We talked about Cain & Abel a couple weeks ago. I wasn't sure how to handle the subject of murder with a 2 year old, so I just said that Cain hurt his little brother because he was angry. Here's what the lesson's objectives were:
Concept: God made it possible for everyone to be His friend.
Goal: Children will learn that Abel chose to be friends with God and Cain did not. They will learn that they, like Abel, can be God's friends if they ask Jesus to forgive their sin. (lesson from Xenos Christian Fellowship)
Here's what we did:
Books
We read the story out of Jonathan's Bible, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. The story did mention murder, but I just reworded the text to be more age-appropriate. I didn't find any good children's books about this story-- but I'm not surprised. :)
Pretend Play
I brought out some of our Melissa & Doug pretend vegetables as well as a pretend sheep. We talked about how Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd and pretended to make offerings to God.
Art
We colored some Cain & Abel coloring pages, especially focusing on the concept of being "brother's keeper".
Practical Life
Though the point of the story of Cain and Abel is not to teach on proper sibling relationships, it's still a very applicable application for a toddler. We talked about how Jonathan should be treating Gracie and that God wants us to be kind.
So that's what we did a couple weeks ago-- still haven't found my camera, so no pictures. Sorry!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
g is for goat
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| Image Source: AllPosters |
We continued our focus on the letter "g" by looking at goats. Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 has some great printables to go along with this theme. Head on over there and check them out!
Books
The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul GaldoneThis is a classic retelling of the Norwegian folk tale by an award-winning illustrator. Galdone's illustrations do the story justice- lively realistic looking billy goats and, of course, an ugly troll. The troll is frightening, but not overly so. The story lends itself well to dramatization-- I really enjoyed hearing my husband read this out loud to Jonathan. Jonathan has enjoyed this story and requested it several times. It's a great imaginative fairy tale!
This is a fun story that Jonathan really enjoyed. Jonathan liked the catchy, rhyming text as well as the bold cartoon-like illustrations. The goats are portrayed in different settings and different activities- from city goats running to show-off goats playing on a playground to firemen goats climbing. The number of goats increases from one to ten as children are invited to count the silly goats. A very cute and creative counting book.
G is for goat by Patricia Polacco
We also read an goat-themed alphabet book. Polacco's charming illustrations feature little shepherd girls and their lively, delightful goats. The book covers everything goat-related from apples to three little kids named Zig, Zag and Zoe. It's a fun and different approach to the alphabet. Jonathan and I enjoyed a nice quiet moment snuggling with this book.
We also read an goat-themed alphabet book. Polacco's charming illustrations feature little shepherd girls and their lively, delightful goats. The book covers everything goat-related from apples to three little kids named Zig, Zag and Zoe. It's a fun and different approach to the alphabet. Jonathan and I enjoyed a nice quiet moment snuggling with this book.
Activities
Pretend Play: We pulled out our Little People farm (which included a goat) and played a bit with that.
Art : We used a lot of Carisa's printables. We colored goats using crayons, markers, and colored pencils.
Field Trip: We did not get to do this because it was too hot that day, but I had planned to take Jonathan over to a local petting zoo and pet some goats and see some geese. I think we still may try to fit this in sometime soon!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Reading Our Library- Kate Banks Part One
In honor of Bastille Day, I thought I'd share some books with a French theme. I was hoping to get this up earlier, but we had a bit of an internet outage. Anyways, Kate Banks is an award-winning American author who lives in the South of France. She has collaborated with French illustrator Georg Hallensleben on a number of children's books. Not all of the books we checked out appealed to Jonathan (at age 2 1/2), but they are nonetheless beautiful books that older children would enjoy.
Baboon
This book is what started our adventure reading Kate Banks' books as it appeared on a list of recommended books for toddlers. It is a sweet, somewhat philosophic book about a baby baboon's first experiences in the world. Throughout the baby baboon's day, he comes across different sensory experiences: green forest, slow turtles, hot fires and tries to understand the world around him. As he settles down to sleep, he realizes that the world is big. Hallensleben's impressionist-style illustrations are beautiful and dreamlike and show the warm, caring relationship the little baboon has with its mother. It's a beautiful book that toddlers and preschoolers can relate to as they also are experiencing and trying to make sense of the world around them. Jonathan liked this book and it (usually) grasped his attention.
