Week 5: Cain and Abel and learning about sacrifice

This week was odd - as Lindsay's post reflects, we were dealing with sickness and doctor's appointments which threw our week for a loop. In fact, the Rericha sickness is STILL throwing our household for a loop...day five of our first cold of the season. And it's a doozie.

This week the 4s learned about the story of Cain and Abel, which is a somewhat difficult story to tell. Despite trying to focus on how the story teaches us to treat our siblings well and to be willing to make sacrifices the kids were FASCINATED with all the parts of the story I'd have rather glossed over.

Let's just hope they take some of the positives from the story as well. You know, as opposed to the killing your brother part.

"X" was our letter of the week, so in addition to reading "My X, Y, Z" book we made "Xs" out of pie crust, adding butter, cinnamon and sugar.

Too much sugar? Nah.

Cheers! I have to admit, I ate most of the "X" treats myself...

We learned about emotions this week. The kids colored in their emotion faces worksheet, I cut them out and they helped me glue them to sticks.

After the emotion heads were dry I read "Harry the Dirty Dog" and asked the kids to show me the emotion corresponding with what the character was going through on each page.

Sad...

...Happy!

After reading the book we headed outside to gather some "dirt" to make our Harry the Dirty dogs. Once back inside, we completed our clean and dirty dogs.

Smearing in the mud.

We had a little cutting practice. The kids got about half-way through the spiral snake cutting exercise before their hands got tired. This is one we'll need to continue working on throughout the school year.

Lastly, we made "Giving Banks." I washed out empty jam and peanut butter jars, covered them with a strip of patterned contact paper and let the kids decorate with stickers. We talked about tithing and making sacrifices. Between now and Christmas, I would like to work with Jack to start earning and saving money that he can use to buy a gift or make a donation for someone in need.

By Day 2, my family was a snotty mess (oh hey, cold and flu season!) and several other folks were dealing with a stomach bug. So we cut our losses and held school at the park. We didn't get nearly as much accomplished, but the weather was perfect and the fresh air made it feel a little less like a petri dish of germ swapping.

We played an amazing game called "Tooty Ta." I challenge you to do this without laughing. Here is video (unfortunately, not of our group: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x124uik_a-tooty-ta-tootey-ta-kids-dancing-music-by-eflashapps_music)

We practiced copying shapes. This was a good exercise for the kids. It forced them to work right-to-left, a good practice as we start reading, and to challenge their drawing skills.