For second semester I’m testing out incorporating the Before Five in a Row curriculum. I bought it planning to use it for Grace in September but she wants to be apart of school time and I really like the idea of focusing on one book a week.

Every morning we read our bible story. This week was about Joseph and we are going to keep talking about him next week for our colors theme. Then we did our calendar. We usually only sing the days of the week but Timmy has that one down so I added a months song and they both loved it. Gracie thinks she is playing a big part pointing to the months as we sing. Timmy can recite them all except he totally skips November and December and pronounces May like Nate. But for the first week of learning it I was pretty impressed. I’m noticing his favorite way of learning is through song. For weather since Snow is part of our theme we talked about what kind of clothes you would wear on a cold day versus a hot day. Then we played cold day dress up with jackets and gloves.

I tried to talk about different seasons but I think I lost him with that. I had them each take turns doing the calendar. I’ve really seen a big positive change in sharing this past week.

For music this week we focused on the song Rejoice in The Lord. We brought out the instruments and really played our hearts out. Timmy is really good with rhythm. His favorite instrument this week was the triangle and Grace is all about the drums. Timmy picked this song right up and I love hearing him sing his Jesus music throughout the day when he’s playing 😍.

Every day we read The Snowy Day and then followed it with a themed activity.

The illustrator uses water colors and tissue paper like art in the pictures so I gave the kids tissue paper squares and paint. They were both amazed at how a little bit of water spreads fast on tissue paper. I painted S’s and then they put tissue paper over it and watched the S bleed through. Timmy thought it was magic.

My sister bought the kids fake snow and it’s totally awesome. It’s cold and doesn’t stick to your hands. I let the kids help measure out the water and powder. We made handprints in the snow, we practiced making S’s and used Legos to make houses and I showed them how a plow works. Doing it in the house probably not my best idea but they really loved this.

Our field trip wasn’t much of a field trip we just went to Storytime at the library. I was really happy about Timmy’s behavior while we were out. I’m hoping it’s a sign we are out of that phase.

Bonus we found a frog in our bird bath. They were both happy just staring at him.

Timmy made us all lunch one day. He watched me to make sure I took a bite. It was hard because I watched him make them straight on the counter while licking his fingers 😝 but I did it. No way I was breaking his heart.

On Friday night we broke out the telescope and did some star gazing.