The Cat Who Walked Across France
This is a book that I think will grow on Jonathan as he gets older. It's a story about a cat whose owner dies. The cat moves from his stone house by the edge of the (Mediterranean) sea to northern France where he is forgotten about. So the cat begins his journey home, traveling through cities, countryside and mountains as he heads back to his home by the sea. Famous French landmarks grace Hallensleben's beautiful pictures as the cat makes his journey. There's a map of France on the back of the book which traces the cat's travels. Jonathan enjoyed the book when I had him involved in trying to find the cat on each page, as well as naming items that the cat sees on the journey (boats, cars, bicycles, etc.). It's a beautiful book, and I think it's one that we'll come back to in a few years.
I'm linking this up to Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word. Check out this link-up for more wonderful children's book ideas!
This book is what started our adventure reading Kate Banks' books as it appeared on a list of recommended books for toddlers. It is a sweet, somewhat philosophic book about a baby baboon's first experiences in the world. Throughout the baby baboon's day, he comes across different sensory experiences: green forest, slow turtles, hot fires and tries to understand the world around him. As he settles down to sleep, he realizes that the world is big. Hallensleben's impressionist-style illustrations are beautiful and dreamlike and show the warm, caring relationship the little baboon has with its mother. It's a beautiful book that toddlers and preschoolers can relate to as they also are experiencing and trying to make sense of the world around them. Jonathan liked this book and it (usually) grasped his attention.
The Cat Who Walked Across France
This is a book that I think will grow on Jonathan as he gets older. It's a story about a cat whose owner dies. The cat moves from his stone house by the edge of the (Mediterranean) sea to northern France where he is forgotten about. So the cat begins his journey home, traveling through cities, countryside and mountains as he heads back to his home by the sea. Famous French landmarks grace Hallensleben's beautiful pictures as the cat makes his journey. There's a map of France on the back of the book which traces the cat's travels. Jonathan enjoyed the book when I had him involved in trying to find the cat on each page, as well as naming items that the cat sees on the journey (boats, cars, bicycles, etc.). It's a beautiful book, and I think it's one that we'll come back to in a few years.
I'm linking this up to Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word. Check out this link-up for more wonderful children's book ideas!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Kids In the Word: Adam & Eve
We spent a week down in central Illinois visiting grandparents and great-grandparents a couple weeks ago. While we were there, we mostly just enjoyed our summer and visiting with relatives. During that week, we continued our Bible lessons and talked a lot about the story of Adam and Eve.
Books
First Virtues for Toddlers by Mary Manz Simon
This is a collection of twelve different stories for toddlers featuring different virtues. The stories were originally published as separate board books. We read the story Bear Obeys and talked more about the importance of obedience and obeying God.
Game
Books
We continued to read from Jonathan's Bible, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes.
We also spent another week reading Adam and Eve in the Garden, an early reader book from the Beginner's Bible. He understands a lot of the basics of the story-- that Adam & Eve broke the "one rule" and he understands that when we break one of God's rules, it's called a "sin". We talked about how everybody sins- mommy and daddy sin when they disobey God and how Jonathan sins when he disobeys as well. We talked about how we need Jesus and how God sent Jesus to save us from our sins. This I Can Read book talks about God sending Jesus, which is wonderful ending to the story. We own several of these books and Jonathan loves them and requests one every night.
First Virtues for Toddlers by Mary Manz Simon
This is a collection of twelve different stories for toddlers featuring different virtues. The stories were originally published as separate board books. We read the story Bear Obeys and talked more about the importance of obedience and obeying God.
Game
We played "Red Light, Green Light" which was a big hit. Jonathan has been such a back-seat driver lately and will tell us "red light means stop" and "green light means go". So this game was right up his alley. We talked about how we have to obey the law. It's also a great safety lesson. (Idea from ABCJesusLoves Me)
Art
We didn't do much art this week. I did print off an "A is for Adam" coloring page from somewhere (I can't find the link just now-- sorry!)
More Ideas
Both Hubbard's Cupboard and ABCJesusLovesMe have great ideas to go along with this lesson. There simply isn't time to incorporate them all-- check them out and see what works for you!
We didn't do much art this week. I did print off an "A is for Adam" coloring page from somewhere (I can't find the link just now-- sorry!)
