Thursday, October 3, 2013

Max’s School (LHTH Unit 9)

Max is 4 years, 1 month old.  We are using Little Hands To Heaven preschool program, which is adjustable for ages 2 – 5, by Heart of Dakota.  I’m trying to post enough to give you an accurate idea of what is covered in Little Hands To Heaven, yet leave it vague enough that you can’t use this post as a replacement for the teacher’s manual.  It’s full of fun ideas and activities to fill 20 – 30 minutes per day with active, creative learning that is centered on Christ.

Once again, this unit took us a while due to a few sick days.  It’s a good thing I am in no rush to get through Little Hands – we’ll go at Max’s pace until he’s completed it!

This unit was all about Letter H.  We made our H letter cards out of cheerios this week.  (One of these days I will remember to take a picture of Max’s Letter Wall!)  I think the manual said macaroni noodles, but we were out of them & I grabbed the closest item that we could glue on paper – cheerios!

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This tactile practice was a bit messy, but it was also a LOT of fun!  I poured a thin layer of flour in the lid of my 9x13 pan.  Max drew H’s in the flour.  (Alex was SO jealous that he had to try later!)

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Max did his Hide and Seek H page, circling all the H/h letters in the poem.  He can recognize the letter while we are working on it, but he doesn’t retain the letter once we’ve completed the unit.  He often doesn’t recognize all the letters from A – H if we review them out of order.  That’s one reason that I see no need to rush through Little Hands.  Max is a smart boy, but he has a very different learning style than his big brother.  I want to wait until he’s at least 5 before we begin MFW K, so spreading these LHTH units out over a few weeks isn’t really bothering me.

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Tracing and writing Letter H

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We learned about how the Israelites built a tabernacle to worship God in the wilderness.  We made our own mini tabernacle out of chairs and a blanket, and we sang a song to praise God.

(Jensyn is in there, too.  She’s under the ever-present pink pillow!)

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We also built a tabernacle out of foil wrapped (to make them look shiny/fancy) unifix cubes and a black cloth.  Max sprayed his little tabernacle with perfume (body spray, actually) to represent a sweet smelling gift to God.

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Working on number 9, cutting and pasting 9 bottles of perfume

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Learning about the grapes that the spies brought back from Canaan

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We used THIS PRINTABLE, covered with cotton balls, to make our “grapes”.  Then I gave the kids small cups of purple paint to spread over the cotton balls.  I ended by dipping another paintbrush in green for them to quickly paint the leaves.  When the paint and glue had dried, I cut out the grape bunches and glued them to construction paper.

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(Technically this was part of Alex’s math lesson, but all 3 kids did this…)
practicing shapes, learning about sides and corners
while hopping, jumping, and scooting along the tape lines
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The Teensiest Preschooler

This little cutie always keeps things interesting!  Sometimes she joins us during Little Hands To Heaven time.  Other days she does her own thing.  One day, she just curled up on the couch with a giant pile of books.  She is SOOOO funny when she “reads” stories aloud to herself.  She’ll be hearing what we’re saying, and somehow our words end up in her story.  It’s so cute!

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Jensyn joined us for Cheerio H letters, but only because it involved food.  I tried to give her enough cheerios to eat AND make an H, but it wasn’t enough.  After she filled her glue H with cheerios and ate the rest of the cheerios in her bowl, I realized she was removing the glue-covered cheerios from her paper and eating those, too!  So her end result was a plain-glue H with no cheerios…and a tummy full of gluey cheerios!  Good thing Elmer’s Glue is non-toxic!!!

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