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. "

I am linking to:

And a couple of new linkies:

T Lessons

We were able to accomplish quite a bit this week. The girls made paper plate turtles over a two day period. On day 1 we sponge painted the carapace (top shell) green and the plastron (lower) yellow.

The pictures were taken on day 2 so all my attention could be on the girls as they painted. In the above photos they are getting ready to glue on the legs, tail and scutes (the scales). I alternated between white glue and glue stick. I found it was better to put the white glue on the plate so the girls could place the legs and tail where they belonged. Then I let them use the glue stick to glue the scutes on independently.

I also realized it made more sense to do the scutes first. as they went on the bottom of the plate. And after gluing on the legs and tail to the top of the plate glue was dripping (I did it in this reverse order for Amelia first before realizing the consequences.)

Next the girls drew eyes and nostrils onto the heads and I stapled two identical head pieces together, leaving a hole at the neck, big enough to poke in a couple of cotton balls for a 3D effect. Then they glued the head onto the plate and I stapled the bottom to the top. I bent the neck back and stapled it so that when it fell forward it wouldn't droop too far.

Tabitha loves playing with her turtle.

So far that is our only craft. Though I am trying to think of something to go in their letter T book.

I made a file folder matching game. Matching upper case T and lower case t.

(And of course, triangle starts with T)

I pulled out Tabitha's Melissa and Doug Alphabet Train Floor Puzzle she received for her birthday last year. She had only used it once and it was forgotten. I am glad I remembered it for the letter T. We laid the pieces out and sang our way down the alphabet, pausing at each letter for the girls to go hunting, repeating it over and over and over. The last few letters Tabitha finished off by herself, without having to repeat the alphabet song.

We also got the jump rope out and used it as a tightrope.

(I even had Tabitha tippy toe across.)

I also introduced a couple of new

Montessori activities:

I found some "Parts of a Turtle" cards at Montessori Materials. They have a bunch of materials that are free, you just have to look for the items listed in purple.

(For some reason I can't get these pictures to turn the RIGHT way)

And I made Egg Sound Shakers. I keep them in a basket and they are to find the matching sound and place them in the egg carton. I started with half a dozen, but that seemed super simple for Tabitha, so I brought out the rest and a full dozen egg carton.

She enjoyed shaking them, though she discovered right away that the matching colors held matching sounds. So, I had her close her eyes and I handed the eggs to her.

As she tended to peek I decided to use her doctor's mask as a blindfold.

After she matched the sounds for a while, she wanted me to try. So, I closed my eyes and let her put the eggs in my hand.

And last week I forgot to post about an activity I introduced. I am considering it Montessori as it was an activity we used with the toddlers where I worked. It is a math/numeral recognition/one to one correspondence activity. I had this in the planning stage for a while. Tried to make my own numerals, big mistake. I finally broke down and printed out the large number templates from dltk-teach.com. I cut them out and contact papered them. Each numeral has the corresponding number of pieces of Velcro attached. (The one other thing that kept this on hold was that I wanted to find black Velcro so it would stand out more, but when we finally made it to a Walmart, I forgot. So I went ahead with introducing it anyway.) Tabitha enjoys attaching the snowmen to the Velcro. At the Montessori we changed the attachment objects with the season, so I will soon be changing it to a more springy picture. At the Montessori we didn't have the numeral zero. I decided to add it so I could show the girls that zero means nothing, there is no Velcro on the zero and you don't need to put anything there.

Our wordcard words this week were:

tent, telephone, turtle, tiger (the ones I found sign language signs for)

tag, toucan and Tabitha.

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and toddlers head on over to Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.