Weather & the Letter W

Last week began a unit study on weather & Rylan focused on the letter W.

Brady read to us about how Jesus calmed the storm. Living in the South we can have some pretty nasty thunderstorms & I want the boys to know they don't have to fear them, that instead they should pray to Jesus & trust that He will protect them. We also read about Jesus walking on the water & how Peter was able to walk to Him as long as he was looking at Jesus, but once Peter focused on the storm around him, he would sink. I told the boys that no matter how scary things seem all they have to do is trust Jesus & they'll be OK.

Whenever I introduce a new letter to Rylan we sing the fun LeapFrog song "Every Letter Makes A Sound." Then we'll talk about words that start with that letter. Ry loves doing magnet pages & using Do-A-Dot markers to form the letter.

Rylan moves on to practicing the letter formation & then to tracing the letter using a dry erase crayon so he can practice over & over without me having to waste paper :)

 

We also reviewed the W word cards as he traced the W on each one. His writing is improving so much!

 

Rylan also does a great job matching the Scrabble tiles to the letters on the rain drops.

 

He also practiced coloring by number & cutting & pasting pictures that start with a W to his paper. We will add this to a mini Alphabet Picture Book we are putting together.

I also introduced him to Starfall & I couldn't pry the child away!

Rylan used the straw to make Wind to blow the Water (tempura paint) over the Ws. Afterward he dabbed it with a paper towel to make it look like Waves.

 Rylan did lots of counting practice & is doing great recognizing many of his numbers. We counted raindrops & made a counting book by coloring raindrops & tracing the number & the number word. Have I mentioned how thankful I am for the other ladies out there that make such cute learning printables?

 

For Science we reviewed various things that are hot & which are cold His favorite cold thing was a red Popsicle & his favorite hot thing was my coffee.

I checked out a Weather Theme Box from the Resource Center & let the boys explore it all. We reviewed various kinds of weather maps & the different types of weather. We looked at pictures & observed our local weather each day. Most of days were clear & sunny, but we got lucky & got a huge thunderstorm with beautiful lightning we oohed & ahhed over from safely inside & once it passed we saw a beautiful rainbow! 

They loved playing with the different weather instruments that came in the box, especially seeing how fast the anemometer went around when the wind blew. We also watched YouTube videos of weather storms. The boys were AMAZED! We practiced our tornado drill for safety & briefly reviewed the water cycle.   

 I found this cute idea on Pinterest to put shaving cream on top of water to represent the clouds. Then we added blue food coloring & waited for it to "condensate" & then "precipitate." It took a while, but it was worth the wait to see their happy faces when it did!

If you like the printables we used this week you can find them all here: 2 Teaching Mommies, Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, & Living Life Intentionally. You can also check out my Pinterest board to find lots of other ideas for weather.

We are continuing our weather fun & hope to get another blog up next week about it! I hope you all have a great week! & if you have any fun weather ideas please ship them my way!

DINOSAURS!

When I was a little girl I LOVED dinosaurs! Probably more than I loved space! I wanted to be 3 things when I grew up; an actress, an astronaut, & a paleontologist! NO KIDDING!!! In fact to this day I still love watching things about dinosaurs!

Here are all the amazing books we read this week!
I try very hard to find books each week the boys can listen to on tape or CD. This week I lucked up with The Dinosaur Who Lived Next Door. One of their favorites this week was Dinosaurumpus! Very silly & very cute! Brady & I also began reading chapter books together & started with The Magic Treehouse Dinosaurs Before Dark. Brady can't wait to read another one! This just tickles my heart! I love that he loves to read & I pray it's always this way! We read about 2-3 chapters a day, depending what all we had going on. We took turns reading pages & I would help Brady with words he didn't know. I can't believe how much better he got at reading just after doing this book together! I can't wait to do more!

Our Bible verse was Genesis 1:25 & we talked a lot about how some people have different thoughts on how long ago dinosaurs lived & what happened to them. Of course we believe in Creation, not the Big Bang Theory so we read What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs & discussed what Creation Scientists believe. Brady doesn't seem to care whether they lived millions or thousands of years ago; he just thinks they're cool! But I know it's important to start teaching the truth young whether they understand all of it or not.

The boys also like the book Look Inside T-Rex & after we read it we did some fossil digging of our own! A long time ago I found a "fossilized dino egg" by Creatology at Michael's for a $1. It came with a chisel, a hammer, & a brush to help the boys uncover the dinosaur inside. This took a lot longer than I expected! But my lil paleontologists persevered!


I checked out a Dinosaur Theme Box by Lakeshore from the Resource Center. Inside they had lil plastic dinosaur skeletons. During nap/quiet time I went outside & hid them in the dirt. When the boys got up they got to to dig away to find them all! This was such a HUGE hit!!! And like Easter egg hunting goes, they wanted to do it over, & over, & over, & over! Can you tell we had a lot of fun this week!? :)

Our printables this week came from Confession's of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week D is for Dinosaurs & 2 Teaching Mommies Dinosaur Pack.

Rylan had to match the dinosaur pieces to the correct color match. We also used dinosaur manipulatives to sort the dinos by color & species & made patterns with them.

Brady also used them to help him with his math as needed during the week & graphed them.

To practice his 1 to 1 number correlation, Rylan used the number cards from the Letter of Week (LOTW) pack & we said the # on the card, then counted the # of clothespins & attached them to the card which also helps him work on his fine motor skills. After we did all the #s, we would repeat it except he would count the clothespins as we took them off this time around.

Rylan also practiced lacing a dinosaur & using his magnetic pom poms to work on his fine motor skills too. His lil fingers sure are getting strong!

All these skills help Rylan with holding a pencil or crayon to practice writing. He began his writing practicing using his Do-A-Dot marker to write the letter D, then he traced the letter D with a dry erase crayon. He also practiced tracing lines by taking the dinosaur to the volcano (this came from 2 Teaching Mommies).

The boys spent a TON of time playing with dinosaurs this week! From the dino mat, to puppets, in the bathtub, outside, here, there, EVERYWHERE!! What can I say? We LOVE our dinosaurs!!

Keller decided to give the T-Rex a dose of his own medicine & showed him how it feels to be bitten :) He also had a lot fun playing with his baby T-rex book!

For our crafts I drew a scene according to Brady's description of what a dinosaurs home looks like. He said it had to have a volcano & grass & trees for the herbivores & omnivores to eat :) The boys then used dino stamps to create their pictures. They also used their dinosaur toys to make dinosaur tracks on paper to see the difference in each species' footprints.

We looked through all of our books & dino fact cards to learn about the various types of dinosaurs. I was pretty amazed at how many Brady already knew from just the past 2 years of liking dinosaurs. We don't watch Dinosaur Train a lot because they can go overboard with their own dino theories, but I will occasionally let them watch it & I'll ask questions about it & always redirect them to remember what we believe about the dinosaurs. Great teaching moments everywhere! The boys also watched The Land Before Time movie The Great Valley Adventure.

Our special theme lunches were dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets & dino shaped spaghetti Os & sandwiches in the shapes of Brady's favorite dinosaur; a Brachiosaurus! I also made him try salad because a Brachiosaurus would have liked them. To his surprise he like it! Though it was covered in ranch which I doubt the dinosaurs had LoL!!!

What would my kiddos do without a themed puzzle!?!? :) I think they did this one at least 5x a day! No kidding! Thank God for Michael's! We went there a few weeks ago & I racked up on wooden puzzles that were on sale for $1.50 or $2.50!!!

I hope you all enjoyed our DINO WEEK!!! Be blessed & have a great week!!