M is for... M Mouse Craft

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this great weekly party called Blogging Through the Alphabet. All are welcome to join in, just make sure to keep your posts family-friendly. I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every intention to post something each week.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

I have found there is a huge benefit in this strategy. I am remembering  ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

When we were going through the alphabet several years ago, I enjoyed coming up with crafts that incorporated the shape of the letter. When we were on the letter M, I came up with this cute little mouse that has lower case m's for ears.

M is for. . . M Mouse Craft

The only materials needed for this craft are construction paper (pink and brown or gray) and glue sticks. 

I cut out an oval for the body, another oval with a slightly pointed side for the nose, tails, ears, a nose (not pictured) and the m shaped ears for the pink parts to be glued on to.

The girls glued the pink pieces onto the m ears, then they glued the ears to the head and the head to the body. They finished up by gluing the tails on.

They drew on an eye and whiskers.

Don't you just love simple crafts?

School Time: Advent Lessons

We have been taking a break from officially doing My Father's World lessons, though I have been throwing in some review. The week's before Christmas we were reviewing SchoolhouseTeachers.com as part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew. You can see the review here. I was glad to focus on the Bible, Luke 2 and Matthew 2 for our lessons during Advent. I printed out some coloring pages (from the PreK Activities: Read and Play) that included the Bible verses of the Christmas story and the girls colored a couple a day.

First we focused on angels being God's messengers.  Of course I had to make a muffin tin.

We made hand and foot angels like we did a couple of years ago.

 They traced their hands.

I even traced Harold's.

I traced their feet by doing one and then putting the heel of the second foot in the traced heel but shifting the second foot over to create a robe for the angel. 

Then I cut out the hands and feet.

They painted the feet/gown with silver glitter paint.

Then they used a strip of foil to make halos.

I had to share Hannah's 2010 angel compared to her 2012 angel. 

I also printed out an angel dot-to-dot picture.

And we made toilet roll angels (once again, part of the SchoolhouseTeachers.com PreK Activities lessons).

That was our review of the letter "a" and we got to discuss how the long a sound was different than the short a sound we were learning with MFW. 

Then we moved on to the letter "m."

We discussed Mary being Jesus' Mother and how she laid him in a Manger. We made mangers similar to the ones we made 3 years ago. I made the manger by drawing a trapezoid and some legs. 

I traced them on brown paper and the girls cut out their own.

Then they cut yellow yarn into pieces for the hay.

The yarn kept Harold busy for a while.

They glued a yellow oval to the manger and then glued the hay to the yellow circle.

We then swaddled baby Jesus in a piece of felt.

And we attached him to the manger.

Unfortunately the glue did not hold. I think stapling will be needed, but I couldn't find my stapler. For the time being they are taped.

We also made Baby Jesus Haystacks for our Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen time. This was also an idea from the SchoolHouseTeachers.com lesson, though I did tweak it a bit and use white morsels instead of chocolate chips. I figured the change gave the haystacks a more authentic color for hay. 

We then moved on to Shepherds and a review of the letter "s" with discussing the staff. 

We played a game were the girls had to take turns being the shepherd and lead the sheep (held by one of the other girls) on a safe path home by saying words that started with the letter "s."

The safe path had the letter S written on it, which you can't really see in this picture. The other papers were blank.

We discussed how sheep (like people) tend to go astray. The sheep would go astray in our game if a word was said that didn't start with the letter "s." But the shepherd had to quick say an "s" word to get them on the right path to be good shepherds.

Seeing as there are three girls they also took turns being the bear or the lion who would growl if the sheep got to close.

I also made a Christmas colors Muffin Tin

And we read  The Candymaker's Gift: The Inspirational Legend of the Candy Cane by David and Helen Haidle.

You can read my 25 Days of Christmas Blogshare post for Dec 24th to read about the legend of the candy cane. We made a birthday cake for Jesus with a focus on candy canes.

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