Bible Journey Curriculum Part 8

Since the last post Grace has learned about Jesus' birth (which she remembered from Christmas time...basically she said Jesus was born in a barn).  I love how the Jesus Storybook Bible ends each story about the day a Savior will come.  I am excited to keep reading through the bible and to teach Grace (and myself) more about Jesus' time on earth.

 

John the Baptist was a strange man; or at least people thought so.  Our takeaway from the story about him was that he eats bugs :)  So, it was only fitting that we made a locust!

Locust:  Part of an egg carton, bug eyes, green paint, and pipe cleaners

I went through and looked up some more bible verses for kids to add on the backside of the verses I already had.  I found some great ones...I'm sure all parents can appreciate Proverbs 20:11 :)

  

After John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, Jesus spends some time in the desert where he is tempted.  There was a cool lesson idea about using a smoke detector to teach temptations.  You make the smoke detector go off and talk about how we sometimes ignore God's warnings and give into temptations.  I didn't do the lesson, but we talked about it.  That lesson led into the story about the 12 disciples.  Jesus chose 12 friends to teach and spread the word of God.  This craft was GREAT for one to one correspondence and identifying numbers.  Grace even drew some fish.  The smaller popsicle sticks would have fit better into the boat.

What do you do with empty formula cans?  You make drums!

 

Random teaching opportunity...if your kid ever brings up something, I always think it's a good idea to address!  Grace found this book and asked for M and Ms.  So I bought some and we practiced matching them up.  Eating them was the best part, of course!

Practicing gluing in straight lines

A cool bug catcher thing I found at work came in handy!  We used it to practice picking up pom poms.

Two handed

One handed

We are in full handwriting practice force!  Well, we just practice a few times a week.  Grace is doing really well.  I don't have expectations of her writing her letters perfectly, but the tracing practice is good for her. 

I tried to force her grip but developmentally it's okay for her to hold a marker like this right now (that's what I have to keep telling myself!). 

We are proud of her!

 

Several of my friends have these Melissa and Doug triangular grip crayons so I bought some for Grace.  They have made a huge difference in her grip.

 

Thanks to Gretchen for this idea!  Instead of always having Grace sit down to do a lesson or practice tracing, I have been leaving out index cards with words on them.  I put a marker or crayon by the cards and whenever Grace sees them, or feels like it, she can trace!

 

Word families!  Y'all, I get so excited about teaching kids to read!  I taught first grade for one year and loved seeing the progress from beginning to the end of the year.  I will be the first to tell you that if you force something upon a child, it usually takes longer to work.  However, Grace LOVES books, letters, letter sounds, and really wants to read.  So I decided to start doing word families with her.  This will also help her with her speech (she says "uv" for "ub" and sounds like that).  I know a lot of her speech will self correct but practice can't hurt.  We will focus on different word families each week and see how it goes.