Shhhhh….the letter S!

Yes, it’s Thursday and we’re just getting to our abc verse this week. I’ve had a busy week and I’ve been cleaning non-stop for my little pirate to get here…in less than 11 days! The problem is, the cleaning just never stops. *sigh* Back to our letter…

It’s the super, spectacular, stupendous, stellar and special…S!

I had a hard time with this verse. Of course, there was SON (as in Jesus) or SABBATH (as in, “who uses that word?”) or even SALVATION or SAVIOR (as in “what does that mean to a 2 year old?”). So, I chose a letter combination…kind of in the vein of Leigh’s hard C/soft C/Ch…and we chose…

“I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” John 10:14 NIrV

I love this verse for so many reasons. Three “s” words for one. But really because it says so much about Jesus. He is our Shepherd. Not just any shepherd. The GOOD shepherd. I so want Lydia to see Jesus as the one who loves her most and is always doing good for her.

When my husband and I were in transition between jobs a few years ago, this whole section in John 10 really helped us. Jesus talks about how we know His voice and we won’t follow a stranger’s voice. This is a lesson worth learning at an early age–when we belong to Jesus, we’ll be able to tell the difference between His voice and the enemy’s. I like it!!

OK, back to our super S craft.

We started off making a sheep. I have to say I cheated a little on this one because I had these cute fun-foam leftovers from “Easter”. We made the sheep…

And then we needed a shepherd.

I had randomly picked up a surfer fun foam craft for like 12cents at Michael’s a few weeks ago. (We had a pool party with Lydia’s cousins and I wanted to make some summer-y crafts. Well, we never did. So, he’s been sitting in my “craft” closet waiting for the day we did the letter “s”.) But instead of a surfer, I figured he’d make a great shepherd!

And I was right!

I also found a fun-foam “S” and I think it really adds to it. You know, kind of a “Super Shepherd” kinda thing.

While we let that dry, I made a few S’s for Lydia to trace. Our printer is still jacked up and I still don’t have the patience to fix it, so I couldn’t print off the ones I usually do. She did the small S first and you can see she started making a circle. Then she went back and traced it perfectly. I was so impressed!

The rest of our week is pretty packed, so I’m hoping we can do a little more for “s” than SCRUB the bathroom, STOP whining and STRAIGHTEN the bedrooms.

Remember the Letter R

Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant, but I could not think of one verse that began with the letter “R” except “Rejoice in the Lord always” and honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was a verse or a song! So, I pulled out my handy dandy concordance and began to flip through the R’s. Wow. Concordances are…well, detailed.

Finally, I got to the word “remember” and I liked this idea. I want Lydia to REMEMBER the things of the Lord. While comparing the concordance to the NIRV on biblegateway.com, I found one of my favorite verses (and probably one of the first I ever memorized) Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways REMEMBER Him. Then He will make your path smooth and straight.”

(Now that I look at it and we’ve said it a few hundred times, I should have split this up and done the first sentence this week and the second sentence next week for “S”: smooth and straight. Live and learn.)

I know “remember” is kind of a hard concept, even though we do talk about remembering a lot. So, I taught Lydia the sign for remember to kind of help emphasize the word and the verse. (You can see the sign here.) I think this helped and she’s very intent to do the sign while we say the verse…or while I say the verse.

(We’ve done sign language with Lydia since she was months old. She knows well over a hundred signs. So, she’s used to this. But regardless, I think motions/signs help emphasize any learning. The more senses you can use, the more you’ll remember.)

There are so many great r words: roses, rainbow, round/rectangle, red…and ROBOT. Ever since Lydia saw Wall-E (or Waaaaalllleeee, as she says it), she’s been really into robots. We decided to make a red, rectangle robot with ribbon appendages. We pulled out the ever-present baby name book and decided on “Razi” as a first name. What can I say? She liked it.

By the way, Lydia did the whole thing by herself with the exception of the ribbon and the awesome button and light drawings I did on Razi’s chest. Did you see the great eyes and nose she did? That’s a big improvement—there are actually TWO separate eyes! Oh, and the “scribbling” on the top left? Lydia wrote “Razi the Robot”, of course.

