From playing the hungry caterpillar to playing migrating to Mexico, there's been a lot of butterfly talk around the house. We studied the letter B and butterflies this past week. We began the week by mailing our voucher that came with our My Father's World curriculum to Insect Lore for our cup of Painted Lady caterpillars. They are growing so rapidly, but none of them have entered into the chrysalis stage yet. If you are not familiar with Insect Lore, check them out. These caterpillars came in a cup with food already in it. We do not have to do anything until they are in their chrysali. Then we remove the lid (to which they should attach) and put it in the butterfly house to await the miracle of a new butterfly. We read many, many books about butterflies and learned all about their life cycle. Our favorite craft was painting butterflies on brown paper shopping bags. The instructions in my manual said to cut the bottom off a brown paper shopping bag to get a large rectangle of brown paper to paint a butterfly on. As I was doing it, I almost chopped off the handles, but decided to leave them on. Well, they made such great handles to hold onto while we flew our butterflies all over the backyard & the house this week! I had the boys choose a particular butterfly to paint. AJ chose an Anise Swallowtail, CJ chose a Zebra Swallowtail, and JJ did a Painted Lady. MJ just played with paint & enjoyed being part of the mess! In math, we talked about symmetry and made symmetrical butterflies out of play dough. One day we pretended we were butterflies from hatching from the egg, to eating & eating as a caterpillar, to making a chrysalis, & hatching as a butterfly. All throughout the week, we talked about how God can make us new. Just like the amazing transformation that takes place from a caterpillar to a butterfly, Jesus can doing a transforming work in our lives. We talked about the "old man" and the "new man" as we read 2 Corinthians 5:17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Thanks for stopping by! This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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There's been talk of garnets, emeralds, diamonds & rubies intermingled with strains from the song "Lord, You are More Precious than Silver" around Russell Homestead! We've been learning about jewels as we study the letter J. The theme of the week has been that Jesus is more valuable than anything else - even jewels. We began the week by learning what jewels are and names of jewels. We pretended our connecting cubes were jewels (the green were emeralds, the red were rubies, etc.) and I had the boys string them in patterns. Next, we "made" our own jewels from soft clay. We rolled the clay into small balls and poked a pencil through them to make a hole for stringing. We allowed them to dry for a day, and then strung them. Again, we talked about what jewels are the different colors can be. We enjoyed reading Revelation 21:19-21 that lists the jewels in the foundations of heaven. The boys were very fascinated with the idea of a gate made of a single pearl. We talked about how pearls are formed and about the parable where the man sold all he had for the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:45-46).
It was a fun unit, and now we are on to butterflies (complete with raising our own Painted Lady butterflies)! Thanks for stopping by! For the past few weeks in our My Father's World kindergarten curriculum, we have been focusing on wild animals. I was ready for a new topic, but...rocks? Now, being a mom-of-boys for six plus years, I know boys love rocks, so I pretended to be thrilled about rocks. And, until the end of the week, I was! Especially the suggested "book basket" books about rocks! We kicked off the week with learning the three types of rocks - igneous, sedimentary, & metamorphic. We discussed how Jesus is a rock and learned the words to the hymn "On Christ the Solid Rock." We also sang "The Wise Man Built His House upon the Rock" each day of the unit. The second day of the unit, we went rock collecting! I each of the boys an egg carton & turned them loose in the back yard. One egg carton wasn't enough, and each boy ended up with two. After collecting them, I let them wash & scrub each rock to make their collection shine. After their collections were all cleaned up, we organized the rocks by size & color. They each picked their favorite rock and sketched it in their nature journal with 2 adjectives. We also counted them by 2s and discussed the term "dozen." For JJ's preschool lesson that day, he made the letter R with rocks (see the worksheet on Pinterest here.) Then things got really exciting. We made a volcano model (since igneous rocks come from lava that hardens after volcanic eruptions). I definitely wowed the boys with this simple baking soda-and-vinegar volcano. Totally worth the mess! I taught the boys how to play Mancala - a simple rock game. (See youtube video on how to play here.) I made our own board with an egg carton. I cut the top off, and then cut it in half. I super-glued the halves on the end of the egg carton bottom to make the mancalas. I painted the mancalas and the corresponding row of egg carton holes to help them see which side is "theirs." Let me end with the aforementioned "book basket" books that were our favorites this week. (Let me preface this with the fact that some of them do mention "millions of years.") Here were our 3 favorites.
1. My favorite was Rocks in Head by Carol Otis Hurst - a book about a boy with a passion for rocks who grows up, survives during the Great Depression, and eventually lands a dream job having to do with rocks. 2. The boys hands-down favorite was How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World by Faith McNulty. I told my husband this is such a boy-book (in a good way). A boy digs a hole to the other side of the world (did you know if you start in America, you come up in the Indian Ocean?). He goes through all the layers (with the help of his custom no-spaceship with a fireproof jacket & drill on the nose, etc). We read this book over & over!! 3. Another favorite was Dave's Down-to-Earth Rock Shop by Stuart J. Murphy. This book clearly explained the different types of rocks and the Mohs scale of hardness. The children enjoyed the ending. So, now I guess you could say we have rocks in our heads, but more importantly, I hope we are standing more firmly on the ROCK! Thanks for stopping by! This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. |
AuthorVanessa from Russell Homestead. Follower of the Lord Jesus, wife of my knight in shining armor, mother of 5 wonderful children, and joint-keeper of the Russell homestead. Thanks for stopping by! Archives
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Vanessa Russell
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