Week 5 - Friday

LETTER E - Heavenly Helpers workbook page (handwriting, coloring)

NUMBER 5 - practice counting five beads into muffin pan, do elephant parade cards again

THEME
Review poster.
Elephants are like cows in that they're called bulls, cows, and calves.
They're also like cows because they are mammals and make milk for their babies.
Elephants are like many of the dinosaurs because they only eat plants and they are very big.

Elephant Facts: Habitat
Because elephants are so big, the world's largest land animal, they require a lot of space. They need space to find enough food to eat--lots of grasses, trees and shrubs. They also need a good supply of water to drink and to bathe in.

Activity: connect-the-dots elephant

Books:
Babar Saves the Day by Laurent de Brunhoff
Fly, Dumbo, Fly! by Jennifer Liberts Weinberg

FAMILY FUN: watch the old Disney movie Dumbo


**LATER IN THE DAY**

Bible Hero: Elijah
Read story HERE. Hannah wasn't up from her nap yet, so even though this is a really long story, Eli actually sat and listened to it!
Add picture to poster and words faithful, trusted God.
Do raven craft.

Completed learning poster.

Week 5 - Thursday

LETTER E: collage, add Eli pic to poster, lay out the letter E out of forks, crayons, markers, uncooked spaghetti noodles, straws, popsicle sticks etc., handwriting worksheet

Activity: glue eggs to letter E shape. I printed the eggs from this activity.
THEME

Elephant Facts: Appetite
Just like many of the dinosaurs, elephants only eat plants. They love fruit, especially dates, plums, berries, and coconut. Elephants use their trunks to get fruit and leaves from trees. They use their tusks and trunks to pull the bark off trees. They use their feet and tusks to dig stems and roots from the ground.

Books:
The Balancing Act: A Counting Song by Merle Peek
Dumbo the Flying Elephant by Walt Disney

Week 5 - Wednesday

* NUMBER: add to poster, add stickers to counting book, workbook pages for number 5

Add 5th commandment to train.
Activity: Assemble Counting elephants book.

THEME
Review learning poster.

Elephant Facts: Babies
Just like with cows, a baby elephant is called a calf. We've learned that elephants are mammals too, and baby elephants drink their mommy's milk. They drink 3 gallons of milk a day! After a few months they will start to eat plants too. Elephants are the world's biggest land animals, so they need to eat a LOT of food! You know what snack elephants really like to eat?? Peanuts! They don't even take them out of the shell first!

Activity: Give the elephants the correct number of peanuts. I found this elephant image and a clipart of a peanut and made up the following worksheet. Eli glued the right number of peanuts onto each elephant's belly.
Activity: Handprint elephants. I made this one up, so they look kind of silly, but it works! After doing one elephant, Eli said the elephant needed a friend, so we made two!
Books:
The Right Number of Elephants by Jeff Sheppard. Our library had this one as one of those huge teacher-sized books, so that was kinda fun to read together on the couch.
Mama Loves Me by Mara Van Fleet

Week 5 - Tuesday

*SHAPE: oval (like an egg). Ovals house walk.

Activity: Instead of cutting and gluing, I had Eli trace the eggs and color accordingly, then count the eggs in the basket.
THEME
Review vocabulary word.

Elephant Facts: Families Elephants are very social animals and like to stay together as a family. Most herds have five to twenty elephants, led by the oldest female (cow). There are only mommies and their babies in the herd. The daddies go to live with all the other males, bulls. In the herd they take care of each other and protect each other.

Poem: Five Gray Elephants (don't remember where I found this one)

Five gray elephants, marching through the glade,
Decide to stop and play like they are having a parade.
The first swings his trunk and announces he'll lead;
The next waves a flag which of course they need.
The third gray elephant trumpets a song;
The fourth beats a drum as he marches along.
While the fifth makes believe he's the whole show
And nods and smiles to the crowd as they go.
Five gray elephants, marching through the glade,
Having a lot of fun during their parade.

Activity: Put the parade elephants in order. I used one of the elephant images from this counting book, colored it and added numbers to it on the computer, and printed on card stock to use for this activity.
Activity: Shapes elephant craft.

Books:
Big Egg by Molly Coxe
The Story of Babar by Jean De Brunhoff

* = add to learning poster

Week 5 - Monday

* THEME: E is for Elephant. Add letter E and picture of elephant to learning poster.
* Vocabulary word: herd - a group of like animals

Read: Pooh Encyclopedia about elephants.

Action song (tune: "The Mulberry Bush")

The elephant goes like this and that, this and that, this and that.
(Walk heavily and stomp feet loudly)
The elephant goes like this and that, cause he's so big and fat!
(Puff up cheeks and stretch out arms)

He has no fingers and has no toes, He has no fingers and has no toes
(wiggle fingers; wiggle toes)
He has no fingers and has no toes, but goodness, gracious, what a nose!
(stick arms out like a long trunk)

Memory verse: "In all things give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:18

(tune: "The Ash Grove")
In all things give thanks
And give God the praise
For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (repeat)
First Thessalonians five verse eighteen
Give thanks in all things
For this is God's will.
In all things give thanks
And give God the praise
For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Craft: paper plate elephant


Book: Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

* = add to learning poster

Week 4 - Friday

Review day!