I was going to go through our books for “R” but Lydia already thought of a book because it has a RAINBOW in it…our Little Golden Book of Noah’s Ark. It’s actually quite good–follows the story well and has cute pictures. We’ll do more with Noah and the rainbow this week because I think it’s a great tie in to “remember”—God put the rainbow in the sky so we could REMEMBER His promise to us.

A is for…

…well, we already went over a list of things A is for… but today, A was for “activity!”

Does anyone know how to help a kid whose mom is too tightly wound?  Poor EJ – I know I thought up this activity and all, but I have a serious problem with mess.  I need to loosen up and understand that if I let a toddler have his way with an ink pad, things are going to get messy.  See?

 

So EJ went crazy with his red stamp pad and his fingers and hands, and as he stamped away, I asked him what words started with A.  As he named them off, I tried to find fingerprints on the paper that matched what he said. 

To be honest, I was mostly thinking about red ants and apples – but EJ was pretty creative with his A words!

And my favorite…

I didn’t even know he knew the word “alien!”

So here was our final product.

I also had him do some stamping on a smaller piece of paper so my mom can hang it on her fridge.  She is so excited about having things to hang on her fridge, so I thought we’d start with this one.

Yesterday was a really hectic day for us, so I pulled out some Abooks from our shelves and we read them together throughout the day.  EJ’s favorite was Ananse’s Feast – an Ashanti Tale, retold by Tololwa M. Mollel.  EJ’s really into spiders and turtles right now, and the main character, Ananse, is a spider – the turtle’s name is Akye.  So there were A‘s all over the book!

Tomorrow, I’m thinking we’ll play outside for a while and try to take some pictures of the ants that have invaded our yard.  I’ll let you know how that goes… pray we don’t find any biting ants!

A Plethora of P’s

There is so much good stuff to go with P! You could do this for weeks. My favorite color is purple and Lydia’s is pink, so that would work. But then pasta is always good, too. And pandas, my fave! Penguins would be fun. Pictures are always great for my little photographer. Puppies are a plus. There’s just too much to choose from! Hmmm…

Let’s get to our verse first. We chose Psalm 135:3, “Praise the Lord, because He is good.” (This is actually just the first part, but if you have an older child, you should do the whole verse because it says, “Sing PRAISE to his name, because that is PLEASANT!”)

It’s an easy verse but I think it is a small sermon. This is the kind of confidence I always want to have in God. That no matter the circumstance here on earth, we can trust that God is good. So good in fact, that our response is to praise Him. It’s a verse that could sound trite, but I pray it really cements itself in Lydia’s heart.

Now, onto our craft. We ended up copying No Time For Flash Cards’ “P” craft a little and did some pasta P’s. I even used some pink & purple paper (although, I have to admit, it’s the only color I had!).

My daughter enjoyed this one so much we ended up making another pasta P.

Then we discovered 2 of our fingers started with “P”—pointer and pinky. So, we put pasta on our pointer and pinky and proceeded to sing, “Where is Thumbkin?” She’s eating lunch right now and has been singing it nonstop!

Speaking of lunch, look what we ate:

That’s right Pasta and Peas!

And a few more things I found to go along with P:

• How cute is this blog? It’s called Kiddio and is full of crafts, book reviews, etc. This one would be perfect for P—a book and an activity about PEAS!
• And oh, I want to do this! A Puppy Party with a cute cake, cute decor and the best is the doggy bag. I love it!
• I glanced through our books before naptime and found, Please Do Not Open This Book! which I think is just the 35th Anniversary book of The Monster at the End of this Book. It was one of my favorites as a kid and now Lydia loves to read it. It must say PLEASE and PAGES a hundred times. We read it today and said, “p-p-please” and “p-p-page” every time. She thought it was hysterical.

The Letter “O”

So, I thought I’d let the pictures do the talking today…

This week we chose Psalm 30:2 “O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.” I thought there would be more “O God…” type verses. But they were all something like, “O God, slay my enemies” or something like that.

