School Time Week 39: Uu Concluded (plus finishing up July 4th craft)

As we hadn't done much last week I decided not to post. I had just found out we are pregnant again, expecting in February, and I have not had a lot of energy.  We had our Patriotic Stars and Stripes Muffin Tin:

Then we made the first part of our American flag picture.

1/2 sheet white construction paper

blue rectangle 

1/2 inch red construction paper strips

I laid down lines of glue one at a time and had them put their own strips on.  Then I put the glue on the paper for the blue rectangle.

Then I made little pen marks where the stars are to go and the girls made white finger prints.

Steven helped Hannah.

I could not find the energy to finish this project until this week.  I found this idea over at Crafts and Things for Children.  I put blobs of paint on black paper and had the girls drag a craft pick through the paint to make fireworks.

I didn't really want to deal with the paint with Hannah, so I let her color with chalk.

Then I thought it would be cool to put the flags over the top of the fireworks.

Now, onto the rest of this week.

I wasn't sure what to do for muffin tin Monday this week as we were still trying to finish up our U lessons and I had exhausted my U muffin tin ideas (You can see them here and here). So we just had breakfast in a muffin tin.

Even Hannah had a muffin tin again, I just chopped her foods up.

Then the girls spent some time on puzzles.  I had found this Strawberry Shortcake puzzle at the thrift shop, but was sure Tabitha wasn't ready for it because it has 63 pieces in it.  She found it and started putting it together.

While she was doing that puzzle, daddy was helping Amelia with the Alphabet Train Puzzle.

Then Tabitha helped sing the alphabet.

Then daddy helped Tabitha finish her puzzle.  She had done quite a bit more by herself or with some hints from me, but the big strawberry house was a bit much for her.

I found this Cheerios book at the thrift shop and thought I could keep Hannah busy a bit while we did lessons by having her put Cheerios in the holes (and eating them of course).

I found some U worksheets in my folder that I hadn't used last year.  They filled in the u in each word, read the word, drew lines to the correct picture and then colored them.

I had been wanting to make some construction paper umbrellas and raindrops of matching color to do "u" word families, similar to my caterpillar "a" word families.  However, I just couldn't get up the energy.  So I decided to use the chalkboard.  I drew the umbrella and then the raindrops.  I wrote the "ug" in the umbrella first then had the girls think of words that rhymed with "ug."

They needed some help thinking of another word, so daddy came over and gave them a "hug."

Then we did the same thing with "un." Then we needed a break.

I had the girls color umbrella pictures.

Tabitha likes making patterns.

Hannah insisted on turning her paper upside down.

Then we made our own umbrella pictures.  I had them cut out umbrellas.

Then we glued them on blue paper and painted on gray clouds.

Tabitha insisted on drawing some people under her umbrella.

Then we put drops of glue on the paper (after the paint had dried) 

And let the rain come down.  After a few minutes I set them on the table to dry. I found this idea over at La-La's Home Daycare.

Two books we enjoyed with our U lessons were

and 

 

I have really begun to enjoy Jan Brett's books.  At first I felt the pictures were too busy, so much to see.  But now I love the little hints you get on one page in the sidebars.  In The Umbrella a little boy named Carlos is going into the rain forest to see if he can find some animals.  But he can't see them, so he climbs a giant fig tree, leaving his umbrella sitting upside down beside the tree.  As he heads up the tree animals gather in the umbrella one by one, each animal being told by the umbrella's current occupants that there is no room.  I love that the tree frog always says something different in Spanish and that it is always translated.  Of course Carlos misses all this while he is up in the tree.

In Under My Umbrella, another Sesame Street alphabet board book that we love, Prairie Dawn loves that it is going to rain and talks about all the joys of the rain and how it helps, while most everyone else is not liking the rain.  The story is told in rhyme, which is always a plus for me.

I also borrowed a book from the library called, What Makes a Shadow by Clyde Robert Bulla.

This was a great beginning science book in the Let's Read and Find Out Science series.  The book discusses how the sun shines on the earth, but it can't shine through objects so it makes a shadow.  I love the different ideas, that are given in prose form, for demonstrating shadows.  I took the girls into the bathroom with my little reading light and we made shadows on the wall, showing how the shadow gets smaller as the object gets further away from the light.  

Of course we had to make some hand shadows.  The book has some I would like to try along with some other activities we didn't get to yet.

Tabitha has been taking us into the bathroom at different times since to teach us about shadows.

We also measured our shadows at different times of the day, seeing not only how they changed in size, but in direction.

This was all in relation to our Interlock lessons this week.  We talked about how God made light on day one and that it causes shadows and also reflects.  

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No Ordinary Blog Hop