Quite Possibly the World’s Most Perfect Q

We’re to Q. Q. What kind of letter is Q? It can’t even work on it’s own, it’s got to have a little “u” next to it. How random is that? Who made that rule up? It’s very strange to me much less a 2 year old.

I was a little stuck on a Q verse. The only one I could think of was “Quench not the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19. King Jimmy anyone?  So, I emailed my bbb* (and one faithful commenter), Leigh. She got concordance- happy and sent me a great list of Q verses.

We chose:

“I am quick to obey your commands…” Psalm 119:32

That is definitely something I want my daughter, Lydia to be. Quick to obey. That’s one reason I named her Lydia because the Lydia in the Bible was quick to believe and do for God. However, when I explained that “quick” meant “fast”, she said, “Mommy, I don’t like fast.” Oh, well.

After a little starfall, and reading the verse, we decided to make a queen.. A beautiful, royal queen. I wanted it to just be her face with a little tinfoil crown. I mean, everyone has tinfoil in their cupboard, right?

WRONG!

So, on to Plan B. I looked through my wrapping paper until I found some silver ribbons. I found some pretty purple tissue paper with scalloped edges and voila, our queen:

OK, so Lydia put her lips on upside down. And she doesn’t have any limbs. And as Lydia pointed out, no chin, either. But still, she looks regal. Right?

I’m looking forward to this letter because I really want to tell Lydia the story of Queen Esther. One of my favorite kids’ Bibles, The Super Hero Bible is illustrated by Brother Jones Artwork. And their picture of Queen Esther is the best I’ve ever seen. I know she’ll love it when she sees it. Sorry I can’t show it to you… (FYI: I just went on amazon to link to it and it says it is OUT OF PRINT. If you ever find one at your bookstore, buy it. It’s way cool.)

Anyway, I think we’re also going to watch Veggie Tale’s Queen Esther. Even though it may be a little confusing when Lydia doesn’t even know the story to watch it with vegetables, but whatever. And of course, I’ve already promised Lydia we’ll be making Queen crowns. I found some really cute ones online yesterday. I’ll share them with you soon, I promise!

Oh, and keep your feed readers open, I’ve got a special announcement coming up ASAP!

*best blogging buddy

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.

O is for Octopus and Omigosh

So, I found a cute octopus craft. I don’t know why I’ve been so stuck on doing an octopus, but I this is what I wanted:

I mean, isn’t that adorable? I knew it was going to be a little hard for a 2 year old, but still, I figured she’d be able to do part of it and then I could do the rest. Easy shmeasy.

Uh, yeah. Well, here’s what ours turned out like:

It took me like 30 minutes to do it and not even one of those legs is even. Does he even have 8 legs?

My daughter was not entertained and ended up measuring the cotton balls instead of making an octopus.

(However, right at this moment, she’s putting the octopus to sleep in the laundry basket. Complete with whispers and a blanket.)

So, next time I’m going to get a craft with a paper plate and a glue stick for goodness sakes.

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!

N: Nature & Nest

Yesterday my car died. It’s a completely long story and I’m so aggravated. BUT, instead of going to the puppet show like we planned*, my daughter and I went nest hunting.

When we first moved to our house, my dad found a robin’s nest. It was so cool. Robins use mud to keep their nests together. And here in Georgia, we’ve got red mud! So, the inside of robins’ nests are red. The folklore is that robins get their red breast from squishing that red mud into their nest. Isn’t that cool?

Well, we saved that nest for months. And I was hoping it might just have fallen off our porch and was some what intact below it. But no such luck.

Anyway, as we began our nest hunt, we talked about the letter N and our N verse. Then when I realized I wasn’t going to find a nest, I remembered the next best word for outdoors and the letter N: NATURE!

I yanked the camera out of my purse and we started taking pictures of all the “nature” we could find. I just told her nature was the outdoor stuff God created.

We found all sorts of fun things including an amazing spiderweb complete with mama spider and eggs. *shudder*

So, there you go, an impromptu activity to impress your kids with…the letter N!

*my mom actually did come and pick us up so we went to a puppet show
about a dinosaur that made a NEST in a little boys closet…coincidence?!

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!