Do you ever find yourself wondering if you are doing enough?
That’s how I feel at the end of the week sometimes. Looking back I tend to forget the little things. That is why these posts are so important for me! I’m able to look back at the pictures… and these pictures remind me of how hard I tried and how much these little ones are soaking up.
This past week we focused on the letter B.
We read a lot of fun books that inspired most of our activities for the week including: Blueberries for Sal, The Bear and the Piano, We’re going on a Bear Hunt, So Many Bunnies, and The Runaway Bunny. Most of these books were recommended from The Peaceful Preschool curriculum that we are incorporating into our preschool routine.
Every morning we start with devotions and our Bible verse for the week. This week we are learning:
“Be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”
Ephesians 4:32
As a prompt for my 1 year old, I always held up a picture of a bumble bee for her to see as we started the verse. She would shout “BEE!” and then I would complete the verse for her. She’s too young to fully memorize a long verse, but kids are never too young to hear scripture!
I’m going to take a brief moment and dwell on this verse. My son memorized this verse a couple years ago, so it was very familiar to him. There are so many life applications that you can take from this verse that reviewing it made it new and vibrant to him again. First of all, I love that this verse points out WHY we do what we do as Christians. We are kind, tender and forgiving because that is what GOD has done for us! He showed us sacrificial love in sending his son to die on a cross for our sins… and we need to live in the love and grace that He has shown us by showing it to others! Secondly, we need to be forgiving. Over the past couple years when my son is being unkind, I ask him, “What does the Bible say about being kind?” He always responds with, “Be ye kind, one to another.” “Yes,” I tell him. “But you know what the second part says? Forgiving one another. Mommy forgives you for being unkind today.” So THIS week we focused on intentional kindness. Kindness that doesn’t need asking for. Thoughtful kindness. I want to start teaching my children to look for ways to be kind to others. By nature we are selfish people. Kindness and giving are learned. I want to instill in my children a habit for being kind. I know I need to learn this better myself! We started a kindness board. Each day, I ask my son what he has done to be kind since the last time I asked him. Hopefully it gets him thinking!
Our first day started off to a rough start, so we didn’t even start school until lunch time. Lunch time? You may wonder. YUP! My kids had their grumpy pants on with a full on case of the Monday’s, so we decided to make lunch early with a little hands on learning… we made B-erry smoothies! The kiddos had fun throwing handfuls of different berries into the blender. Once their bellies were full again, we were able to press on!
Because our verse was about “BEE” ye kind (remember my daughters prompt???), we made handprint B’s! This was a VERY quick craft. While my son was finishing up practicing his writing, I made the handprint bumble bee with my daughter. She moved on to the next project while I helped my son paint his hand 🙂
We then made B-inoculars! They didn’t know it at the time, but we were going to go on a “B” hunt the next day. They practiced their fine motor skills by gluing and putting beads and stickers on their binoculars. The next day we read “Going on a Bear Hunt,” but instead of hunting bears, we hunted for B’s. If you want to read more on this fun activity, check out the full post HERE. Seriously, my 4 year old LOVED this… he’s still asking to do it again a week later!
Following the blueberry theme, we counted blueberries into muffin tins. For my 1 year old, she put one blueberry in each well and we counted 1-12 together. With my 4 year old, we practiced skip counting by 2’s, so he placed 2 blueberries in each muffin well counting 2-20.
You know you are in full on homeschool mode when you are doing laundry and you leave all the socks unmatched so that your youngest can practice her matching skills… an activity that she loves helping mommy with by the way!
We ended our week with a Bunny Hop! After reading our bunny books, we collected bunny tails, practiced our counting and sorting, and made a bunny mask. If you want to read more about this fun activity check out the Bunny Hop HERE.
Oh, and you can’t do a “B” unit without playing with bubbles! Putting a couple inches of water in a big bowl, I added several drops of dish soap and let the kids blow bubbles with straws. We WILL be doing this again! Twenty minutes later, they didn’t want to stop, but I knew the little lady needed a nap, so mommy had to end the fun. They loved popping the bubbles, dipping their faces in the bubbles, making soap beards, and picking them up and blowing them through the air. It was good clean fun! A little caution though… my 1 year old WAS able to blow through the straw, but I also found that she tried to suck up water a few times too (she wasn’t too fond of the nasty surprise when she did), so I did end up blowing the bubbles for her. She enjoyed popping them just as much as blowing them, so it was still a success!