Anyway, after reading the verse and writing it, Lydia colored in all the O’s. I think she did a pretty good job.

I printed off some orange clip art…

Found some orange stickers…

And some random orange fun foam and buttons and other stuff…

Then let Lydia decorate a letter O.

Then we used our “O” worksheet from First School. Lydia loved all the animals on the bottom: ostrich, ox, otter and octopus.

She even tried her hand at tracing the letters. Not bad for a two year old, I guess…

And the finished products with her saying, “Ooooooh.”

Happy “O” Day!

What We Usually Do

Each week, here’s what I try to do. I’m not “homeschooling” her every day or anything. I just try to integrate our verse & letter into about 3 different activities across 3 different days. If I actually get all 3 of these things done I feel VERY VERY accomplished. Each post following this one will showcase one or more of these segments:

Day 1:

First: Find a Verse

We read the verse from the Bible, write it down on paper and then repeat it a few times. I try to pick verses that actually begin with the letter we’re focusing on. That doesn’t always work. Some verses are inappropriate for a preschooler…

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— ofr your love is more delightful than wine.” Song of Solomon 1:2

or they just don’t mean much…

“Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself.” Deuteronomy 23:12

I want to put scriptures into my children’s hearts that will be helpful to them (DO NOT BE AFRAID!) or that show some great quality about God (GOD IS LOVE!).

I usually look at the New International Reader’s Version first. It’s on a 3rd grade reading level and is in short sentences. However, I also use BibleGateway.com to look at several versions, in case something is written a little bit easier (or to make it start with our letter!)

Second: Go to Starfall.com

This is seriously my favorite thing ever. It’s a free site for parents and teachers. It’s got all kinds of computer “games” that teach letters and reading. The ABC portion is so cute. You click a letter and then it goes through all sorts of words that begin with that letter–they’ll show pictures, animations and even games. But the best part is it says the letter’s sound every time you click. I love listening to my daughter repeat the sounds with every page.

Third: Find a craft

I try to find a picture or craft that can be on our same Bible verse page. We display it all week…mainly so I can remember to say the verse with her. So, we’re not talking big honkin’ craft here. Just something more than coloring is all I’m after. We’ve done stamps, fun foam, feathers, yarn…whatever just happens to be laying around the house. Seriously, I have NEVER bought anything for this crafty endeavor.

There are tons of great sites out there. You can view them all on my sidebar.

Fourth: Letter Recognition
I usually print a Capital & Lowercase letter and let Lydia trace it. I found a great site that has the printable letters with the directional arrows on each one. Not that my daughter uses or understands the directional arrows. But still, it’s fun for her.

The tracing of the letters, the computer game, craft and Bible verse MAY take us a half an hour to a full hour. It’s not structured. I don’t make her do the craft the way I want. (Wait till you see the elephant she made for E. yikes.) It’s just about introducing the letter and saying the verse as many times as she’ll do it!

When our crafts and coloring sheets are done, we hang them up in the living room. She loves looking at her “abc verse” all week…especially if someone comes over, that’s the first thing she wants to show them.

Day 2: Activity

I try to find something else to do that goes with our letter.

C? Are you making chicken for dinner? Let your preschooler help.

A? Going grocery shopping? Let your son pick out three things at the store that begin with A. (uhm…apples, apricots and artichokes)

K? Go fly a kite!

E? Tivo a show about elephants.

F? Make an American Flag from tissue paper and let your child display it in their room.

Just whatever I can find online, remember from doing as a kid, or can just make fit into our letter.

Day 3: Library Books

We go to the library and look for books that begin with our letter. Or are somewhat about our letter. Or about the craft we did.

For example, the letter A; I found books about Johnny Appleseed. Then I just searched our card catalog for anything that had to do with apples. For B, we got Berenstain’s B Book. For C we looked for books about cats and caterpillars. For E I found Elmer the Elephant. You just have to search around.

Hope this helps! Please leave comments or questions!