"I Belong to God"

My children have all loved the Little Saints Pre-School Program. I love that they love it. ;) No really, I do love it, it just initially took a *TON* of preparation. In fact, the first year I justified all the hours I spent cutting out flannel board pieces and card stock learning games, and $$$ I spent purchasing the recommended children's books, by telling myself, "It's worth it.. We will be using this over and over with all our children." So, even though I would love to switch to using just the plans over at Serendipity this year, we will also be using Little Saints. Actually, I think they will work out pretty well together, if I follow each one loosely without trying to take on too much. In fact, the Little Saints program eventually introduces one letter per week anyways, and what better way to do so than with the Alphabet Path?

Even though I plan to attempt both this year, I decided to start out slowly. I think maybe in a couple weeks we will begin Along the Alphabet Path, and maybe do two weeks on, one week off, but I am going to see how this first month goes before deciding for sure. So, this week we just completed Week 1 of Little Saints. In the Little Saints Program, each week has: a Lesson Emphasis (this week it was "I Belong to God" and everything we do relates to the theme), Bible Passage, Poems, Storytime, Nursery Rhymes or Finger Plays, Songs and Circle Games, Music Appreciation, Art Projects and Learning Games.

Here is a glimpse at what we did this week:

Storytime

My Handprints

Parts of the Body Flannel Board Pieces

Child of God Matching Cards

I made these matching cards from various Catholic images that I found online, printed onto cardstock, and then laminated.

"The Heavenly Jerusalem"

by Twinkle Toes

by Chiquita

We also spent time browsing through old photo albums, video recording the children telling me about themselves and their favorite things, among other things... Even the boys couldn't help joining in on some of the games and crafts. And they all kept saying, "Oh! I REMEMBER when I did (this or that)!" It was very cute.

We are looking forward to continuing next week!

"School Time" Toys

In the comment section of my post On Setting Goals, I was asked:

What are those "toys" that you take out only during school time? I struggle with getting my younger kids- 5, 4, 2,and 1 to leave me alone to work one on one with my first grader.

I think every mother of little ones must struggle with this! Right?? However, I notice that when I am organized it isn't quite as big of a challenge. I think making a point to start the school day with the little ones will definitely help.

This coming year I plan on spending 15 minutes working on some sort of memorization work: memorizing a poem or working on art appreciation, and then getting them started on a workbook, coloring, or "learning" toy/game.

We have a large variety of these "school time" toys that I have been collecting over the past years. My children look forward to playing with these toys, and I rotate them, so that they will hold their attention long enough for me to accomplish some school work with my older children.

Here are some of our favorites:

• Wooden & Foam Puzzles. I especially love the Lauri puzzles, they have some great ones for perception development. Although Chiquita loves the ones we have by Schylling. Melissa & Doug also carries lots of great puzzles. These I keep in a puzzle storage case, which I love!
• Various 20 piece box puzzles (Twinkle Toes loves these!)
• Lacing Shapes and Place & Trace
• Wooden Lacing Beads
• FeltTales and various other Flannel Board items (some of which are homemade!)

• Safari Toobs: Various Sets --At this point we have most all of them.
• Blessed Toys: Tales of Glory Sets
• Playful Patterns, Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks, Mighty Mind and SuperMind

• Various nesting toys and blocks.

• Busy Bugs Learning Set  

• Cuisenaire® Rods with Alphabet Book

• Bristle Blocks and Gears

• Wikki Stix

• Peg Boards and Shape Sorters

• Coloring Books (I have a basket full for the children to choose from at anytime.)

• Various Memory or Matching Games

• Stickers!!! My girls love stickers!

I also have a collection of videos that the little ones are allowed to watch during school time. Our favorite series is definitely Signing Time. We have most of the original series, and we recently added 1-3 of Season Two to our collection. I am hoping to add 4-7 for this coming school year.

These toys are by no means necessary, but I do find them very helpful!

A Butterfly Lap Book

Twinkle Toes has been talking about Butterflies since our Caterpillar/Cocoon/Butterfly Holy Week Project.

I decided to take her interest a step further and have her make a lap book on Butterflies! She was very excited!

