Tag Archives: tea time and rhyme thursday

Latest Curriculum Ideas

I finally have a sec to whip up a blog post! My life has been so SO busy balancing work and mommyhood! Let me share with you some of the ideas for activities that we have done over the past couple weeks.

My Faith Mondays:
We have learned about the Old Testament prophets Noah, the Tower of Babel, the temple, and the Book of Mormon story of Samuel the Lamanite. We are currently working on the story of Joseph Smith and the origin of the Book of Mormon. I decided to spice things up by alternating weeks between bible and book of Mormon stories.
For Noah I used a file folder game found here and a lapbook found here.

My favorite part of our whole Noah lesson was hearing my daughter read (actually she memorized it) the memory verse: “Noah did everything God commanded him to do.”

To learn about the tower of Babel, my Boo and I built a tower up to a picture of Jesus. We then used Little People (valuable resource for learning!) to try and climb the tower to see Jesus. I then had Jesus tell the people that they don’t climb a tower to see him (in my daughter’s words “that is SOOO silly”) but we pray to him instead. I kept the lesson super basic and my little one caught on!
We learned about the temple this past week as well. We built a tower with blocks and used the Little People guy my daughter has named Tony as Angel Moroni on top of one of the spires. We talked about how we all got to go to the temple as a family and I showed my daughter her temple dress, after which she wanted to immediately take of her jammies and put it on (and for her thats a big thing- jammies are her favorite things to wear)! She has grown in the past 2 years however- but she still squeezed into her bonnet! We also had some of the Little People go to visit the temple- I had one of the people be naughty and told Boo that ‘cuz that person was naughty, she couldn’t go to the temple. She had to make better choices and be nice. NO time was wasted in repenting so all the people could be at the temple!

Samuel the Lamanite was another little story we talked about this week- using the megablocks and Little People again- we built a wall and had Tony a.k.a. Samuel tell the people (who happened to be Candy Mommy and Santa Claus Little People) that Jesus was coming and they needed to be nice. Kept it short and simple and to my daughter’s asking repeated it A LOT!!! She really likes her scripture stories!

Tumbling Tuesdays:
We picked up some hula hoops for Boo and she LOVES them! She calls them her “hula loops” – so cute! What do we do with them? We jump from hoop to hoop, we use the hoops as cars and run around the house, and eventually mommy will be using them for sorting activities. We also have gone on a few walks, been to the park to play, and learned new games such as Red Rover and Tag. Which my daughter CAN NOT get enough of!

Wednesday’s Words:
So this has been very low key- we have learned spanish words for eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arms, head, body, cold, and hot. I want to have her make a book of the spanish terms she is learning so we have an easy way to review words. That is still a project in the making, however!

Tea Time and Rhyme Thursday:
We have spent the last two weeks learning the story of the three little pigs. Initially I wanted to do a different nursery rhyme a week, but right now I am WAY too busy to gather materials for that.
For the three little pigs, we put on a puppet show and have played with these sequencing cards. She has had fun learning this story, however when I ask her to tell me the story of the three little pigs. more than likely she will tell me this” three little pigs, lost their mittens, began to cry….” and continue on with the story of the three little kittens 🙂 -she has that kitten nursery rhyme down!

Field Trip Friday
We went to the train station on a cold morning and had all the display trains to ourselves to explore! and a few days later RODE on a train to a nearby city, in a blizzard, to go to build-a-bear. On our way to build-a-bear we stopped by a planetarium to dry off from the storm and “walked on the moon”. It was a lot of fun! I have a list somewhere on my computer of possible field trip locations for your kiddos- if I can find it I will upload it!

Some things I want to ADD to our fun days: piano lesson (I have the workings of a very basic “piano” curriculum running through my head) math exploration time, and more arts and crafts. I am slowly getting a structure and routine in place- I just need about 5 more hours in a day to get everything accomplished! And one day a week where I can do some uninterrupted lesson planning!
If anyone has great spanish teaching ideas (besides watching Dora the Explorer) I would love to hear them!!!!
Happy Teaching!!!

