Little Hearts For His Glory, Unit 11

This year, we are using Heart of Dakota’s Little Hearts For His Glory curriculum.
It is adaptable for children ages 5 – 7.  To read more about our choice, CLICK HERE.

Alex is 5 years, 8 months.
He will turn 6 in December 2013.

Alex is learning right now that history is HIS story – the story of God’s world!

We read (and did dramatic play) about the birth and childhood of Jesus.

When we read about the angel visiting Mary, we discussed emotions.  How do you think Mary FELT when the angel visited her?  Was she surprised?  Scared?  Upset?  Happy?

We then practiced making faces to show different emotions: sad, happy, excited, silly

I was pleasantly surprised to find that, when we read about the wisemen in our history book (a nice touch!  some historical info to go along with the Bible story), they were sure to point out that it took the wisemen quite some time to find Jesus.  Jesus was a young child, not a newborn baby, when the wisemen visited. 

 

The Bible verse for this unit talks about how Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and men.  (Luke 2:52)  Our stories were, obviously, about Jesus as he grew.

We are finishing All About Reading Level 1 – and moving on to level 2 – this year.


We’re just reading together right now. 
I decided it might be nice to take a little break before we dive into Level 2 of AAR.

(Please keep in mind that I have the older version of LHFHG, and if you purchase a new guide, your math will follow a different sequence than what we are doing.  I created my own spreadsheet to match the math activities in the older version of LHFHG to the lessons in Singapore Essentials.  It’s not perfect, but it will work for us!)

I sent Alex to find one heavy object and one light object.  He came back with a Leapster (heavy) and a crocheted purse (light).  I was a little surprised that he didn’t find something heavier, but I did tell him to be quick about it.  Perhaps he felt rushed!

We’d read about the angels appearing to the shepherds, filling the sky and singing praises.  So we talked about how vibrations cause high/low tones.  We felt our throats as we spoke to each other, noticing the vibrations.  Then we filled drinking glasses with water, tapping them with a spoon to produce high and low tones.  We experimented to see if more water makes higher or lower tones, and Alex played “music” on his water glasses.

I thought I had taken pictures, but perhaps they are on the other camera.  I’ll add them later if I find them.

We are using Happy Handwriting and Rod & Staff ABC series.

 

Alex has moved on to lowercase letters.  I can see definite improvement when he CONCENTRATES, but he still doesn’t put his heart into these.  Handwriting pages are something to be tolerated

 

We finished Peter Rabbit and started reading Danny Meadow Mouse this week.  Alex is really enjoying these stories, and he is getting much better at answering the comprehension questions!

One thing that’s REALLY special about the story time in Little Hearts is that you’re not JUST reading a story and discussing comprehension.  The Little Hearts guide also has questions/comments that help you tie the story in with Christian principles.  This week, that was tied in by how God created some animals to hibernate in winter, while others were not created for that purpose.  We, as His people, need to remember that God created us for a purpose.

drawing skills are slowly improving,
but he’s still not one to make an elaborate picture or add a lot of color

We did not do the artistic expression for Unit 11. 
We’d had a busy day, and I didn’t feel that this particular project had much value.
The part that involved copying the Bible verse might have been a nice touch, though…

As I mentioned in the Unit 10 post, we’ve been working on the Daily Math & Literacy pages from DreamBigKinders.  I’m finding that these are a great bit of extra practice/review for Alex, and I’m also learning that he can do more than I realized.  I am so thankful to have stumbled upon these sheets on Teachers Notebook while looking for some ideas for a co-op class!

Alex has always had a hard time remembering the date of his birthday.  This unit’s rhyme was about the months of the year, and Alex does a pretty good job remember his birthday now.

 

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