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Preschool Corner ~ Fruit of the Spirit Lapbook

I was visiting Jill’s site last week and saw her post on the Fruits of the Spirit and immediately started printing off a bunch of stuff to do with all of the kids during the upcoming week…and the kids had so much fun working on their lapbooks and learning about the Fruits of the Spirit.

Since our Awana time is done now, we focused on this as our Bible time and also added in some extra activities to go along with the general fruitiness. :) Before I start linking and show you the fun stuff we did with our lapbook, I have to share a little about Zachary’s handwriting.

Zachary finished up his handwriting curriculum at the end of last week, so I pulled out a new book for him to start using  ~ cursive. Can I just say that the boy LOVED it? He’s only worked on the letters ‘i’ and ‘u’ but I’ve found him sitting at the table working on a scratch piece of paper later in the day, practicing his letters.

abeka cursive k4 Note: From Abeka’s K4 cursive booklet.

Other than our daily reading and writing we started talking about the Fruit of the Spirit and putting together our lapbook. We need the Spirit of God to help us with each of the fruits ~ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

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A quick description of the fruits {Galatians 5:22-23} can be found on the DLTK site as well as some great ‘example stories’ at Child Bible Lessons. While we were talking about the different fruits the boys worked on coloring in a spiritual fruit basket craft from Christian Preschool Printables {doesn’t Kaleb look thrilled to be coloring?}.

While Zachary worked so hard to color his fruit the RIGHT color, Kaleb was more than happy to make every piece of fruit a rainbow. Very much so.

We also colored a cover for our lapbook and printed off some fruit of the Spirit mini-books. Kaleb just glued the pictures of the fruit in his lapbook while Zachary folded his as the mini-books. Inside the books we glued some questions from the Fruit of the Spirit file folder game.

As we matched the questions to their mini-books, I asked Zachary the different questions. For example: “Your brother came into your room and took a toy without asking. How can you show patience?” and we talked about different ways we could show the fruits of the Spirit to others.

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Bible Verse Card

Fruit of the Spirit verse printable Click on the thumbnail image to download.

We needed a verse card for Galatians 5:22-23 to go on our morning board, so I put together one in the same format that we did our Awana verses for the boys {and girls} to practice.

Language

We used the fruit of the Spirit words to count out the syllables in words. Did you realize that there are 3 one-syllable words, 3 two-syllable words, and 3 three-syllable words? Zachary sorted his words and put them into his lapbook by syllable count.

Kaleb just glued his and stuck them wherever they landed {grins}.

Character

To tie into the fruit theme, we used this great idea for Runts candy. I filled a jar with the candy and as I ‘caught’ the kids showing a Fruit of the Spirit throughout the day, I gave them a piece of candy {we found our Runts at the Dollar Tree}.

Since the Runts were such a huge hit, we also used them in some learning activities. I have to admit it was HYSTERICAL watching Kaleb periodically stick his little nose down right next to the candy and sniff, sniff, sniff. Zachary disappeared with a bowl when I got distracted….

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Color Sorting & Letters

I gave Kaleb a bowl or Runts and he sorted them by color. After he named the color I repeated the color word back to him asked what letter the word started with. “This is red. What letter does red start with?” made the ‘r’ sound

Counting

Next, we lined them up and counted them, trying our best to count with 1:1 correspondence.

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Patterns

We used the fruit to make patterns {orange, green, orange, green ~ ABAB} and moved to more difficult patterns {red, yellow, yellow ~ ABB pattern}.

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Estimating & Subtraction

Zachary also worked on patterns, but we focused more on less/more and estimating with his pile of Runts. He had to guess which one he had more of and then we counted out to see how many we had of each. We also used them to do subtraction and find out the difference between two colors, etc…

The completed project!

IMG_4507   {and yes, he was trying to make his eyes look like that!}

Songs and Rhymes

The girls knew a Fruit of the Spirit song that they had heard on JellyTelly, so they taught us that, but I couldn’t find it anywhere online to show you all {sigh}. We did find another song though on DLTK that the boys thought was a riot! It’s a cadence/song ~ so really no singing, just more ‘military’ fashion:

I don’t know what you’ve been told…
Galatians’ got the fruit of gold.
Patience, joy, love, peace and faith…
With gentleness He’ll get the praise.

