Week 6 with the 4's

It seems the kids are mostly back to healthy this week, with the exception of a few runny noses. What a relief! I decided to change up the order of activities this week. Normally we jump right in to calendar and Bible time, but I decided to see how the kids would do making their own snack from start to finish...oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! I had all the ingredients ready to go, and I moved our "kid table" into the kitchen so everyone could gather around and participate in all the steps. Here is a peek at the little bakers at work...

The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar, so each child filled 1/4 cup...they concentrated SO hard!

And we took turns creaming the butter and sugar...

And we used our muscles to mix in the chocolate chips by hand.

The kids did great using my Pampered Chef cookie scoop! Way to work those hand muscles!

 

 

While the cookies baked, we told the story of young king Josiah with the felt board. The Bibles I have don't include this story, so I just told it as best I could with the felt board. They actually seemed to get it pretty well.

And then we traced V's and W's using our tactile letters. And we discussed what sound each letter makes and listed a bunch of words that start with each letter. They are getting SO good at this.

We made V's and W's out of popcicle sticks. They had a hard time with the W...

Then it was time to try out the cookies! They snacked while I read Tales of Oliver Pig...and of course, they thought it was SO cool that Oliver and his mom made cookies just like we did...

Then it was time to practice writing last names...this needs some work to say the least! Ha ha! The kids had a rough time with this activity, but at least we know we have stuff to work on.

This girlie wrote each letter in  different color... :)

 

I also thought it was interesting that they can form many of the letters quite well, but placing them on the lines is a huge challenge.

Then we colored some pictures of King Josiah. I had to talk to the boys about why coloring is important and good practice for learning to write. They both used their crayons to scribble all over the paper without ANY effort at all to stay in the lines...I think they weren't very happy with me after this conversation, but I wanted them to know that it has a purpose, and that even if they don't LOVE to color, they should at least put forth a little effort.

The last thing we did on Tuesday was a visual perception activity using wood blocks. I set up a row of blocks that were all different shapes. I asked them to study the row, and then they had to close their eyes. I took one block away and they had to decide what was missing. They all did GREAT at this activity.

 

On Thursday, we had the special treat of having a friend join us for school. Evelyn was babysitting two kiddos for the day who happened to be the same ages as our kids, so we just added them right into the mix. It was fabulous!

 

 

 After calendar, Bible, and memory verse work, we gathered at the table to practice writing X's, V's, and W's. This was HARD for the kids! I gave them the angled letter worksheet from the curriculum, and they found staying in the lines very tricky...but they all did an excellent job concentrating.

 

Next we made a Bible scroll craft in honor of young king Josiah. They loved crunching up their paper bags!

 

They painted the scrolls using water colors. All the kids loved this part...

Sorry no pictures...

 

 

And then we practiced making letters out of play dough. Most of the kids found this really hard...making snakes is still pretty challenging for this crowd.

 

 

To wrap up the day, the kids practiced making patterns out of pop-beads. This was tricky for a couple reasons...they had to choose the two colors they wanted to make repeat, and the beads require some fine motor skills to snap together. It took most of the group a few minutes to figure out what to do, but they eventually all got the hang of it.