School Time With My Father's World : Unit 6- Tt Turtle

Unit 6- Tt Turtle

Words to Remember: I don't quit! I persevere! 

(Here is another school time post that I didn't post when we were done with the unit. We have been finished with Tt:Turtle for a few weeks now as we have been working on Unit 7-Uu:Us. But I wanted to share what we did for T, so here you go)

We are back on track with our My Father's World lessons after all the holiday stuff and a week of snowmen activities. And this lesson couldn't have come at a better time. There have been days when I have been so overwhelmed that I just want to give up. Then those words to remember pop into my head and I repeat them over and over and over to myself.
I have gotten us into a bit of a different schedule and am trying my darnedest to stick to it. When the girls finish their breakfast and their after breakfast chores are done they are able to take turns alternating between the WiiFit Plus (their physical education time, right?) and coloring a topic related coloring sheet.

For the past 2 weeks we have been focusing on the letter Tt and the topic was Turtle. The girls had lots of turtle coloring pages to color during their after breakfast coloring time.

On the WiiFit Plus they enjoy the Tight Rope,

and the Obstacle Course. This past week Amelia finally completed the beginner course all by herself; she was soooo happy. And what really touched my heart was that her sister was genuinely thrilled for her. 

When I am done cleaning up from breakfast I get our lesson ready. I then nurse the baby while we do our "circle" time, which consists of prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Pledge to the Bible, the B-I-B-L-E song, and our calendar/weather time. We then move onto our letter.

On day 1 Tabitha shows the word cards, sounding them out (or Amelia can try sounding them out) and Hannah finds the matching picture card to put on our poster.

On day 2 I show the word cards and have the girls take the picture cards off the poster.

On day 3 I write the word on the chalkboard and have the girls put the picture cards on the poster. They can try to guess which word I am writing as I go.

On day 4 we play a game with the picture cards. I lay out 3-6 of the cards and have them close their eyes while I take away a card, they have to figure out which card is missing. Even Hannah has been getting some of them.

On day 5 Hannah picks a card and Tabitha and Amelia take turns trying to write the word on the chalkboard by sounding it out. Hannah then puts the picture card on the poster. They also take turns erasing the word by using a wet paper towel to trace over the letters.

Usually on Monday we have a muffin tin. Well, for our Turtle lesson I couldn't quite fit what I wanted to do in a muffin tin. So I made them this Tortoise and the Hare meal on a plate.

I am not sure how I came across this website, http://twistynoodle.com/ (it was probably when searching for turtle images to color), but I thought it was a great site. They have pictures to print out and they have some words underneath to trace. The great thing about it is that you can customize it and change the words. So I changed "Turtle" to have the girls write their words to remember, I don't quite, I persevere.

As Hannah already had colored a turtle picture, I didn't want to give her another one right this moment, so I gave her some big Ts to trace.

Then we started our paper plate turtles. We made these a couple of years ago when we did the letter T. We probably would have made them again anyway, but being the craft for My Father's World they were sort of a definite. 

The girls each painted the bottom of 2 paper plates green.  These are the turtle's carapace and plastron.

And Harold sat at the table snacking

When they were dry (on a different day) I had them cut out legs, head and a tail. Then I stapled them together and they glued some shapes on the shell.

We discussed how a God gave a turtle a great defense mechanism where they are able to scrunch up into their shell and hide. I had the girls draw some different animals and insects on the board, then we said whether the turtle would eat it or hide from it.

The turtles had to watch The Tortoise and the Hare episode of Super Why! with the girls.

We also painted Toilet Paper tubes as a part of the Flowering Baby lesson for Hannah that week. These toilet paper tubes would become candlesticks for Jack Be Nimble. You can check out my review of Flowering Baby, LLC here.

And Harold was again eating a snack. At least it keeps him happy.

Here they are jumping over the candlesticks after they were complete.

In honor of our letter T, I made Tater Tot Casserole (it was my new recipe for Chicken Broccoli Tater Tot Casserole).

In addition to the Flowering Baby curriculum, Hannah has been busy learning her colors,

and working on matching letter magnets.

And Harold has been busy building 2-block towers.

We also read some fun books with our T Unit:

(And the girls acted out The Tortoise and the Hare repeatedly as a part of SongSchool Spanish. You can see this newest Schoolhouse Review Crew Review here.)

(A story of a slow-moving tortoise who tries to find someone to play with him.)

(A story of a pet box turtle who digs his way out of his backyard pen and imagines he is having adventures in Africa and India as he moves across the backyard.)

Description from Amazon, "This book is a delightful story about a new family of painted turtles. From the safety of the nest where the baby turtles hatch to the security of the pond where they search for food and witness the changing seasons, this beautifully illustrated book is ideal for introducing young children to the wonders of nature. "

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And a couple of new linkies:

School Time: Week 11 (Tt, Big and Little, Thanksgiving)

We started out this week with a craft based on the book Big Truck and Little Truck by Jan Carr

You can read the details here.

 Because we were focusing on big and little, our muffin tin this week also revolved around this theme, in addition to the Food Pyramid theme it was supposed to be.

 

On Tuesday we made and took Turkey Cookies to playgroup.

On Wednesday we went to visit my mom as an early Thanksgiving (hubby has to work the night before)

These were taken on the way there:

Okay, so I was at my mom's for crying out loud and suddenly I am seeing  a shape lesson in their lunch.  I was randomly placing food on the girls' plates when I noticed I had a circle, rectangle and square.  Then I saw I could make this:

And grandma getting down to play with Hannah

Then it was back to some lesson time on Thursday after Hannah finally decided to take a nap. 

I decided to keep with the Big/Little theme and make a chart for them to sort big and little Thanksgiving pictures on:

Then we lined these turkeys up smallest to biggest.

This was a bit of a challenge as we have never done it before.

I tried limiting Amelia to three at first, but she wanted to use all of them, though she didn't comprehend how to organize them.

As I was going through my pictures last week I saw a picture of Tabitha using the medicine dropper water activity.  I hadn't realized how long it's been since I let her do this.

This was taken January 2009.  I really hadn't realized it had been almost 2 years since we did this activity.

This time I opted for the larger medicine dropper. Of course the most difficult thing is trying to explain that you have to squeeze it first then let go to let the water go up into the dropper.

Amelia really took to this activity and even asked for it later on in the evening.

And on Friday we went to Story Time of course.  A few weeks ago the librarian had us trace the children's hands on to some brown paper.  This week she had them all cut out and ready to go.

The children glued them onto the paper.

Gave the hands legs, wattles and eyes

And glued on tail feathers.

Aren't they cute turkeys.

I'm am linking up to