Dd is for Dog

Yesterday we continued our study of the Days of Creation.  We are on Day 1 - God made light.  I had made a number 1 that we covered in tin foil to represent light.  We hung it on the wall.  By the time we are done, we will have 7 numbers up there showing what was made on each day.  We made another memory verse craft today.  I had 2 circles - a black circle and a white circle.  Evan folded each of them in half and then cut them across.  He matched up one black half and one white half to make a circle.  He glued them onto a blue piece of construction paper.  We recited the verse together, Genesis 1:3, and he said it by himself.  



Evan cutting the circles in half.



"Dark and light.  Dark and light.  They're opposites!"

The memory verse craft was great because we have also started to learn about circles.  Evan already knows all of his shapes, but the curriculum we are using, Answers for Preschoolers, spends time on each shape individually.  Evan traced a big circle on a worksheet and I gave him a bunch of little circle stickers to put all over it.  I gave him 3 of each color (since we are also working on the Number 3) and we counted each of them as he put them on.  When he was done, I wrote his name for him on his paper.  As mentioned in an older post, I am trying to teach him to write the first letter of his name, so I have been writing it with dashes and he traces it.  I was pretty impressed with his 'E'.  He didn't want to trace mine this time, he wanted to make his own, and I thought he did a great job!



Putting circle stickers on his circle worksheet.



Evan's E!

We continued learning about the Letter Dd.  The next Dd word in his Lapbook was Dog, so Evan glued a picture of a dog into his book.  He then practiced writing the Letter Dd and then made a Dd on the cover of his Lapbook.  I am really proud of him.  His writing skills have really improved.  He seems to have much more control over his writing utensil now and he is holding it much better too.


Dd is for Dog.



Making a Dd on the cover of his Dd Lapbook.

 Since Dd is for Dog, we started on a new B4FIAR book - "Angus Lost" by Marjorie Flack.  It is a really cute book about a dog, Angus, who gets tired of the same old things and is curious what else is out there.  He runs away to seek new adventures but ends up longing for home.  He meets several new animals that aren't very nice and even scare him and he ends up spending the night in a cave.  He finds the milkman and follows him from door to door until he finds his home again.  He is relieved to be back in his same old house with the same old cat.  Evan loved this book and we read it over and over again.  We spent the rest of the day working on the "Angus Lost" Lapbook. 
 


Evan loved putting the magnetized Angus in and out of the cave.



Playing a classification game - dogs with short legs and dogs with long legs.



Playing a dog matching game.  Evan won!

Putting the other pets in their appropriate place.

 

Painting the pictures in the "Dog Breeds" book.



Painting the front of his Dd Lapbook.



What color is Angus?  Black!

  

Painting all the other little pets.

I had several old National Geographic type books that were all about Dogs and Puppies.  Evan enjoyed looking through those at all the different types of dog.



The Three Little Pigs

Some of our good friends have a couple of pigs and they had 2 sows that just had babies.  Since we have been reading (and watching) "The Three Little Pigs," we thought we would take the boys over to see them.  Evan was so excited to go to "Mr. David's house to see the pigs!"  We have gone before when he had some baby pigs, but today we got to see 21 babies!  One sow had 10 and the other had 11 piglets.  They were so cute!  The two litters were about a week apart, with the youngest just being born on Wednesday.  I don't think I'd ever seen 2 day old piglets before.  They still had their umbilical cords!  Both the boys thought it was really neat and they wanted to touch them.  So Daddy reached over and grabbed a couple for them to pet.  Boy could those little piglets squeal loud.  It was amazing!  We kept the mamas distracted by feeding them pumpkins.  Evan wanted to go out and see the "Daddy pig" too.  Talk about a huge boar!  It was the biggest and meanest looking pig I've been up close to!  After seeing the "Daddy pig" Evan wanted to pet a "black baby pig", so Adam grabbed one for him to pet.  He was so excited and kept saying, "I got to touch a pink pig and a black pig.  They were so cute and soft!"  Before we left it was feeding time and we watched all the piglets nurse.  It was really cute!  I think Evan will have a new appreciation for "The Three Little Pigs"!



Mama pig and her babies.



They were so cute and cuddly!



Say bacon!  Oh, I mean cheese!



"I got to pet a pink pig!"



Daddy pig.



"I want to pet a black baby pig too."



Time to eat!  Yummy milk!



