Last week we talked a little about different people and treating everyone with kindness, even if they aren't exactly like us. We read a book called Sergio Makes a Splash! about a penguin who doesn't swim. And we talked about people who look or act differently than we do. The simple truth is that our kids are blissfully unaware of disabilities and prejudices. It will be important to carefully expose them to these things down the road to foster compassion and understanding.
But for now, we had Swedish fish and Goldfish crackers as we read about Sergio the penguin.
The bible story this week was Ruth and Naomi, which is quite honestly an odd story. We focused on how Ruth took care of Naomi by following her and working to bring her food (vs. the fact that Naomi sort of created an arranged marriage to Boaz and then strangely stole her baby).
Talking about the story and coloring puppets |
We practiced writing angled letters this week (e.g. Y).
We also played Twister, which is actually quite difficult when you are shorter than the game mat.
Next, we made copied patterns with shapes on contact paper. The kids were good at this, and it was fun to play with sticky paper.
Day two we cut out our puppets and did some play to help re-tell the story of Ruth and Naomi.
We completed a fun math activity with play-doh and stickers. I had the kids build a snow-man and Christmas tree with play-doh, and then they had to decorate with the correct number of ornaments. I then introduced + and = signs to show that the snowman + the tree decor = 10. To be honest, they loved decorating, but weren't too hot on hearing about the math.
While the math activity wasn't a huge hit, THIS WAS. Building with gun drops and toothpicks is super fun for a four-year-old. Who knew.
Last, we used this great app called "Teach 911" to let the kids practice calling 911, including reciting their addresses (which we also reviewed this week by cutting out the numbers and having them put them in the correct order). This is a fun, effective tool that Jack is still asking to play with.