we worked on: Drawing, writing, cutting, pasting, coloring, math - we started our 100 days of school, listening, memorization, and character development.

Week 1 of My Father's World Kindergarten: Creation

Day 1 - God separated day from night
We also started our Creation Timeline
Day 2 - God created the skies and seas
Day 2 Timeline
Day 3 - God made dry land, plants, seeds, and trees
He pasted the apples on the trees and wanted to have one falling and on the ground
Day 3 Timeline
We did a little activity for Day 3. God made two kinds of water, salt water and fresh water.
Day 4 - God created the sun, moon, and stars
Day 4 Timeline
This was an activity from Developing the Early Learner.
I placed 4 items in front of him. He studied them, turned around, and I took one away.
He then turned back around and told me what was missing. Then he colored the picture in his book.
He loved this and wanted to take items away for me to guess as well.
Listening skills: I gave him instructions on what to do with each picture.
He colored and drew objects accordingly. He did a great job!
Day 5 - God made creatures of the sky and sea.
I cut the creatures and he glued them. Notice the whale is going to do a flip.

He cut out the 5 perfectly! I was impressed.

Day 5 Timeline. All of the numbers are still colored blue.


Days 1-5 Creation Illustrations and Timeline
This week's books

How I'm storing each week's books and activities
Once we are done, I'm going to add his creation illustrations to his notebook that I'm keeping as record for what he's doing this year. I let him cut out all the numbers and glue them to the timeline and for the most part he's cut and pasted the other pictures. He also colored the numbers, all blue, his favorite color. When I'd suggest for him to use another color he said, "no, just blue, because blue is my favorite color."

In addition to the fun activities above, we read from the Bible everyday about creation. We also read a few other books about creation, and we started reading Big Thoughts for Little People, which basically connects the alphabet to Bible themes and verses. Since he's known the alphabet for a long time, rather than just go over flash cards, we read a page or two in this book and then talk about the questions that relate to what we read and the cute picture. This was an extra thing I bought with this curriculum.

For Sonlight P4/5, we have started reading some wonderful stories. I still haven't received a few of the books for week 1, so we'll just read those stories once we get the books. The books we read from this week were: 101 Stories from the Bible, The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book, Uncle Wiggily's Story Book, The Children's Book of Virtue, Eric Carle's Animals Animals, The Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature, and Stories from Around the World. We are waiting for A Treasury of Mother Goose Rhymes and Things People Do. We also started doing work in Developing the Early Learner 1, which he loves and so do I! I only ordered the first one to begin with since they cost more than most workbooks. I have to say, there is a difference. I love how you can really find out how your child learns and their learning style. This book tests your child's motor skills, visual skills, auditory skills, and comprehension skills. So far he's doing great at everything. The work will get harder as we go through it and I'm looking forward to seeing where his strengths are.

We also got together with several different friends this week and got to eat lunch with my husband a few times. Monday Blue Rock spent time with his granddad, who took him to a playground while I went to a meeting at church. Tuesday we went swimming with some sweet friends, who are in one of our homeschooling groups. Wednesday we ate with his granddad and great-grandmother at Chick-Fil-A and were surprised to see a few of his friends there. Thursday I had a catch up day at home and we ran a few errands our playdate was cancelled. Friday we went to a PJ potluck with my Mom's Club. I love how homeschooling allows flexibility to get together with friends throughout the week. I think in the future, more and more people are going to be homeschooling. It's just such a wonderful way to educate your child. I know it's not for everyone and I can see the appeal of sending your child to a traditional school.  It's funny, before I had kids, I never thought I would homeschool. Of course this is only week 1, we'll have to see how the rest of the year goes.

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