Self-control with kind and good…
We’ll be like Jesus said we should…
Ask me what would Jesus do?
Galatians 5 Verse 22

Sound off: Galatians 5
Bring it on down: Verse 22

Galatians 5 Verse 22

WE’VE GOT- THE FRUIT!

(optional ending)
WE”VE GOT- (clap) – (stomp) – THE FRUIT!

Additional Resources

Danielle’s Place ~ crafts and additional activities for the Fruits of the Spirit{many require membership}.

Christian Preschool Printables ~ Fruits of the Spirit file folder game

Lapbook Lessons  ~ Fruit of the Spirit lapbook

Confessions of a Homeschooler ~ Fruit of the Spirit beanbag toss

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 
NOTE: Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The point of Preschool Corner is to share resources with others, so please include a link back so that your readers can find some other great blogs and ideas to use with their children.
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Preschool Corner ~ Rainbows and Leprechauns

Notice a difference in the button to the left? Preschool Corner is expanding a little bit to incorporate 5K {or Kindergarten} too! You can read a little more about it in the post I wrote yesterday {and grab the new button too if you would like!}.

Starting this week, I’ll be sharing what we’ve been doing with BOTH of our boys. I’m focusing on one theme each week with them, but will be showing how we cover the same theme with activities geared for different ages or modified so they both can participate.

This week’s fun {a.k.a. learning} was all about leprechauns and rainbows. We had to have a little fun with St. Patrick’s Day! A lot of the activities we did eventually ended up in our Rainbow Lapbooks.

Rainbow lapbook

Bible

Rainbows = Noah. I’m sure that’s not any big surprise! We read the story of Noah from several of our kid’s Bibles each morning, played with our Noah’s Ark set and used this mini-reader as story sequencing cards for Zachary.

We also have some great flannel board punch out pieces that we used on our flannel board to have Kaleb play out the story of Noah this week.

Coloring

Drawing rainbows ~ Kaleb doesn’t often like to sit down and try to draw on his own. This week I asked him to make a rainbow…and he did!! Granted it only ended up with three colors before he hit his drawing limit, but he even tried to make little arches just like a rainbow.

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Dot Rainbows ~ Originally we were going to use our dot markers to make rainbows {til Mommy discovered that she had purchased the wrong set of markers…}, so instead we used this M&M Sorting mat for to Kaleb practice coloring in small circles.

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Cooking ~ Pistachio Pudding

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We were going to make pistachio muffins, but time ran out ~ so pudding it was! Really, the boys could have cared less ~ it was edible. And green.

Fun

The rice box got pulled out this week and a little leprechaun lost a bunch of his gold. The boys had fun digging around and filling up their bowls with the gold {spray painted kidney beans}.

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Math

Counting 1 to 10 ~ We used the same set of cards for the boys, but both did something different. Kaleb is counting from 1 to 10, so we worked on counting with 1:1 correspondence and pointing to the numbers as we said them to help him identify the numbers.

Zachary took the same cards and used them to count backwards from from 10 to 1. We printed off the rainbow numbers from Erica’s site ~ I just printed them off four to a sheet, rather than on individual pages.

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Rainbow Size Sorting ~ Kaleb started sorting the rainbows by size and then lost interest.

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Big sister Laurianna quickly stepped in and had him stomp on the biggest rainbow that was left in the pile to help him finish sorting them. He thought that was hilarious!

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Cereal Sorting/Graphing ~ I had all the pages printed off, the Lucky Charms cereal ready to be sorted ~ and then two little boys snuck into the kitchen and ATE THE ENTIRE PROJECT. So much for our Lucky Charm sorting activity.

Roll a Rainbow ~ A fun number recognition activity where you roll the die to get pieces and build your rainbow. We ended up gluing ours onto Zachary’s lapbook.

Roll a Rainbow

Rainbow Graphing ~ These were meant to be large printables, but I just changed the print settings and printed off 2 sheets per page so that we could add it to our lapbook. Zachary had to count the rainbows and then graph how many there were on a bar graph. This was the first time he’d really done graphing and he was so proud of himself! :)

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Roll a Leprechaun ~ I thought this might be a little hard for Zachary, but he was so excited to play this. Basically Zachary had to figure out the number on the die that he had rolled and then draw a specific part of the leprechaun. He was so happy with his {girl} leprechaun that he wanted her put on the front of his lapbook.

