First unit- Creation week!

So we've actually finished two of our units now but I'm a bit behind on chronicling it what with all the viruses going around our house right now. I aim to post a recap of each unit when we finish it for my own records and just in case anyone else wants to steal some of the fun activities for their own kids.

So I'll start with our first unit of the year - creation week (which actually took us two weeks). This was a nice relaxed way to ease ourselves into the school year and get a feel for what works for our family. It was a lot of fun for me to see the kids trying to grasp just how awesome God is to have made everything in one week.

Each day we read about a new day in creation week (you know, Day 1 "Let there be light" etc...) and got to create the timelines you see above. They would get a number representing the day we were studying and filled with whatever was created on that day, color and cut it out, and then paste it onto their charts. They were excited each day to see what was coming on the next number. I particularly liked Rylee's take on "Day 7". This number was to be left blank to show that God rested on this day but Rylee decided that just wouldn't do. She got her crayons out and went to work on the number 7 informing me that since this was the day of rest then she needed to draw a big comfy chair for God to rest in. This activity covered fine motor skills (cutting on the lines and coloring), number recognition, ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc), and of course Bible.

They also made a creation book, adding a new page each day until it was finished. Rylee particularly liked this activity and wants me to read her book to her all the time. Jack gave up after about day 3. And that leads me to Mommy's first homeschool lesson- Be Flexible. Rylee is a very artsy- craftsy kind of kid. Jack is not. He has zero interest in coloring, painting, cutting, gluing, all that stuff. I wasn't sure how I'd adjust this to make it interest him. I told him he didn't have to do it if he didn't want to (being that he is only 4) but I could tell he really wanted to participate with us. I tried a lot of different approaches but nothing worked for him until I figured out that if I just tell him I'm going to color this and ask him to come sit on my lap and help me pick out the colors then he instantly gets interested. He would climb on my lap and direct me what colors I should use for each picture and how to color it and it kind of became our snuggle time that he looked forward to each day. So for now I'm doing most of the hands on work but he's getting to make some decisions and participate as well so it's working for him.

We did some basic work with letter recognition and a great word race game that their dad came up with. We also picked out the letters from a couple of the common kids songs "Old Macdonald Had a Farm" (E-I-E-I-O),  "The B-I-B-L-E", and B-I-N-G-O. I can't believe I've never sung Bingo with my kids before... I completely forgot about that song.

At the end of the week we did a charting and classifying activity where we made a chart of things that were created by God and things that were made by people. We then went on a bit of a scavenger hunt outside and in some catalogs to find different things we could put on it. They did pretty good except they insisted that God created airplanes and people make grapes. I guess they are partly right.

It was a fun, easy, and slow couple of weeks. As I've said before I want my kids to be outdoors as much as possible and not stuck at a desk at this stage of their lives. We did a bit of our work at the table but most of it we were able to do outside. We spent one day coloring pictures out on the trampoline in the backyard and on the third day (God made the seas and dry land) we decided to take our work to the beach with us and experience the seas and dry land ourselves. We had the whole beach to ourselves and the big kids spent the afternoon running around collecting shells and swimming in the bay while the babies napped in the shade.

 *sigh* I love homeschooling