Books of the Week – Feb. 13, 2010

 


We finally got to the library this week and found a zillion (well, almost) good books.  It felt like we were on a book fast for the past couple of weeks, and it’s so good to be back, reading up a storm together. 
We discovered this adorable little book:Choo Choo, The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away, by Virginia Lee Burton.  This  was written in 1937.  It’s a cute story about the engine of a passenger train who wants to shake off her responsibilities and run free and fast, and really impress everyone.  She has her chance one day and speeds off to find adventure.   She ends up alone at the end of an unused track, with no fuel left since she lost her coal tender when she jumped a drawbridge that was halfway up (she’s got spunk!).  She’s kind of a naughty little engine, and I think I may have related to her even better than M did. :)  Needless to say she learns a lesson about how it’s pretty nice to be what you are supposed to be after all. 

We also read Do Like a Duck Does! by Judy Hindley.This is a cute story about a mama duck who just knows there’s not something quite right about a big brown “duck” who keeps following her babies.   It’s told in rhyme and is fun to read (although some of the rhymes are not true rhymes, which can be annoying if I let it be).  Of course Mama outfoxes the fox in the end.  M enjoyed this book a lot since it is full of silliness.  He especially enjoyed it when the fox has to pretend like he is enjoying the worms and bugs that Mama Duck feeds him. :)
Go here to find more great kids’ books!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – The Tower of Babel

Last summer we were doing Bible story activities somewhat sporadically and in no particular order.  However, now we’ve started with creation and we are going through our children’s Bible chronologically.  This means we are reviewing some of the same stories we talked about last year (which is important to do!).  We recently read about Noah and the ark again, and it is such a good story that I was tempted to make this the focus of our next set of activities.  However, M was really interested in the tower of Babel story, so that won out.  You can see what we did last year for Noah’s Ark here.

We began by talking about how the people were building a tower intended to reach all the way to heaven and why this displeased God.  God does not want us to attempt to gain heaven by our own efforts, but wants us to have a relationship with him, and trust in his care for us.

First, we discussed how we are able to work together because we can talk to each other and understand each other.  We discussed foreign languages and M really took interest in this.  It’s not the first time he’s been exposed to the idea of a language other than English (really, living near a large city, that would be pretty impossible), but it was the first time he really showed an interest.

M learned to say “hello” and “goodbye” in Spanish, German, and French.  We listened to some part-English / part-German children’s songs on Youtube and he was able to tell me when they were singing in German.
I found a tower picture here, and printed it in a few different sizes.   M size sequenced them out and we talked about small and large, and smallest and largest.  He already knows this, but it’s always fun to review.

I gave him a coloring page of the tower and had printed some numbers on it, hoping to introduce him to the idea of coloring by number.  He only colored the numbers. :)I told him he did a great job and he said, “but it was pretty hard to do, Mommy, because the numbers are so small!”  Hee hee. 

We also played a tower-building game with his mega-blocks and a number cube.  We took turns rolling the die, and then adding that many blocks to our towers.Whoever’s tower fell first lost.  It was fun to see M learn after a couple of times that he needed a “turdy” (lol, that means “sturdy”) foundation to keep his tower from falling.

All in all it was fun and we both learned a little bit.   M is still in a no-photos phase, so that makes for some pretty boring posts.  I’m thinking about having him take the pics while I pose; that should liven things up a bit! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)