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Phonics & Spelling

Zachary had fun playing this great shamrock phonics sorting game. He read each of the words and then put them into the word family they belonged.

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We also worked a little more on All About Spelling {Level 1}. While it may not seem rainbow related, we tied it in by using some rainbow colored M&M’s as rewards for Zachary’s spelling work. When he finished the lesson he made a rainbow row and gobbled them up. :)

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Science

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Color Mixing ~ Even though we’ve done this before, it never ceases to interest and amaze all of our kids. We just used water and food coloring in small plastic bowls.

We first read the book White Rabbits Color Book and then set up our three primary colors {red, yellow, blue}. I filled those containers up with more water and left three empty ones. The containers were each on a foam sheet that represented the color in the bowl {none under the ones that weren’t filled yet!!}.

The boys each guessed which color would result when we mixed the two choices together and then Kaleb put down the right color square for our new color to go on. We put our colors in a circle shape, similar to the color wheel that we added to our lapbooks.

Color Words ~ We named and wrote the colors in this minit book for our lapbook. Kaleb colored in the squares and named the colors {I wrote them} and Zachary wrote in the color names as I spelled them for him.

Songs and Rhymes

Color Songs ~ Carisa has some great printables for color songs that we sang this week and then added to our lapbook.

I’m a Little Leprechaun

{Tune: I’m a Little Teapot}

I’m a little leprechaun

Dressed in green

The teeniest man that you have ever seen.

If you can catch me,

So it’s told,

I’ll give you my pot of gold!

Additional Resources

Here are links to some of the great resources we used this week! I’m all about using what is already available is someone has gone through the trouble to put it together and it fits what we need!

R is for Rainbow ~ Erica has some GREAT printables all about rainbows. We used several of them this week. Don’t forget that you can make the printables smaller {i.e. fit more than one on a page} if you are worried about printing off too much.

Rainbow Lapbook ~ printables and links from Carisa @ 1+1+1=1

Little Laplinks {April} ~ Links to some lapbook printables and other sites that have completed rainbow lapbooks

Lucky Charms Graphing ~ sort cereal and graph the results of what’s in your bowl.

Shamrock File Folder Games ~ a variety of different file folder games. Pick one to use with your kiddos!

Roll a Leprechaun ~ Whatever number you roll allows you to draw another piece of your leprechaun.

Rainbow ideas from Making Learning Fun

R is for Rainbow ~ Michelle @ Delightful Learning linked up with her preschool rainbow ideas ~ she has some great ones to share!

Stories & Books We Used


 

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.

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Preschool Corner ~ Firemen Lapbook

Both of the boys are very much into firemen and policemen at the moment, so we took advantage of that this week and I put together a fireman lapbook for Zachary {and also for Kaleb}.

Zachary was hilarious when I pulled out all of the printables and asked if he wanted to do some ‘schoolwork’. When he saw what it was, he ran and grabbed his marker box and plopped himself down to start working right away. I had to help put some of the lapbook / lapfolder together, but he had fun coloring and cutting some things out to put it all together.

This is a picture of the inside/outside of our fireman lapbook that we did. I used a file folder ~ no fancy folding, and just punched it with a 3 hole punch when we were done so we could put it into a binder to keep on a nearby shelf.

Fireman Lapbook collage

The front cover is a 16 piece puzzle that is part of the download. Zachary pieced it together and then we worked to glue it on the cover. The back cover is one of the other printables, a shadow matching game that features different things that firemen use.

Inside the lapbook we added our pattern strip to the top, a color word and ‘simple’ reader, words that firemen use, spelling his name, and counting/sequencing from 1-10 using the Dalmatian’s spots.

You can download individual pieces for the fireman lapbook on my website or the full file {it’s around 2.5 MB}. I will be updating it soon with additional resources for games and other activities too!

Stories & Books We Used

 

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 

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Preschool Corner: Robin Lapbook

We had a little robin who decided to build a nest right in front of our house and we were able to watch the entire process. The kids were thrilled to discover that she had laid three eggs.

Zachary was the one who alerted us to the fact there were eggs in the nest ~ after he reached up, stuck his hand in the next one morning and felt the eggs.

