S is for Sun

After a photo shoot last night I went to Starbucks with my school curriculum and had some alone time to prep for today. We've now finished our Creation segment and will be moving to the next phase of our curriculum that we'll work on for the rest of the year.

The kids were so excited when they came downstairs this morning and saw all the new things up on the walls, that they begged to start school as soon as they were dressed. I decided to just go with it. I had made popsicles last night (just our fruit smoothies that I froze) and figured I could give them each one half way through for a little snack time.

We started our day by putting a straw in the jar. We have 100 straws and each day we will add one to the jar, and write down what # we are at on our number chart as well as count up to that #. Jude got to add the first straw today, and Selah will add the second tomorrow, etc. When we reach 10 straws we'll bundle them together and put them in our box, then continue putting a straw in the jar each day. After 100 days we'll have learned to count to 100 by 1's and 10's and we'll celebrate by eating 100 raisins, or something like that. :)

Next we wrote today's date on our calendar, went over the days of the week and talked about the month of September.

Then we started talking about letter S for Sun. We worked on the sound that letter S makes, ssssss. And we practiced writing S with our finger in the sand (a tupper wear tray of salt). :) Jude was nervous he wasn't going to do it well enough, so I told him that if he could draw S correctly 3 times I'd give him a sticker. That was great motivation, and he did it!

Selah jumped right in with excitement and drew S twice, so well! Only they were backwards. :) So we worked on doing it the right way. For some reason her brain just couldn't recalculate and draw a forward S. But after the promise of a sticker her brain figured it out! Our minds are amazing. ;)

Next we worked with our Cuisenaire rods for words that begin with letter S. This is a math exercise. The kids have all of these different length rods in different colors and they need to figure out which rods to lay where, in order to create the picture. They love this activity!

(Sun, Snake & Seven...)

Then we cut out some cards of words that all started with letter S and the sssssss sound. And we ran our finger across the foam letter S several times to repeat the drawing motion of letter S (we did this part while snacking on our popsicles.) :) And cute Benjamin went down for his nap.

Next we talked about the sun. We went into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door so it was dark. Each kid had a flashlight. We talked about how it was hard to see and we could easily trip. Then the kids turned on their lights and told me they could now see because they had light. We talked about how the sun provided light for us, and warmth as well. We also talked about how Jesus is the light of the world and He shines His light into our dark hearts.

Lastly, we sat and looked at images of the sun and solar system, and learned some simple sun facts. It was a longer day than normal, but a lot of fun. Tomorrow will be a completely different day! I feel like I'm getting into a little deeper waters (since we'll be working on several different things all week long), and I just pray my kids are learning! :)