The Number 3 and Dd is for Dinosaur

Today we continued discussing the fact that God made light.  I was so proud of Evan.  He is now able to say Genesis 1:3 all by himself - "And God said, Let there be light and there was light."  He was really proud too and got to put another sticker on his memory verse chart.  He is now up to 5 verses!  He recites them all every day after we say the Pledge of Allegiance.  To go along with our discussion of the creation of light, Evan colored, cut out and glued together a candlestick.  I wrote Genesis 1:3 on his paper and we hung it up on the bulletin board.  



Coloring his candlestick.



Gluing the candlestick pieces on.  He wanted a blue candle on blue paper.

 I am working on getting Evan to write the first letter of his name, so I started writing the E with dashes and letting him trace it.  Here he is tracing his name. 


Writing his name on his paper.

We started to learn about the Number 3 today.  We got out the number puzzle and sang "1-2-3, Jesus Loves Me."  We practiced counting 3 things and Evan attempted to write the number 3.  I'm not so concerned about writing the numbers right now.  We mainly work on recognition.  Writing numbers is a skill that we'll work on more later.  To go along with the Number 3, we read "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Three Silly Billies" (a retold version of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" - the library didn't have that one in!)  I had also checked out a video version of "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff".  Evan had already been watching this video before today, so he practically had the story memorized.  At one point during the story, I said (in my deep mean wolf voice) "Then I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down."  Evan stopped me and said, "No Mommy, that's not how it goes.  It goes like this: [in his deep mean wolf voice] 'Then I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.'"  Oh sorry, Evan.  Silly kid!  But he was right.  Sure enough, the book said 'in' not 'down'.  I'll know better next time! :)


Putting the number puzzle back together.



Counting to and writing the Number 3.

Evan did a worksheet matching items in groups of 1, 2, and 3.  Then we made another foot print.  He loves when we make hand and foot prints.  After we made the print, I made 3 dots and wrote the number 3 on one foot.  He then did the same on the other foot.


Counting worksheet.



Proud of his Number 3 footprint!

Evan then made a Number 3 Train.  Alan always wants to help Evan color, so they colored the train together.  Then he decorated his train with Number 3 Henry stickers.  He loves his trains and wanted this one up with his Thomas and Edward train too.


Alan helping Evan color the Number 3 Train.



"Look, here's Mommy Henry, Evan Henry, and Alan Henry!"



Thomas, Edward, and Henry Trains hanging on the board.

Then we continued learning about the Letter Dd.  Evan did a worksheet and practiced writing the Letter Dd.  He circled the Dd's at the beginning of each word.  One of the Dd words on his sheet was dinosaur.  We focused on Dd is for Dinosaur the rest of the day.  He glued a picture of a dinosaur in his Dd Lapbook.  One of his favorite movies to watch (at Nana and Papa's house) is "The Land Before Time."  I thought it would be neat to make Little Foot and Cera.  He had seen the pieces in the Dd Lapbook yesterday and woke up this morning asking if we could make Little Foot today.  He loved his little dinosaur characters and put on a little puppet show with them.  I couldn't make out all that he was saying, but I did hear him say something like, "Cera, will you come to the Great Valley with me?  Little Foot and Cera are friends.  They are going to find more tree stars and eat and eat.  AHHHHH, here comes Sharp Tooth."  I guess he pretty much summed up the movie right there!  After the puppet show, he wanted to get out all of his toy dinosaurs and play.  Alan wanted in on this and quickly grabbed onto Little Foot.  The boys have been playing with dinosaurs all night.  When I asked Evan who made the dinosaurs, he said, "God, and Adam named them!"  YEAH!  I was so proud of him.  We read lots of dinosaur books, but I especially like "God Made Dinosaurs" by Brad Harrub.  It has several pictures with dinosaurs and people together and talks about how it would have been fun to have a dinosaur as a pet and seeing them run across your yard.  I'm glad that my 3 year old can understand that dinosaurs and people were created on the same day and lived together.  Too bad most of the extremely intelligent scientists and well, most people in general, don't know this.  Or won't accept it.  I don't know which!


Practicing writing the Letter Dd.



Dd is for Dinosaur.



Piecing together Little Foot and Cera.



"Come on Cera, let's go to the Great Valley."



Alan playing with Little Foot.

 

Evan lining up a bunch of his dinosaurs.

You may have noticed in the pictures, but I dressed Evan in his dinosaur outfit today too, to go along with our theme Dd is for Dinosaur!