Tea Time and Rhyme Thursday- HUMPTY DUMPTY

Thursday we had a great time learning about one of my daughter’s favorite Nursery Rhymes- Humpty Dumpty. We read an old Humpty board book (which she loves- and will point out the pages when he is feeling grumpy and happy and all the cracks he gets from falling down). I found a printable book from readinga-z.com that we read and colored together (I gave one of the king’s men purple boots,then my daughter wanted to give them ALL purple boots 🙂 )


We also made a Humpty Dumpty! This turned out SO much cuter than I thought (I am looking through the eyes of a biased momma, after all!). I took an egg pattern I found here, and then traced my daughters hands and feet on colors she picked. I also asked her if she wanted big or little eyes, and you can tell which she picked by looking at her masterpiece! I love this!

Happy TEACHing!

Tea Time and Rhyme Thursday- THE LITTLE RED HEN

For our Tea Time and Rhyme Thursdays we are going to start working on Nursery Rhymes. We started with The Little Red Hen because Tuesday was Bird Day and I wanted some continuity with our curriculum! And yes we spent the ENTIRE day in our jammies. Well, my daughter did. I eventually had to get dressed for traffic school- but thats a whole different blog post!

BEST ACTIVITIES:

  • Having some cut out pieces to use to tell the story- it was SO cute to see my little one “retell” the story.
  • blow the hen’s feather game: use a red craft feather and blow it across the table to each other! this was a riot for my daughter! Everytime the feather landed on her she would just burst out laughing!

NOT A BIG HIT WITH MY BOO:

  • rolling playdough with a rolling pin like the Little Red Hen- I have one giant marble rolling pin (way too big for Boo) and this roller tool- it was still too tricky for her.
  • sweeping up popcorn with a pastry brush like the Little Red Hen- OK she was supposed to sweep up popcorn kernels but we had pre-popped popcorn on hand so that is what I used! My daughter liked this activity ONCE. And that is precisely how many times we did it!

WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

  • not read the Nursery Rhyme in her playroom- it is WAY too distracting in there! The ironic thing is that her playroom is also where I store most of her learning supplies- I might need to make some changes in that department! Or maybe she will learn to avoid the temptation of toys while we learn- any thoughts/ideas/suggestions on this topic???
  • remembered to visit this site and to also make the cutest little red hen handprint craft– I totally spaced it! Blah!!!

MY FAVORITE PART OF THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE:

  • When I was tucking in my daughter last night, we had a funny conversation about the Little Red Hen. We were doing a basic retell, I would prompt her and she would fill in the blanks. She thought the dog more of a helpful guy than the other animals. I don’t remember the entire conversation, but the best part went as follows….
Mommy: “Once upon a time there was a Little Red Hen. And she found some seeds.
So she asked some animals to help her plant them in the ground.
Did the animals help her? The cat said…
Boo:Not I!
Mommy: The pig said:
Boo:Not I!
Mommy: The dog said:
Boo:Ya!

—–
Today is Bubble Bath Day- maybe you can squeeze a nice, relaxing bath in some time today- you deserve it!
Happy TEACHing!

Tea Time and Rhyme Thursday- THE MOST THANKFUL THING

Today for our little learning time we read a treasured book called “The Most Thankful Thing” by Lisa McCourt. It started out really well- my Boo and I were sitting at her table having pretend “tea” while I read her this book. I haven’t read this since I became a Mom, and the emotion of how thankful I really am for my daughter hit me while reading the last few pages. I am such a crybaby!!

After reading the book, we went up to the kitchen table and colored some thank you cards for my daughter’s birthday gifts. Since we really didn’t have any Spanish learning yesterday, I tied it in today by adding “gracias” to each note!

Happy Teaching!!

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