I love, love, love the Christmas season! I love that we have a month to reinforce everything we try to teach the girls throughout the whole year. There are so MANY fun things we can do together as a family! I love teaching the kids about why God sent his son and what that means for us!!
I started this post on November 8th, but I wanted to have all my plans complete before posting. So, here are our lessons for the month of December - not necessarily in order.
We are going to spend some time talking about several different Christmas symbols: advent wreath, trees, angels, the star, candy canes, and gifts (with an emphasis on giving gifts and God's "gift" to us). I hope to spend a couple of days on each symbol.
On Sunday November 29, we are going to introduce the Advent to the girls. Each Sunday as a family, we will light the appropriate candles in our Advent wreath and read the corresponding scripture.
(The following activities are in addition to several things that we do everyday, including phonics lesson, calendar time, Bible verse practice, sight word review, etc.)
Some of our crafts include:
Advent wreath - My objective for this activity is that the girls will be able to tell me what each different color candle represents.
Handprint/footprint angels - although instead of the poem that is suggested, Norah will write "Glory to God in the Highest" Luke 2:14.
Paper plate angel - Lucy loves any craft that involves cutting!
Some of our math activites include:
Pattern bead wreath - using green and white beads on a pipe cleaner, Norah will create an AAB pattern and Lucy will copy an AB pattern
Decorate the Christmas tree - Norah will use addition facts to figure out how many ornament stickers to put on her paper tree. Lucy will identify numbers and put the corresponding number of stickers on her tree.
Compare weights of various Christmas objects.
Measure and compare different sizes of candy canes
Venn diagram with our big Christmas tree and the girls little Christmas tree.
Bead candy canes - The girls will put 10 beads (red and white) on pipe cleaners. We will work on 10's and 1's.
Practice counting money - Christmas shopping - I am going to set up the shelves in the basement with toys and books so the girls can pretend they are going Christmas shopping.
Some of our copywork will include:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. Isaiah 9:6
She gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. Luke 2:7
O star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect Light. (We Three Kings)
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8
Other language arts activities include:
Acrostic - Christmas
Dictate a Christmas story using some of these prompts.
Sequence Christmas events - After listening to a story, Norah will put sentence strips in the order they happened in the story.
12 Days of Christmas - After listening to the song, the girls will make their own version.
For science we are going to try to make our own candy canes!! We'll see how that goes!!
Much of our read aloud time will come from The Adventure of Christmas. We will also read a different Christmas book every night at bedtime.
We also hope to spend a significant amount of time teaching the girls the importance of helping those in need. We filled a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child (funny thing: I thought Norah would want to fill a box for a little girl in the 4-6 age bracket. Oh no, she wanted to fill a box for a 14 year old girl. I explained the age bracket is 10-14. She wanted to circle the number 14 where it said 10-14. Let me just tell you that I have NO idea what to buy a 14 year old girl. We managed, though, and ended up filling our box rather quickly) and we will send cards and goodies to the girls we sponsor through Compassion.
Obviously, all our plans are subject to change and I always like to have plenty of things to choose from - even if we don't get to them all!!
3 comments:
This looks great Heather! Can I come do school at your house? :) We are hoping to try making candy canes too. It should be an interesting experiment for sure. or maybe I should say sticky. :)
Yep. I used to LOVE teaching in December. I always had so many fun activities and lessons that I could never fit them all in. I had to rotate each year which ones I did. Have fun!
What an aggressive plan. If you accomplish 1/2 of the things you have planned, the girls will have a ball and learn a lot. I wish I would have had a kindergarten teacher more like you!
Post a Comment