Raising Rock Stars – Halloween 1

Weekly Theme – Halloween Week 1

Last week and this week are going to be kind of off weeks for us.   We are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen (new cabinets and new flooring) so things are a bit chaotic.  We are not doing any regular school but I am trying to at least get a little bit of Raising Rock Stars lessons in.  We did pretty good last week (which is what this post is a review of) but it is going to be a bit harder this week considering I have no kitchen cabinets or countertops and everything from my kitchen is either in my room or the school room!

But you don’t want to hear about that do you?  Since we are in a bit of chaos I decided to take a break from our God Made Me theme and focus a bit on Halloween and Where Is God When I am Scared?

I will admit Halloween is my least favorite holiday.  I could sit here and say that they shouldn’t even have the holiday and wish it away…but that is not going to make it go away.  The fact that Seth is having a lot of fears right now and is seeing the monsters in his room at night doesn’t help matters. But I have decided the best way to tackle this is to  just take a different approach on it…instead of trying to ignore it, find a way to enjoy it!

So one of our major focus was on the jack-o-lantern.  I LOVED Carissa’s Rock Star post last week on their view of the jack-o-lantern and the poem she had.  We have adopted that view ourselves.  In our house we have Matthew 5:16 Jack-O-Lanterns (you can read the verse below under the Memory Verse heading).  You can now ask Seth when you see a jack-o-lantern what it represents and he will tell you “The Light of Jesus shining through you”.

Our other major focus has been the Veggie Tales episode “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”  Seth has begun to love Veggie Tales and this episode is exactly what he has needed.  We have had many good discussions on monsters and scary stuff and how most of it is not real but most importantly God is bigger than the boogie man and He is watching over Seth.

Memory Verse

I had Seth concentrate on learning the first part of the verse “Let your light so shine”.  He has grasped it too!  The other day I asked him “why are we calling them Matthew 5:16 Jack-O-Lanterns?”  He said “let your light so shine!”

Books We Read and Videos We Watched

Of course we read the bible. We are concentrating on Matthew 5:16 and Psalm 56:3 (What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee).

Every night before bed we have been reading the book “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”.  We have been making sure in our nightly prayers that we thank God for his creation and thank him for watching over us.

We have also been watching the DVD “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”.  It has the story that is in the book along with the story of Daniel and the lion’s den.  We have talked about how much God took care of Daniel and that he will take care of us too.

I want the book “The Pumpkin Patch Parable” but I have not been able to find it yet.  I am going to look at Target tomorrow.  We have talked about the story (I know the story, have read it before) even though we don’t have the book yet.  We talked about the story as we carved our jack-o-lantern.

Songs We Sang

If you haven’t already guessed our song that we have been singing over and over is “God Is Bigger”.  Here are the lyrics to the chorus.

God is bigger than the boogie man

He’s bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV

God is bigger than the boogie man

And he watches out for you and me.

We have also been singing “This Little Light of Mine”.  The boys love for me to have the pumpkin sing it.  I sing it in a real deep voice and change some of the lyrics to things like “hide it behind my icky gooey stuff – NO! I’m gonna let it shine”

Activities We Did

We carved our Matt 5:16 pumpkin.  As we were carving it I told the parable.  I tried to get the boys to help me get out all of the icky gooey stuff but neither one would…they don’t like to get their hands dirty!  So Mommy did all the work and they just watched.  We really had a good discussion though. 

 

We went to a Sunday School costume party over the weekend.  Everyone was to bring Halloween theme goodies.  We decided that we would stick with our Matthew 5:16 jack-o-lanterns.  I made homemade jack-0-lantern shaped corn tortilla chips (baked – forgot to get pictures) and a jack-0-lantern decorated brownie (orange frosting with candy corns around edges and choc chips for features).

 

And here is something to add to that…I made their costumes…I thought I would show you the pics (if you will allow me to chase this rabbit for a minute hee hee)

Seth wanted to be Super Man.

Aaron wanted to be Buddy the T-Rex from Dinosaur Train (his favorite show!!)

Alyssa was a poodle!

