Week 2 - Samuel is Attentive

Printables for this week:

Attentive Bible page

Attentive Chart from Hubbard's Cupboard

Psalms 85:8a from Hubbard's Cupboard
Zoo ABC - letter b

Zoo Math B - #2

We started the week by talking about how Samuel listened to God, then made bunny listening ears.  Who knew they would be such a hit!  Peter and his Papito Matt recently recorded a song called Cangrejos Amables (Friendly Crabs) and so the children decided to turn it into Conejos Amables (Friendly Bunnies) .  Wow, phonemic awareness practice in Spanish...I just realized that.  hehe  Anyway, every spare chance they got this week, they were chasing each other through the halls screaming “CONEJOS AMABLES!!” and thank you Lord we had crashes and tears, but no blood.

Acting out the bible story is a great way to really “make it stick,” and Samuel is an easy one to work with.  Make God’s voice magnified by using a toilet paper roll tube to wake up the sleeping Samuel, then have Samuel run to Eli and get sent back to bed three times. Talk about how they both might have been feeling/thinking.  Finally, have Samuel wake up and say “Speak Lord, I am listening!”  (In our bible, the story finished with God telling Samuel he was going to punish Eli’s wicked sons.  I was not going to focus on that part, but when I skipped it Levi said “Wait Mamita!  You forgot that God told Samuel he was going to punch Eli’s sons.”  hehe) 

Other highlights of the week included:

- using our listening ears to play ‘Mama Bunny Says’ a.k.a. ‘Simon Says

- making the Attentive Booklet from Hubbard’s Cupboard

- using “b”lowpens for the first time

- baking banana bread together

Friday Edition

We did our first independent cutting activity...balloons!  I love the different personality everyone's balloons have.

To end our day, every got a balloon with their name written on it.  We talked about how Samuel was a prophet of the Lord, and how in 1 Samuel 3:19 it says "The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground."  We threw the balloons up and tried to keep them from falling to the ground.  Just like the bunny ears...chaos soon erupted, but isn't that the joy of preschoolers? 

Jungle School Fall Schedule 2010

Here is our Jungle School Fall Schedule.

The week number corresponds to the lesson plan covering that character trait at the Hubbard's Cupboard website.

For the Dictionary column, I listed the animal friend we will be working on, then left space for you to write down your friends and family that start with the letter.  See the Prayer Dictionary post for more info.

Note for Panamanian Jungle School participants:  I wrote down the date we would be meeting to introduce the lesson.  For example, August 20 would be the introduction day to week 2 (Attentive, Samuel, Bubba Bear), then you would continue week two the following Monday through Thursday.  In the our home, we will be ending the week with our Friday session, that way I can work out the kinks and post the weekly blog the weekend before you would begin.  Make sense?   

Week 1 - Creation

We had a great first week of Jungle School!  I was expecting a lot more resistance, as we went from two months of pure vacation mode to a very structured school schedule.  Although it is just a class of three, I feel as exhausted as with 20 Kindergarteners!  I am very glad to have structure back though, and I think the addition of Peter really helped with getting in “school mode.”

Here are some photos of our highlights:  

Getting their own pencil boxes, who knew it could be so much fun!  All they have inside are a new box of crayons, scissors, a pencil, and gluestick, but they are a treasured possesion.  We set out some magazines and construction paper for cutting and gluing practice.  They had never used a gluestick independently before so we practiced with our glue song to the tune of Farmer in the Dell,  “A little dab will do, A little dab will do, We don’t use too much glue, A little dab will do.” 

Peter with his airplane creation

Levi focusing intently

Making the animals "orderly"

Being so orderly she refused to cut her pages,
and just wanted to glue them on “perfect,”
her favorite word as of lately.

We also broke out the playdoh.  We tried creating man and bringing him to life, but learned that only God's spirit can breathe life into creation.  

We finished off the week by doing an adaption of the Creation Layer Snack (from missionarlington.org).  Here’s what we used (sorry for the blurry photo):

Day 1- a scoop of ice cream and chocolate syrup for light/dark

Day 2 - mini-marshmallows for the sky

Day 3 - ONE sprout for a tree to plant (which the boys dug out before they ate, and Aryelle refused to let touch her bowl in the first place...but it looked cool!)

Day 4 - sprinkles for the stars

Day 5 - Goldfish crackers for ocean creatures

Day 6 - Animal cookies (and 2 gingerbread men would’ve been perfect)

Day 7 - Top it off with whipped cream for God taking a rest

I used these sequence cards (from www.ChristianPreschoolPrintables.com) to help us visualize the days.




Printables for this week include:

• Orderly page & Days to go with it (I would suggest using stickers as our little ones got frustrated trying to color within those tiny lines.  Oops!)
• Zoo page- letter a
• Zoo Math - letter a

Jungle Life

We went to meet our new cousin on Thursday.  Isn't she beautiful!

The monkeys were very excited to hold the baby.

By the end of the day on Thursday, they were exhausted too.  They fell asleep on the way home from the hospital, and dropped again for an extended power nap.  Wow, Jungle School is such hard work! 

Introducing...Peter!

We have a new addition to our Panama Family...Matt and Misty have adopted a very special 4-year-old boy whose school name will be Peter! Levi was very excited to find out he was 4 too, and Aryelle is just working on saying his name in Spanish. Rolling those “r”s is still a tricky, making him “Pelito.” hehe He will be joining us for school every day. Woohoo! We are so glad to have you in the family!

2010-2011 Curriculum

It is finished!!  Well, for now anyway.

I got great inspiration and started planning on May 1st, thinking to myself "Wow, at this rate you'll have the whole year done in a week."  Then came June, then July, lots of family visiting, vacation, graduation, exhaustion, and when I finally got to sit down at the computer...ZERO creativity!  Just when I was about to throw in the towel, it came.  Mostly when I laid my head down to sleep at night, but I'm not complaining.  At least the inspiration came!

I have been working on a two-year multi-level plan that I could just rotate through from ages 3-6.  I want the main focus to be on the bible and memorizing God's word, while integrating all other aspects of learning into that.  I also understand that math and language arts need to be taught at each child's instructional level...so how do I put it all together for children of various ages?!?!  Whew, I did!  (I think...hehe)  All right, enough commentary, here's our plan...

Bible:  Every week we will be focusing on a character trait, Bible story, and memory verse from the Joyful Heart Character curriculum at Hubbard's Cupboard.

Language Arts:  Picture Dictionary with friends and family, Kidwriting, Zoophonics, Sight word and Alphabet readers

Math: Math Their Way activities, Workjobs, Pattern Block books, Number Journals

Everything Else:  Will be integrated into our monthly themes.  I would like to focus on a different habitat per month (Forest, Ocean, Arctic, Rainforest, Farm, etc.) going deeper into our zoo friends that live in that habitat along with some super fun science and art activities.