We had a little discussion about leaving bird’s nests alone. Yes, we did.

That seemed like a great time to avoid those last few pesky letters of the alphabet that are hanging over my head and use the time to learn as much as we could about robins. It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good learning opportunity, don’t you think?

Drawing a picture of a robin

I posted about the robin lapbooks that the girls put together along with some great links, but wanted to do a separate post for Zachary’s lapbook, since it was a little different and more ‘directed’ by him. He was so excited to have school time along with the girls and feels like he is really doing school right now. It’s so funny to watch him.

Zachary’s lapbook only used one file folder ~ I opened it flat and then re-folded it so that there were two smaller flaps on the sides. The above picture shows the front and the back of his lapbook {cover pic is linked below} For the back cover, Zachary drew a picture of some worms and dictated a few sentences to me:

“Robins can see the ground moving. That means worms are going underground. They eat them.”

There are only a few minit books inside: Who’s Who {difference between male and female birds}, bird food, predators, a coloring sheet with a robin’s anatomy, clip art and a drawing Zachary made of a robin’s nest. I didn’t get a very good picture of his completed drawing, but it’s hysterical! The robins all have their heads straight up, mouths open and waiting for food. He was so proud because he did it all by himself and wrote “This iz a robin” along the top.

Here are a some shots inside the lapbook and with the minit books fully opened:

During the week we also worked on memorizing a little poem about “Little Robin Redbreast”. Zachary did great memorizing the first stanza of it:

Little Robin Redbreast

Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree,
Up went pussy cat and down went he;
Down came pussy, and away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast, “Catch me if you can.”

Little Robin Redbreast jumped upon a wall,
Pussy cat jumped after him and almost got a fall;
Little Robin chirped and sang, and what did pussy say?
Pussy cat said, “Meeow!” and Robin jumped away.


Links for the Lapbook
:

Be sure to check out my post about the girl’s robin lapbooks. I’m covering a lot more information about the things that we talked about during the week and will have more resources and links in that post!

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Robin Lapbook and Unit Study

Little did I know that one simple robin’s nest would take us on an adventure into learning some fun things about robins ~ and more about the creativity of God!

We watched a mommy robin build her nest right outside our window, found out {thanks to Zachary putting his hand in the nest} that she had laid three eggs…and then watched and waited patiently.

Until she abandoned the nest three days before the eggs were supposed to hatch.

Regardless, we continued on with our robin study and learned so much. We’ve all been sharing the little tidbits that we’ve learned with others we know, because it’s too neat NOT to share!

At the end of the post I’ll include a full list of all the great links and resources we used over the last bit. I’ll also throw in some of the fun facts we learned as I post pictures of the lapbooks the girls put together. Tomorrow I’ll be posting the lapbook we did for Zachary as part of the Preschool Corner.

Every day we spent time memorizing “Little Robin Redbreast” and also sitting outside to observe the robins {and other birds} in our yard ~ their songs, habits, etc… We also worked on the minit books that went along with what we were studying that day.

Monday: A Robin’s Habitat ~ Our backyard

  • Identifying robins: difference between males and females ~ minit book
  • Scientific name of robins: turdus migratorius
  • Migration of robins & minit book
  • What do robins eat?
  • How do robins find their food? We had so much fun watching the robins in our yard and learning that they actually see the ground move ~ not hear like we originally thought!

Tuesday: Life Cycles/Nesting ~ Getting ready for babies

  • What are the predators of robins?
  • Who builds the nest?
  • Robins ‘chore chart‘ ~ who has what responsibilities in raising babies. You guessed it, it’s primarily the momma robin. We learned that the mom lays one egg a day and that it generally takes 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch. The mother robin spends on average about 50 minutes of each hour sitting on the eggs in the nest.

Wednesday: Keeping up with the babies

  • Feeding habits of babies ~ wow! We were amazed to learn that the parents have about 100 feedings a day. {And I thought that my kids ate a lot}
  • In the first two weeks of life, each baby eats the equivalent of 14 feet of worms ~ we even went into the backyard and measured that out.
  • Babies weigh less than a quarter when they are born and are almost the same size as their parent within 2 weeks.
  • Disposable diapers for birds ~ This was amazing!! Did you know that every time a baby robin eats it poops right away? That way the parents are there to pick up after them. Their poop is contained in a little sac that the parents can pick up {just like a disposable diaper} and carry away from the nest. This helps keep the nest clean.