Here was a family picture taken at the party (yes I know my cat ears turned out to be a little too big! Please don’t laugh)

 Crafts We Made

We didn’t get our crafts done like we wanted.  Hopefully we will get them done this week ":-).

Our Family Project

We had Granny and PaPa over for dinner one night so that we could tell them about what we were learning and our new take on Halloween.  We made pumpkin bread for dessert!!  It was so very yummy!!!

Even though we didn’t do as much as we would normally do for a week of Raising Rock Stars it was still a good week and I think there were still some very good lessons learned.   Hopefully after this week my house will be back in some order so we can get back to our full lessons.

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Raising Rockstars - God Made Me!

Weekly Theme - God Made Me

This week ended up being a very interesting week for Raising Rock Stars!  Daddy was gone all week (left on Sunday and returned on Saturday).  We were planning on going to my mom's but not until Thursday.  Well the rainfall we were getting and the fact that our roads were starting to flood we were urged to go to my mom's a few days earlier so we spent most of the week there.  But since my parents worked all day we packed up our school stuff and took it with us (another plus about homeschooling).  We were lax in most of our schooling for the week but I wanted to make sure we got in our Raising Rock Star lessons.  I really want to make this our number one priority for our schooling!  We were able to have a bit of fun with these lessons even though we were away from home!

Our theme was God Made Me.  We concentrated on the fact that God made people.  We talked about how everything else he created he spoke it into existence except for Adam and Eve.  When he made Adam he took dirt from the ground to make him and then he breathed his breath into him!  We talked about how God made us all special.

Memory Verse

 

I used Psalm 139:14 instead of the verse that went with the lesson from Danielle's Place.  Psalm 139:14 has always been one of my favorite verses and I believed it fit our lesson very well.  It had some big words for Seth, since he is only 4, but we really had some good discussions about what this verse meant!  He might not be able to recite the verse to you but he does know what the verse is saying and what it means (isn't that what is most important?!?)

Books We Read and Videos We Watched

Of course we read the bible.  We read in Genesis how God made Adam from the dirt of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life.  We talked about Psalm 139 about how God knew who we would be before we were even born.

My kids are really starting to enjoy Veggie Tales.  I ordered "God Made You Special" and it came in this week (how perfect was that!!)  It went great with our God Made Me Lessons!!

 

Here are the kids watching the video at MiMi's house (even Alyssa enjoyed it!)

Songs We Sang

We had a super good song session this week!!  It takes about 2 hours to get to my Mom's house.  I thought of a way that we could still have our rock star lesson that day...and do it while traveling!!   When we started our trip we talked about our bible story about how God made Adam and how God made each of us and took care of us while we were in our Mommy's tummy.  We worked on our memory verse too.  Then the rest of the trip we listened to our bible songs CDs.

Activities We Did

How cool is this??  Last week the story hour theme at the library was "Our Bodies".  They did a body tracing of each of the kids on butcher paper.  I made sure to put them in a safe place so that we could use them in our God Made Me lessons.  Aaron didn't want to color his at all at the library and Seth only colored his a bit...so I decided we would really color them good this week!  We made sure that we added our eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, shirts and pants.  Seth wanted me to help him draw his pajamas on his since that day was pajama day! :-)

While we were at Mimi's we did another drawing of ourselves.  The boys had doodle pads that I got them to use in the car.  I drew an outline of a person on a page and put their name and God Made Me.  We then completed our drawings by adding details.   Aaron really got into this....he did even better this time pointing to where his eyes, nose, mouth, etc...should be.

 

Crafts We Made

We made the God Made Me book from the Danielle's Place lesson while we were at MiMi's.

Our Family Project

Since we were at MiMi's most of the week and since Daddy was gone we did a family project with my nephew Joey (he's 6).  We made people shaped cookies and decorated them.  While we were decorating them I asked the kids "Is this how God created people?  Did he use cookie dough and cut out the people shape and then use frosting and sprinkles?".  Seth replied "No, he made Adam from dirt and breathed into his nose."  That was a PROUD Mommy moment!!  He got it, he really got it!

