Little Hands Toward Heaven - Unit 15

Last week we finished Unit 15 which was about King Solomon. We started out by reading about how God gave Solomon wisdom and the story of the 2 mothers who fought over the baby. Solomon was able to tell who the true mother was because of the wisdom God gave him. We did an activity where we had different pairs of shes and Samuel had to try them on and tell me if they were too small, too large, or just right -- just like Solomon knew which mother was just right.

For our Bible activity, Samule had to follow directions to draw this picture. He drew a blue cloud to show Solomon's dream, a happy face with a red smile to represent Solomon, and a yellow rectangle at the bottom to show the temple that Solomon would build for God.

The second day we read about how Solomon build God's temple. This week we reviewed all of the letters we've learned. We were supposed to choose one to make out of masking tape and Samuel chose the letter G.

For our art activity, we built a temple out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Samuel did a great job on his with only a little help from me.

The next day we read about how the people praised God and thanked Him when the temple was finished. We talked about things that we are thankful for. Then Samuel made the letters I, J, K, & L with glitter. He loves using glitter even though it makes a huge mess for me!

I had started trying to teach Samuel to read with Hooked on Phonics several months ago. He did OK for the first few lessons, but then got really frustrated with it and would cry whenever I pulled the book out so I put it away for awhile. Now that we have gotten moved and settled, I decided to pull it back out again. Samuel has really caught on this time and loves learning to read! We have a chart that came with Hooked on Phonics and for each story he reads he gets a star. Here he was showing off his newest star!

Here are the first two books he was able to read. The other stories he's read have just been in the Hooked on Phonics guide so he was excited to read actual books!

The next day we read about how Solomon listened to his wives and began to worship idols. We talked about how that made God sad because we should only worship him. We worked on our phonics lesson next and Samuel was able to read another story and get a new star. Here he was putting it on the chart.

Samuel worked on his Letter Review page and did a great job matching up the upper and lower case letters and picking out the different letters I asked him to find in the words.

Riding a Bike

We got Samuel's bike out for the first time since moving to our house. Adam had tried to get Samuel to ride his bike several times last fall, but Samuel could never figure out how to pedal. Adam took him out in the road yesterday and Samuel finally caught on. He did a great job riding and is so excited that he can ride all by himself!

More Soccer Pics

Here's some more pics of Samuel playing soccer.

If you look closely, you can see that Samuel is actually kicking the ball. YAY!

Here he is kicking off after the other team scored.

Running down the field

I think this was another kick off

Soccer Pics

Here are some pics from one of Samuel's last soccer games for the season. He's starting to figure out a little bit more about the game and actually played for most of the game this time. He did get a little tired toward the end, but overall he did well.

This was when he started getting tired. He stayed at the opposite end of the field from where the action was with his head in his shirt.

Kicking the ball!

Little Hands Toward Heaven - Unit 14

This week we finished unit 14. We continued learning about David this week, and learned the Letter L. The first day we read about how David became king. We also talked about how people obeyed David because he was the king, and practiced following directions.

The next day we read about the Ark of the Covenant returning to Israel. We also made our L out of tape. Samuel wanted to make his dinosaur walk on the L.

I have added a couple of workbooks to our day to help Samuel with writing skills and fine motor skills. He loves doing them and will usually do 4-6 pages a day if I don't stop him sooner. He has learned to hold his pencil correctly and is getting really good at following directions.

The next day we read that David sinned and God punished him. We talked about different behaviors and whether they were good or bad. Samuel also worked on his L worksheet. He did a great job finding the L's on the page. For our art time, he drew a picture of David with a sad face and wrote the word NO to show that David had done something wrong and was sorry. You may not be able to tell in the picture, but Samuel drew tears coming out of David's eyes. He also drew a yellow crown around his head, but I don't think it showed up in the picture.

The following day we read how God forgave David even though he had sinned. We also talked about how even though God forgave David, there were still consequences for his sin. We also read a devotional about lying. Samuel made an L craft.

The last day we read about David's son Absalom. Absalom's hair was caught in a tree branch as he rode his mule. We did a craft project where we cut different lengths of yarn and laid them out on the table. Samuel chose the longest piece and glued it on the tree branch, and then continued to choose the longest piece that was left until we got to the shortest piece. He was supposed to glue them on the tree branch in order, but he had his own ideas about where they should go.