More Ideas
Both Hubbard's Cupboard and ABCJesusLovesMe have great ideas to go along with this lesson. There simply isn't time to incorporate them all-- check them out and see what works for you!
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tot School: Summer Edition (30 Months)
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Jonathan is 30 Months |
Anyways, here's what we've been up to this week:
Bible
We talked about Cain & Abel this week. I wasn't sure how to handle the subject of murder with a 2 year old, so I just said that Cain hurt his little brother because he was angry. Here's what the lesson's objectives were:
Concept: God made it possible for everyone to be His friend.
Goal: Children will learn that Abel chose to be friends with God and Cain did not. They will learn that they, like Abel, can be God's friends if they ask Jesus to forgive their sin. (lesson from Xenos Christian Fellowship)
I'll cover what we did in depth in a future post. Jonathan seemed to like the activities well enough, but he didn't engage with the lesson as much as Adam and Eve. We did tie it in with how he should treat his little sister though.
Books & ABCs
We read books about goats and geese, to tie in with our focus on the letter g. Look for upcoming posts about these. Some favorites were Blue Goose by Nancy Tafuri and Let's Count Goats! by Mem Fox
We got a lot of old favorites from PaperBack swap recently, so we re-read a lot of those. Jonathan's favorite book right now is The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. He requests that one over and over again!
Gross Motor Skills
Jonathan has loved golfing in our yard- it's his favorite thing to do outside! He got a chance to practice his skills when our church had Family Night at its annual Sports Life Camp. He played mini golf, soccer, and jumped in a bounce house with a couple of his friends.
We also did some swimming in our friends' toddler pool. Jonathan loved sliding down the little slide. Even Grace had some fun splashing!
We also took a nice long walk to our local farmer's market. Jonathan did great! He was so excited to buy blueberries.
(on Grace's end, she's crawling all over the house now and trying to pull up-- she's getting to be such a big girl!)
Art
We did some coloring (goats, geese) and we painted this week and played around with mixing paint colors. We also did some pre-writing exercises- which Jonathan did great at! He traced some lines and some circles using printables by Carisa over at 1+1+1=1.
Games
We played Cootie this week which Jonathan liked. He has fun building the cootie bugs. We only played this while Grace was napping, since it had small parts.
So that's what we've been up to this week! Thanks for stopping by!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Kids in the Word: Creation
A couple weeks ago Jonathan and I began journeying through the Bible. The first story that we focused on was the story of Creation (Genesis 1 and 2). Here are some of the things we did:
Reading:
We read from Jonathan's Bible, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. This is a wonderful Bible for toddlers.
We also read Adam and Eve in the Garden, an early reader book from the Beginner's Bible. Jonathan loves this series of books and requests one each night before he goes to bed. He picked up on the plot easily and was able to recall details of the story.
Art
We did art projects to show what God made on each day of creation:
Day One: We glued black paper upon white paper to talk about darkness and light. We then used picture cards featuring different day/evening activities and glued the "daytime" activities to the white half of the paper and the "evening" activities to the black paper. I downloaded the cards from Hubbard's Cupboard.
Day Two: We glued white cotton pads to blue construction paper to make clouds. Then we glued blue waves onto the bottom of the paper and sprinkled salt (dyed blue) on the bottom of the paper.
Day Three: We painted green grass, brown trees, and orange flowers onto blue construction paper. Then we placed leaf stickers onto the tree.
Day Four: We glued a sun and moon onto black construction paper and then covered the sky with star stickers.
Day Five: We put fish stickers onto blue construction paper. (I didn't have any bird stickers)
Day Six: We put animal stickers onto green construction paper. Then we rested!
Here are a picture of five of our creations-- I didn't get a picture of day six:
Jonathan really enjoyed this week and knows that God made everything! In fact, when we asked him about a wooden bunny his great-grandfather carved, he said that God made the bunny. It was cute- it gave us all a laugh. :)
For more Creation lesson resources check out:
Hubbard's Cupboard
ABC Jesus Loves Me
Reading:
We read from Jonathan's Bible, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. This is a wonderful Bible for toddlers.
We also read Adam and Eve in the Garden, an early reader book from the Beginner's Bible. Jonathan loves this series of books and requests one each night before he goes to bed. He picked up on the plot easily and was able to recall details of the story.