Dd is for Duck

I think our schedule is finally going to settle down so that we can get back into our normal routine.  Evan was excited to play school again today.  Since we started playing school, we have been talking a lot about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  We have talked about how God is made up of these 3 different 'people', and how all 3 of them were there when they created the world.  Today, we started to talk about how everything was created.  We started with Day 1.  God made light.  We talked about how in the very beginning, everything was dark.  We talked about how powerful God is and that all He had to say was, "Let there be light," and light appeared.  I taught Evan Genesis 1:3.  We will use this as our new memory verse.  Evan can almost say it by himself.  It says, "And God said, Let there be light and there was light."  I took Evan into our bathroom with a flashlight and a lighter.  We sat there in the dark (and he held my hand).  I told him that it was dark, but that in the very beginning, it would have been much darker than even this.  We said Genesis 1:3 over and over and Evan loved "making light" when God said, "Let there be light."  We compared the difference between the light that the flashlight and the lighter made.  Evan discovered that the light from the fire was brighter.  And he enjoyed blowing it out time and time again! 


God said, "Let there be light." (picture using no flash)



God said, "Let there be light." (this time using a flash)

I took the opportunity to explain to Evan that light comes in waves.  I showed Evan how to draw waves and he did a worksheet where he traced a bunch of different kinds of waves.  I told him that light comes from God to us by a lot of squiggly lines.  We call those squiggly lines light waves.  We read a book called, "My Light" by Molly Bang.  In this book, the sun is the narrator and explains how electricity can be traced back to its light and energy.  Throughout the book tiny yellow dots represent the sun's power as it streams from light, wind, water, and electricity. 
  

Tracing waves.

Later this evening, Evan was telling Daddy how he learned about light in school.  His explanation went like this:  "Daddy.  Me and Mommy went in the bathroom and it was dark and scary.  But you don't need to be scared because God made light.  We don't live in a dark house."

Today, we started to learn about the Letter Dd.  We sang the ABC's and Evan pointed out the letters that he knows.  We noticed what was represented on our Alphabet train by the Letter Dd - dog and dish.  This was perfect because our Dd card has a dog on it.  I taught Evan how to write the Letter Dd and he practiced writing it on the card.  


Evan learning how to write the Letter Dd.  Pretty good for his first time!

Then I got out the pieces for our Letter Dd Alphabuddy - Doctor Doggy.  Evan pieced him together and was excited to get a new puppet.  Of course we then had to get out Angie A, Bobby B, and Cathy C too!  We took turns putting on puppet shows with the Alphabuddies. 


Putting together Doctor Doggy.



Excited to have a new puppet!



Putting on a show with Cathy C and Doctor Doggy.



Proud of his performance!  Encore, Encore!

There is a Dancing Dogs puzzle in Evan's Dd Lapbook, and he enjoyed matching the pieces to make the picture.  

Dd is for Dogs - Dancing Dogs!

There is also a spin wheel of Dd words in his Dd Lapbook.  The first word is duck.  Evan glued a picture of a duck onto the book.  We read several duck books that we had checked out from the library.  I taught him a nursery rhyme called, "The Duck".  It goes like this:  "Behold the duck.  It does not cluck.  A cluck it lacks.  It quacks.  'Tis especially fond of a puddle or pond.  When it dines or sups, it bottoms up."  We were in Branson yesterday and knowing that we would be learning that Dd is for duck, we took the boys to 'Ride the Ducks'.  We each got a "quacker" and Evan hasn't stopped "quacking" since he got it!  He hasn't wanted to take it off from around his neck and even wanted to sleep with it!  Needless to say, he was thrilled that we were talking about ducks and wanted to "quack" even more all afternoon!  We put on lots of puppet shows with the Rubber Duck family and "quacked" a lot.  


Papa Duck says, "Quack, quack, quack, quack!"

The following pictures are from yesterday when we Rode the Ducks.  When the Duck went out on the water, Evan got to drive.  He loved this!  He got an Honorary Duck Captain Certificate.  He thought he was pretty cool! 

Getting ready to Ride the Ducks.



Alan and Adam with their "Quackers."




I felt sorry for the people sitting in front of Evan!  They probably heard quacking in their sleep last night!

 

Honorary Duck Captain Evan steering on the water.

This quarter at church, Evan's Bible class topic has been all about how God made everything special.  Tonight, they happened to learn that God made ducks special.  Evan came out of Bible class with a duck necklace and duck stickers!  I told his teacher that we had been talking about ducks all day!  Evan was so excited.  He's sleeping with his duck necklace tonight!