Unit 13: Young David (and other odds and ends)

Well, it looks like we are back in the swing of things.  I'm not posting this until Thursday.  Yup, typical for me when I'm working. I really want to stay committed to keeping this up, especially since I don't want to have to cut out time to catch up one of these days.  So here is last week:

Young David

Our topic Bible theme/topic for the week was "Young David" so we covered a few things: David was a shepherd who took good care of his sheep.  He was brave and fought off animals who came to hurt his sheep.  So we made a little visual that represented David and his sheep.  River, sheep, clouds etc.  Cotton balls for our sheep and she glued on pieces of paper for clouds in the sky.  She's getting a lot of glue/cutting etc practice as well as reinforcing the story.  

 A few other things went with our study of young David, namely, our Bible verse, Psalm 23.  We discussed that David wrote the words she was saying.  We are about halfway through.  I'm going to keep this verse as our verse for next week since we aren't quite done with it and because we'll still be talking about David.
Her favorite story, by far, was about David and Goliath.  Always the one to have a penchant for the adventurous, she was get interested in the story and in the slingshot.  So I looked on youtube to see if I could find a demonstration of the kid David used.  Sure enough.  I found two that we really enjoyed.  They are here and here.

I'm trying to make sure the girls get more outside time in the afternoon so a couple days this week we went to the park across the street and played but sometimes we walk through the neighborhoods and go to the park with the swings and taller slides.  This gives me some exercise, too, which I really, really need.  The weather's been ridiculously nice lately so we are trying to take advantage of it, so sometimes, we do school for a couple days and then skip it in exchange for a park day so that the next day we do two or sometimes even three days worth of activities, which I'm ok with.  If I weren't working in the morning, I don't know that I'd have to make those decisions as often because I'd do school in the morning like we did in the summer.  But it is what it is.  I like doing some of the same things everyday for repetition's sake, but if it doesn't work out, I'm not too worried about it.  And a lot of learning can happen during walks and car rides and at the dinner table where we say our verses and sing and do all sorts of things that might seem odd to a lot of people.    

The letter for the week was letter "K."  Typical activities in terms of what we normally do with letters around here- taped letter on the ground and then I found a book at Target in the $1 section with letters to color.  She loves it.  Not sure I'm always going to just have her color it.  Maybe paint it, glue it etc.  But the book has been helpful!

Dramatic Play
One of the things the book emphasizes is dramatic play and acting out the Bible stories.  This was a hit with the "David and Goliath" lesson.  First, we arranged our stuffed animals in biggest to smallest and talked about how Goliath was the biggest of all.  Then we acted out David defeating Goliath with two stuffed animals using the song "Only a Boy Named David."  She wanted to do this over and over and over again.  Sometimes, those simple, old songs are all they need. . .

Sermon Lesson as Review
At our church, the children are with their families every Sunday for worship so that the congregation can worship together (as indicated in scripture) and then the children leave for their own lessons during the sermon.  I have been teaching Claire and Ashlyn's age group for now.  So I've been bringing Claire's school lessons to church on Sundays.  The lesson at church is behind the lesson we do at home so at church they learned about Joshua and Jericho.  So we sang read the story, sang "Joshua Fit the Battle," built a "city" with blocks, blew "trumpets" and marched around the city and knocked it down.  Afterward, we made little cracker and peanut butter towers.  What's cool about this is going over this again forces me to find out just how much of our lessons Claire retains.  It's amazing what little sponges preschoolers are.  

Sunday night, I just didn't feel like making dinner and we had a Red Robin giftcard from a good friend so we thought we'd use it.  Just a couple of shots of my very favorite people. :-)  Ashlyn is still learning restaurant etiquette.  I used to take Claire out more often than I have Ashlyn.  She's doing better, though, and Red Robin is a good practice place.  I took her to Claim Jumper with a friend the following week and it went well, too.  Claire Jumper is great because they have this free "Baby Plate" with cheese, mandarin oranges, turkey and applesauce. . . but I digress. . .