Art
We did art projects to show what God made on each day of creation:
Day One: We glued black paper upon white paper to talk about darkness and light. We then used picture cards featuring different day/evening activities and glued the "daytime" activities to the white half of the paper and the "evening" activities to the black paper. I downloaded the cards from Hubbard's Cupboard.
Day Two: We glued white cotton pads to blue construction paper to make clouds. Then we glued blue waves onto the bottom of the paper and sprinkled salt (dyed blue) on the bottom of the paper.
Day Three: We painted green grass, brown trees, and orange flowers onto blue construction paper. Then we placed leaf stickers onto the tree.
Day Four: We glued a sun and moon onto black construction paper and then covered the sky with star stickers.
Day Five: We put fish stickers onto blue construction paper. (I didn't have any bird stickers)
Day Six: We put animal stickers onto green construction paper. Then we rested!
Here are a picture of five of our creations-- I didn't get a picture of day six:
Jonathan really enjoyed this week and knows that God made everything! In fact, when we asked him about a wooden bunny his great-grandfather carved, he said that God made the bunny. It was cute- it gave us all a laugh. :)
For more Creation lesson resources check out:
Hubbard's Cupboard
ABC Jesus Loves Me
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Reading Our Library- Janet & Allan Ahlberg
I'm going backwards a bit with this one-- but Janet & Allan Ahlberg are British authors/illustrators whose books one just shouldn't miss! Janet's illustrations have been awarded the Kate Greenaway medal.
The Ahlbergs partnered to create a number of popular children's books together until Janet's death in 1994. Allan Ahlberg has gone on to write several more books. Their books routinely appear on recommended book lists. Some of the most popular for preschoolers are Each Peach, Pear, Plum and The Jolly Postman. We've enjoyed each of those books. In this post, however, I want to focus on some of the books they wrote for babies and toddlers. These books were new to me, so I thought I would share:
Peek a Boo! (titled Peepo! in the UK)
This is a delightful board book with die-cut holes. It shows scenes from a baby's point of view as a family goes about its day. The little refrain "Here's a little baby 1-2-3...what does he see?" is catchy and fun.. The old-fashioned illustrations are beautifully detailed with lots of things to point out to your little one in each scene. Both Grace and Jonathan have enjoyed this sweet book. Don't overlook this one!
Another series of board books written by the Ahlbergs is The Baby's Catalogue. This board book series is written to introduce familiar objects to babies, in a similar fashion to a first word book. The first two books feature two words of text to introduce different items to babies. The last two books are more of a guessing game with the baby finding a named object in the picture. It took Jonathan a few tries to enjoy this series, he's enjoyed more of the guessing game books (Blue Buggy, See the Rabbit). Grace has enjoyed sitting on my lap and looking at these books particularly the former two (Doll and Teddy, Baby Sleeps). The series contains four books, each are well worth checking out from your local library. Snuggle up with your little one and enjoy pointing out different objects on each page!
The Ahlbergs partnered to create a number of popular children's books together until Janet's death in 1994. Allan Ahlberg has gone on to write several more books. Their books routinely appear on recommended book lists. Some of the most popular for preschoolers are Each Peach, Pear, Plum and The Jolly Postman. We've enjoyed each of those books. In this post, however, I want to focus on some of the books they wrote for babies and toddlers. These books were new to me, so I thought I would share:
Peek a Boo! (titled Peepo! in the UK)
This is a delightful board book with die-cut holes. It shows scenes from a baby's point of view as a family goes about its day. The little refrain "Here's a little baby 1-2-3...what does he see?" is catchy and fun.. The old-fashioned illustrations are beautifully detailed with lots of things to point out to your little one in each scene. Both Grace and Jonathan have enjoyed this sweet book. Don't overlook this one!
Another series of board books written by the Ahlbergs is The Baby's Catalogue. This board book series is written to introduce familiar objects to babies, in a similar fashion to a first word book. The first two books feature two words of text to introduce different items to babies. The last two books are more of a guessing game with the baby finding a named object in the picture. It took Jonathan a few tries to enjoy this series, he's enjoyed more of the guessing game books (Blue Buggy, See the Rabbit). Grace has enjoyed sitting on my lap and looking at these books particularly the former two (Doll and Teddy, Baby Sleeps). The series contains four books, each are well worth checking out from your local library. Snuggle up with your little one and enjoy pointing out different objects on each page!
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