Tot School: Fruit of the Spirit (Intro, Love, Joy)

Tot School: Fruit of the Spirit
Letter Focus: Letter F, Letter L, Letter J
Fruit Focus: Memorizing Galatians 5:22-23, Love, Joy
Age: 32 months

I had planned to use Intentional Homeschool's Fruit of the Spirit Curriculum, which is fabulous, but I ended up not using as much as I originally planned.  They have their curriculum broken up differently than I decided I wanted to do.  I did use a few of their printables, but I decided I wanted to focus on each fruit individually so I had to come up with some different ideas on my own.  I also got some great ideas from Oh Amanda's blog.

Also, with the weather being so awesome and the grass fully grown in the backyard, we're spending a lot of time outside instead of doing tot school every day, so we didn't do a whole lot this week.

Monday is sweeping day, so that means it is also sensory bin day! Since we didn't have letters this week as we have in the past I just gave Raelynn free play with the rice.  She loved the timer she found in there.  Declan had mashed potatoes and did a great job, too.

 


I wanted to do a lot of alphabet review along with the Fruit of the Spirit.  This is a puzzle I found at a garage sale!

We listened to Crazy Praise Vol 2. "Fruit of the Spirit" song A LOT this week! One of the printables from Intentional Homeschool is the fruit.  I taped to popsicle sticks and she loved holding them as she sang along.  After listening to the song just a couple times she had 6 of the 9 fruits memorized!
Hear the song here

This is a fun file folder game that is similar to shadow matching. Printables from Christian Preschool Printables

I used packaging tape to tape the 'shadows' down on the folder then cut the fruit out to be matched on top. She did this many times this week.

 

F is for Fruit:

 





 

We stuck with a 'fruit' theme this week and used it to practice counting and sorting.

Counting apples on the tree from Little Learning Lovies

F is for FRUIT loops!
First she SORTED on paint samples:

Next she COUNTED each color:

Then she LACED onto a pipe cleaner to practice motor development.  This kept her busy for a while and she loved it because she knew she was going to get to eat it after.

Her pretty bracelet:

While she was learning her letters, I loved using ABC Find It printables from1plus1plus1equals1.com

 

So I just pulled them out of the file and focused on learning the lowercase f this week.

F is for frog:

printable from Intentional Homeschool.  First time she had done the dot markers for these pages.  They worked well! I think after doing these through the alphabet she is a bit bored of them, so she liked the switch up of the markers.

Declan is doing so well with this puzzle.

F is for Fruit:

I chose the fruit out of our plastic food set.  First, she CUT.

Next, she MATCHED back together.

Then she MATCHED to a picture:

I found some great learning apps on the ipad that were all about fruit.

Little brother on the cutting action:

I printed several of this page off for the week.  One day I colored their faces and she had to match to color the rest.  This day she was coloring as she pleased.  Another day she did dot markers.

Counting practice:

This is just cardstock with numbers and I traced around a nickle

Little Brother stacking the beads

L is for Love:

 

We have a heart stamp that she did in one of the cherries and in the other she did thumb prints. We were making thumbprint hearts.

L is for Lamb:

Dot marking the lambs.  We focused on lowercase L and talked about God's love for us and the love we should have for others

J is for Joy:

I love this picture of Raelynn:)  She knew right away that the banana looked like a smile. (this idea came from Oh Amanda.  I wouldn't have been clever enough to think of this on my own!)

We did notice that the banana looks like a J!  I made a dot page for her since there wasn't a printable.

And of course we sang "I've got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy, down in my heart!"

she's singing "and I'm so happy, so very happy..."

Another printable from Christian Preschool Printables:

She was doing so well matching the colors to the correct fruit without me even telling her to do that. But then she just got carried away with the green:)

I read an idea online that you could trace the child's body and put it on the wall and when they showed the fruit of the Spirit you taped the fruit to their body.  I didn't think that would work for a 2 year old, but I did think she would like to trace her arm/hand to make a tree! We talked about fruit growing on trees and she could relate because she likes to pick apples from Grandma and Tank's tree!

As we focused on a new fruit of the Spirit, she colored it and taped it up.

 

 We had a field trip to Superstition Ranch Market this week! I had been wanting to go for so long because I know their fruit prices are outstanding.  It's not really close to our house though, so we went on a day that Daddy worked from home.  It was fun (and their prices ARE amazing!) and we got a lot of great fruit we wouldn't normally buy from the store.

 

 

 

It was a fun week of introducing the fruit of the Spirit to Raelynn.  It was especially neat when she told her daddy at dinner one night after saying the verse for him that "the fruit is in me when God is in my heart."  Hey, I think that's pretty great to come out of a 2 year old:)  And it sure does provide great study and reflection for mommy as I teach her, too!  Next week we will focus on Peace and Patience!