We began by reading a couple of our books:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne

Today we picked up the following additional books about butterfly's from the library--OH! It is SO NICE to have our library's open again!-- to read during the next couple weeks:

The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco
Butterfly House

From Caterpillar to Butterfly
Where Butterflies Grow
Monarch Butterfly
Red Butterfly: How a Princess Smuggled the Secret of Silk out of China

She began her lap book by coloring a picture for the cover... Like usual, Chiquita wanted to color one too!

Next she practiced writing the letters C for Caterpillar, and B for Butterfly, and then made alphabet mini books for those 2 letters.

After that she recited her numbers and then worked on practicing number placement for numbers 1-9 in addition to reviewing her colors using a Caterpillar Circles and Colors Activity. She then colored a beautiful Letter B for Butterfly. These were both added to the lap book next to the corresponding mini-books.

Next we discussed, and put together a mini-book, on the life cycle of the butterfly that I found over at Enchanted Learning. Note: This printout requires membership. If you don't happen to have a member ship at Enchanted Learning, there are still lots of free printables available from them. I just love this site! I reduced the book to 70% before printing.

I also printed out the Painted Lady Butterfly Life Cycle Sequencing Cards which she colored and put in order. We then made an envelope for them inside the lap book.

For copy work, she copied--currently I create a word document, with the letters in light gray, for her to trace--the following poem from one of our favorite books, Favorite Poems Old and New:

Caterpillar
by Christina Rossetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

We had some extra room on one side, so we added a Caterpillar that she colored, and then she learned about symmetry through the use of finger paint!

Painted Symmetrical Butterfly

Fold a piece of construction paper in half and cut out a butterfly shape. Open it up and allow the student to dab different colors of paint on one side. Fold the butterfly back up and smooth it down with the palm of the hand. Open it up and you have a symmetrical butterfly.

For the Back of the lap book, and to tie in our Easter butterfly, I printed out a Butterfly Dot-to-dot followed by, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, and the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17

I made a list of possible activities for the girls to do:

• Any of these Caterpillar Crafts
  
• Put together a Butterfly Puzzle
  
• Play Butterfly Go Fish
• Watch Signing Time! Volume 8: The Great Outdoors and review the signs for Caterpillar & Butterfly
  
• Online Butterfly Puzzle
  
• Play Butterfly Dominoes
• Butterfly Color-by-Number
• Color a Butterfly Online
  
• Any of these coloring pages
  
• Make an Origami Butterfly
  

We have only done a few of these so far... I hope to do a few more of them the rest of the week.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures of her completed lap book:





Before I go, has anyone ever had a Butterfly Garden or made your own? It sounds so neat! I'd also love to hear any suggestions you have on any other Butterfly themed picture books!

Four Seasons Craft

Our recent spotting of our first bud of spring triggered a conversation about the four seasons. Since Twinkle Toes really enjoyed making the craft on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, I decided to have her make a similar one found in the Little Saints program.

First we read a few picture books, including:

• Why do Leaves Change their Colors?
• Will Spring Be Early?
• Four Stories for Four Seasons
  

Then, it was on to the craft! First she colored the truck and branches of four trees:

After that, she glued them onto a piece of construction paper and made little balls out of small pieces of tissue paper (brown, green, pink and yellow for each of the various seasons) and glued them onto the trees:

Then she added a few appropriate stickers, and I helped her with labeling the seasons:

**I just noticed I took the picture before having her add apples falling from the fall tree...
You'll just have to imagine them! :)

It is such a fun craft, and quite easy--a definate plus!

My Neighborhood

I haven't posted any Little Saints Pre-School projects in awhile.

Mainly since we have been really busy with other things, and it had been placed on the back burner, so to speak. I do love the program, but it is very time consuming and I just haven't had the time it requires. We do follow it loosely and we read many of the selections recommended, and do a few of the games and art projects.

This week, we worked on "My neighborhood." The girls especially loved this craft (pictures following) in particular. We talked about the different shapes and colors, and they got to paste them all on a poster to make their "neighborhood." It was fun, and very easy!