LETTER D: Heavenly Helpers workbook page (tracing, a small color by letter). Usually Hannah just does this one while Eli does the letter collage, but this time both kids glued scraps to a letter D outline so Eli could practice cutting with scissors! By the end he was really getting the hang of it! I don't practice as much with him as I probably should, but that's okay.
THEME

Book: another book from the library, I didn't get the title written down before taking it back

Dinosaur acrostic poem and add to learning poster. thanks to Kevin for helping write this!

Dangerous
Interesting
No long live
Oversized
Scary
Animal
Underground
Roars

Dino of the day: Apatosaurus
* many people call it brontosaurus
* a plant eater with a long neck
* did not chew up its food so it swallowed stones to help grind up its tough plant food

Activity: shadow match, reviewing all of the week's dinos. I searched online coloring pages to find the dinosaur images, then used a paint program and paint bucket to color them, saved it, then painted it again but all in black and saved it as another title. wolah! shadow game!

Bible Hero: David. Read Goliath story. Add picture and words brave and trusting to learning poster.

Activity: stone game. tape off a medium-sized box on the floor with an X in the middle. Find 6 rocks, labeling them with the letter D-A-V-I-D and G. Place the "G" rock on the X. Then you have 5 turns with the remaining rocks to slide the rock at the "G" rock trying to knock it off the X.

Learning poster at the end of the week:

Week 4 - Thursday

LETTER D: sound, collage and letters, handwriting page/coloring book. The collage took quite a bit of time, so it worked fine that we didn't have many other activities for the day.


THEME - review so far

Book: something from the library. I didn't get the title written down and now the book is already returned

Dino of the day: dimetrodon
* name means "two measures tooth"
* actually lived a long time before the dinosaurs
* had a sail-like flap of skin along its back
* had sharp teeth and clawed feet

Activity: homemade puzzle

Week 4 - Wednesday

Mark day off calendar.

Add 4th Commandment to train.
NUMBER: Add number 4 to learning poster. Add four stickers to counting book. Count four beads into spots on wooden Mancala tray. Take one bead out and have Eli find the missing spot. Number 4 activity pages from coloring book we have.

COLOR: Do green page in our Counting Colors book.
THEME

Book: How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yoken and Mark Teague

Dino of the day: T-rex
* name means "tyrant lizard king"
* a huge meat-eating dinosaur
* ate other big dinosaurs
* had short arms with two claws on each

Activity: do-a-dot number four

Week 4 - Tuesday

COLOR: Green. Add to learning poster. Show 3-5 green items and then take a house walk finding more green things. Color worksheet.

THEME

Book: Big Old Bones by Carol Carrick

Poem: Long, Long Ago by Jean Warren (with actions)

Long, long ago, when the earth was young
Dinosaurs lived here under the sun.
Some were big and some were small.
Some were fat and some were tall.
Some could swim, some could fly.
Some could stretch up, very high.
Don't you wish they still roamed free
And lived somewhere that you could see?

Dino of the day: triceratops
* plant eater
* had three horns, one above each eye and a smaller one on its nose
* it had a parrot-like beak
* behind its head it's neck and shoulders were protected by a thick collar of bone and skin

Activity: coloring page

Activity: make our own fossil making prints with dinosaur toys, paper clips, keys, etc

Week 4 - Monday

You may have noticed from as slowly as I'm getting these lessons put up that we really don't do school every day. It seems to be taking about two weeks to do one week of lessons. Just because. If we have other things going on, or visitors, or I'm just plain exhausted, I'm not going to push to do something that's not even necessary at this point.

This week we did a dinosaurs theme, but I had a hard time finding many activities we had supplies for, so we kept things pretty simple. A book, poem, and song has been seeming like too many sit-and-listen type things in a row. So this week we just did a book and a song.

* THEME: D is for Dinosaur (add letter D and dinosaur picture to learning poster)
* Vocabulary word: paleontologist--someone who studies dinosaurs

Book: Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp by Syd Hoff
Song (tune: "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star")

Dinosaurs lived long ago
Some ran fast and some moved slow.
Some ate plants and some ate meat.
All were mean, none were sweet.
I'm so glad I didn't live then
I wouldn't want them for my friends!
-Ellen Bedford

Activity: egg hunt with facts inside (we had these big Easter eggs that came with Little People-sized friends inside, so I got those eggs back out and we used them for this activity). I cut these facts into individual little strips, putting inside each egg. We went around the house looking for eggs and when we found one we opened it up to read a fact:

• Dinosaurs were animals that lived millions of years ago.
• Many dinosaurs were very big, but some were as small as chickens are today.
• Most dinosaurs ate only plants. Some dinosaurs ate other animals. They were meat eaters.
• The word dinosaur means "terrible lizard".
• A paleontologist is someone who studies dinosaurs.
• Fossils are the remains of plants or animals that lived a long time ago or the evidence of them.
• Many dinosaurs had more in common with birds than with lizards.

Dino of the day: stegosaurus

• one of the earliest dinosaurs
• its name means "roof lizard"
• was a herbivore which means it only ate plants
• had triangular plates on his back and spikes on its tail for protection

Activity: homemade stegosaurus puzzle using this coloring page


* Memory verse: 1 Thessalonians 5:16 "Be joyful always."
(song: by me, tune: "Are You Sleeping")

Be joyful always, joyful always
First Thessalonians, five sixteen
Have a happy heart
In all that you do
First Thessalonians, five sixteen

* = things that go on learning poster