Thursday: Listening to robin’s songs

  • What are the different songs of robins ~ we sat outside and listened to them
  • Put our lapbook and minit books together
  • Wrote/journaled and illustrated our robin stories. The girls used Draw Write Now to do the first page and then drew their own pictures on the second page. We use a lined journal that has room for drawing on the top of the page and then I photocopy their work to put in the lapbook.

Books we used

Free Bird Nature Study Printables!!

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If you are looking for some additional notebooking style pages, don’t miss the free Bird Nature Study Printables. It includes bird tracking, information pages, labeling activities and much more! 


Some Great Resources

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Preschool Corner: Letter R

This week I’ll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter “R” and the lapbook for Runaway Bunny that I created to go along with the book. At the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you’ve been doing during your preschool time.


Rick had a business trip this week and I was able to tag along for a few days, so I spent some of my alone time during the day sketching out the lapbook pieces and putting them together for us to do. I based most of the minit books on the areas that Before Five in a Row covers. All of the pieces I made are now posted at Homeschool Share and Ami was great to make the cover (which I forgot) and also a few bonus games to go along with it.

We did do a few activities that weren’t related to the book, but it’s all listed below, so enjoy looking around. I’ve provided links to the various activities and sites that we used whenever possible. Of course now that I’m posting, I’m thinking of a bunch of other little minit books that I could have made too ~ sigh.

ABC Book:

The alphabet book page for the letter “R” was a rainbow using fingerprints for each of the bands of the rainbow. We glued some clouds (cotton balls) on at the ends of the rainbow…and made a general mess. {grins}

Alphabet Activities: Rice Tracing


Zachary had a lot of fun with this activity…and then Kaleb joined in and the REAL fun began. He practiced his uppercase and lowercase ‘R’s’ and also made rectangles.

Fun Activities: Shadow Matching and Patterning

Homeschool Share has a fun game that uses images of rabbits with long ears, short ears, etc…and then has a shadow image of it to match. We stored our game pieces in a pocket on the back of the lapbook. You can find the shadow match and patterning games here.

Lapbook: Runaway Bunny


The lapbook pieces that I created can be found at Homeschool Share. Here are the links for the lapbook cover and some other games to go along with the lapbook. I used a full size folder for this lapbook and glued some of the game pieces directly onto the folder so that we could open it up and play it. On the back of the lapbook I glued our math game (only three sides) so that the pieces to the game can slide down in between the game board and the lapbook cover. You can see it in one of the pictures below if you can’t visualize it.

Lapbook pieces closed:

Lapbook pieces open:

Here are the minit books that we worked on:

Types of Art ~ Runaway Bunny uses two different kinds of art for the pictures ~ pen and ink drawings and also coloring paintings

What is Round? We looked throughout the book for different things that are round (spheres, disks, circles).

Catching a Bunny ~ Zachary had to remember what the Mommy bunny used as bait for her ‘fish’ son

Scarecrow puppet ~ We made a popsicle stick puppet for Zachary to play with since there is a scarecrow in the garden

Animal identification and matching ~ There were several different animals in the story at some point: bird, rabbit, monkey, donkey, kangaroo, fish, dog and donkey. There are two sets of cards to use either as a matching game or as animal id cards.

If/Then ~ Throughout the book the little bunny says he will become different things and his mother then says she will be something to find him (if you are a rock then I will become a mountain climber). There are cards for each of the If/Then’s in the book.

Shapes throughout the book ~ This minit book has four different shapes: square, crescent, circle and triangle.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Math: Rectangles

I pulled out a bag of rice and poured it into a shallow baking pan so we could ‘trace’ letters and shapes in the rice. We also had fun with our geo boards making rectangle shapes with rubber bands.

We also had other things that would fit in the math category (rabbit patterns) but they are listed above. :)

Stories and Books

Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
I’ve Been Working on the Railroad by Nadine Westcott

Verse: Exodus 20:8

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”

Writing

We’re still using the Peterson’s Writing book for our handwriting. There are great prompts and reminders for him to visualize how the letters are formed. Here’s a look at his work from this week:

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!