Project 52: week eighteen

October 20-26

Sunday Snapshot: (and yes, they match again and yes, it was on purpose:)

I think Declan is looking down at his vest wondering if his button is about to pop! haha.  It's an 18 month vest that apparently needs to be packed away until little brother is ready to wear it

 

 

I love this picture:) 

 Home Improvements:

The grass is in! The kids have been enjoying the great outdoors all week and can't get enough of being outside.  It is becoming more and more obvious to us the difference between boys and girls as Declan gets a little older and is showing us how boys really are so much rougher than girls! We thought Raelynn was tough and daring, but it's no comparing to her brother!  I'm just waiting for the first broken bone!! 

Not only did Brent shovel all the rock out, till the hard ground, build a sprinkler system, and lay grass seed; he also built this beautiful fence! It even has a little gate to open.  It blocks off the AC units, lawn mower, and anything else we decide needs to go there in the future.  He planted two flowering vines that will soon start to cover the fence a bit.  I think it looks GREAT!
  

A neighbor at our old house gave us this little playset for free around Raelynn's first birthday! It sure is coming in handy now.

Declan can't quite make it up the little steps, so he climbs up the slide and slides down on his belly.  Over and over and over.

Playing outside has really helped the bigger two interact with one another!

She looks WAY too big here!!!  Practicing her tricycle riding...doesn't quite have it mastered yet

Elliana's first time in grass EVER!! She LOVED IT! Was crawling all over the place

 




Daddy came home with some great craigslist deals one night.  He got this little airplane rider, a big wheels trike, and a cozy coupe car all for $10!!  The kids LOVE them and it's so fun to watch them interact.  Raelynn does a great job of pushing Declan around....most of the time:)  I happened to catch this moment on camera perfect!
 




This is when Raelynn says, "Bye Bye Mommy.  I'm going to Grandma and Tank's house. I've got the gift card in my pocket. I'll see you when I get back."
Hahaha.  This girl is just too funny.  And do you think we must use a lot of gift cards around here? :)



 

Raelynn sure does bring a lot of JOY to all she meets.  She is learning the fruit of the Spirit right now.  She is such a big helper and always looking out for her siblings.  We say she is the second mommy of the house and she sure keeps us on our toes.



This is a great picture of Declan's personality...not so much of Raelynn though! She looks like a grump here-I think the camera caught her after her smile.  We were sitting here reading, which we love to do and before I know it Declan is SLEEPING!  He will sleep anywhere and is so content with missing out on whatever is going on around him.  Raelynn on the other hand....

I've started working on "blanket time" with Declan to help my sanity while I nurse the new baby.  It helps a lot right now when I'm prepping lunch because they especially like to run circles around me during that time.  Raelynn took a lot of training and effort to have her stay on the blanket.  Even now, she will stay there but not necessarily look at books or whatever it is I give her.  Declan though has mastered this without even trying! I'm talking no. effort. at. all.  Well, until he sees the food then he comes running! But I loved this moment when they were both looking at books and when Raelynn would finish one she would pass it over to him:)


And another sweet moment that I caught--all three playing with the same toy.  And playing so well together.  It's not always like this:)



 Elliana had another fabulous week.  She has been home 3.5 months already.  It really seems like she has always been here.  Just this week we were talking about how we can hardly remember those first few weeks falling asleep in the chair with her and her waking every couple hours to eat.  She is such a perfect fit into our family and we just love her so much.  She continues to crawl all over the place and will play with various toys around the room all on her own.  She will go into the other room and look in the bucket for a toy she wants.  She mimicks like crazy and now says "uh-oh" at the appropriate time.  This is a first--she found a paci, put it in and was crawling around with it! She will take it now when we put her to bed and also while we sit in church.  We have also started swaddling her less.  This week she took all her naps with only her arms swaddled and near the end of the week we started only swaddling one arm.  We tried leaving both arms out, but she just plays with her feet or with her blankie and doesn't sleep.  She is SO distractible! Because of this, meal times are difficult because there is a lot to distract her.  But she will even be distracted by her own hands.  It is getting a lot better though and she is eating more and more finger foods.  Eating faster and eating more than ONE piece at a time.  It's just such a drastic change from our other kids who were like little chipmunks trying to stuff in as much as they could!

She eats about 1/3 a banana every morning with her oatmeal.

Really enjoying toys now.  She was loading up this bucket all on her own! I've been trying to teach her this for a few weeks, so it was a great thing to see. 

Trying to get her transitioned to a sippy cup...but she doesn't really lift it to drink, so I think it will still be a little while on the bottle

This week we had a fall festival with Aunt Ashley, Uncle Kyle, Jackson and Harper.  We went to their neighborhood for a chili potluck and fun games.  Raelynn LOVED dressing up! We let her pick her own costume out and she was so excited. Elliana is a lady bug and Declan is a dinosaur. The hood kept bothering him--he isn't used to bows on his head:)

Cousins and best buds!