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Note: I am getting most of my lessons and craft and activity ideas from Danielle's Place.  This is a great site that has so many good ideas.  I am using their resources as my core and then adding in additional things as I think of them or come across them from other sites, stores, etc...

Tot School - At MiMi's!!

Aaron is 27 Months Old

We had a very interesting week this week!  Daddy was gone all week!  We have been at my Mom's most of the week.  But Aaron enjoyed his time with his MiMi and Poppy very much!  Here are some highlights from our week!

One good thing about MiMi - she is a school teacher!!  She used to teach 1st grade but now is in 6th grade!  Therefore she has a bunch of resources!!  She gave some that we were able to take home and some other books that I took time this week to jot down ideas from!  We also went shopping on Saturday and spent a gook amount of time in Barnes & Noble and MiMi got us so many more books and resources!  So we have so many new ideas and fun stuff to do!!  I just have to figure out how to put in time to review and plan everything.

One of the things that she gave us was tropical linking fish  and swinging links (I found them online and posted pictures below...each picture has a link to the school supply site where I found them). They are different colors and they link together many different ways.  The swinging links will swing around once snapped together.  They will be great for learning colors, counting, patterns, etc...  Aaron really enjoyed playing with these this week!!!  He is working on his counting to 10 and he can almost do it correctly!!

 

Aaron is also getting a lot of practice learning the parts of his body with our Raising Rockstar lessons.  Our lesson this week was on God Made Me and we did a lot of portraits of ourselves.  I had Aaron show me where to put his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc...

He loved putting M&M eyes on his people cookies!

(be sure to check out the blog on Tuesdays for our Raising Rockstars post!)

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Raising Rockstars - Creation

We had a fun filled week studying about Creation!  The boys really seemed to like the new schedule and the activities that we did for our bible lesson.

Our Memory Verse:

Books we read & Videos we watched:

To kick off our lessons for the week on Monday we watched A Beginner's Bible video on creation.

Of course we read the creation story from the bible - Genesis 1.

We read The Creation Story from DK Publishing (we checked it out from the library).  The kids really loved the illustrations in this book 

Songs we sang:
1. He's Got the Whole World In His Hands


2. Creation Song that I made up
(to tune of He's Got the Whole World In His Hands)

He created the whole world with his voice (repeat 3x)

He said let there be light on Day 1 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created the skies and the seas on day 2 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created land and plants on day 3 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created the sun moon and stars on day 4 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created fish and birds on day 5 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created animals and man on day 6 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice


The good Lord rested from his work on day 7 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

3. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
(this is Aaron's favorite song but we change a line in the song (bolded below)...it went well with the creation lesson)


Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
God placed you right where you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
God placed you right where you are



Games we played:

Adam Names the Animals file folder game from here.   The boys took turns finding the animals when I would read the name card.  Seth enjoyed helping Aaron find the animals.

Activities we did:

1. Play-doh creation.  I gave the boys each a blob of play-doh and told them they had 2 minutes to create anything they wanted.  (I was helping Aaron and made a man for him...he then started putting on the eyes, ears, nose, etc...it was so cute to watch.)  Then I took up the play-doh and told them to create something...they realized right away that they can't create anything out of nothing...this led into the story that day...we talked about how God did create the world out of nothing...

Crafts we made:

Animal jungle scene foam craft that I got from Wal-Mart

Our Family Project For the Week

We made puppets as our family project this week.  I found a Martha Stewart kit of 4 animal puppets (2 dogs and 2 cats) on clearance.  It was one of those kits where you just had to stick the pieces to the bag (which was fabric covered by the way).  There was no need for glue or scissors.  We talked about the creation lesson. Seth told Daddy his bible verse and we talked about how God did not create animals the way we were...he used his voice to create everything.  When we were done making them the boys did a puppet show (kind of)...and had fun playing.

Here are some pictures from our family time:

Next Week's Theme: God Made Me!!

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Note: I am getting most of my lessons and craft and activity ideas from Danielle's Place.  This is a great site that has so many good ideas.  I am using their resources as my core and then adding in additional things as I think of them or come across them from other sites, stores, etc...