Our lesson structure goes like this:
This unit was easily broken into 7 lessons, one for each day of creation. I then have each lesson broken into two days. So Day 1 of creation has two days worth of activities. Most activities are the same both days, we just repeat it, which is perfect for Lauren's age. Some activities are broken into two day. And then there are some things we do only on one of the days- mostly the activities I talk about at the end. You'll understand it more as I go through the routine below.
Start with Prayer- we have a poster on the wall were we write down people or things Lauren wants to pray for. Each lesson I ask if she wants to add anything new and then we take a moment to pray for them and for our time learning about God.
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| This is our prayer poster and the "Days of Creation" Song poster |
We always have a second song. First we learned "He's God the Whole World in His Hands" and now we're on "God Made Me and All of You" which she enjoys as well.
Read from the Bible - we then open her children's bible and read Genesis 1 through the day we're working on. So today when we did day 5 of creation, we read day 1-5 or Genesis 1:1-31 (which in a children's bible is not that long at all). Sometimes it's paraphrased and other times I read each day through. It all depends on how active she is or how long it has been since we last did a lesson.
Go over bible story - this is where we just have a short dialog about what we just read.
Read Story Book - "God Created" By Mark Francisco Bozzuti-Jones OR "The Story of Creation - An Alice in Bibleland" Storybook By Alice Joyce Davidson
God Created I got from our church library and The Story of Creation I got from my MIL (this book is part of a series and I love them all! I can't wait to do other units with Lauren with the other books). Both books are wonderful. God Created I've used more because it really drills home the point that God created EVERYTHING from people, and light, to smiles and dreams. But The Story of Creation retells Genesis 1 well in a fun way so it just reinforces what the Bible is saying, so I like this one too.
Talk about God - this is where we dialog about who God is- we talk about how he's the creator of all things and Jesus' daddy.
Felt Board - I purchased a packet of felt pieces for the creation story from Amazon and made my own flannel board with flannel from the fabric store and foam board from Michael's. There were multiple different creation story felt sets, I selected this one because it had lots of pieces, was colorful, and thought it would follow my lessons the best. She was in love with the felt board as soon as I showed her how it worked. She's played with it during none school time and has formed a special bond with, you guessed it, the shark piece. I also took a picture of how it looked at the end of our day 5 lesson today so you could see. She puts up the days in order and today I sung the Days of Creation song as she put up the pieces. Notice she put the birds in the sky with the sun and moon and all the fish are in the water. (The creation felt pieces also contain an Adam, Eve, angel, and the fruit tree, I've been incorporating them into the creation story)
Bible Verse - Our Bible verse we've been learning is Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." I have it written on sentence strips. I'll read it and then she'll repeat it and use her "pointer" to follow along as I read it again. I've cut it into smaller pieces because for day 6 I'm going to see if she can put it in the right order. You can see it in the top of the pocket chart below.
****This is where things will be different depending on if is day one of the lesson or day two.****
Coloring Pages - Each day of creation as a coloring page that goes with it. I got them from here but there are also some great ones here.
Letters & Numbers - I have a number dot page for each number we go over and I got them from here and Lauren loves them. The first day we put pom-poms in the dot spots and color the number and number word. The second day of the lesson we use a bingo maker to fill in the dots as we count.
Each number we've done has had a big project with it. This usually happens on day two of the lesson. 1 - we used rice to fill in the number, 2 - we used packaging peanuts, 3 - we used pom-poms, 4 - we used foam sea life stickers, and 5 - we used buttons. You can see them hanging on our fridge in the picture below.
For numbers on day one of the lesson, I also write the number out on an index card and she uses the bingo marker to trace the number. We put that in the packet chard too. (See picture below- in the bottom right)
Some of the lessons have lent themselves to learning a letter- we did the letters "G" and "F" only. I was more focused on the numbers then the letters for this unit. You can see the dot page we used for the letter "F" two pictures up. Each lesson that lent itself to learning a letter had a few words in the lesson starting with that letter. You can see the "F" words in pocket chart below (which is becoming awful crowded, so the "G" words have been covered up, but they were - God, Good, and Genesis).
Activities - Then we have other projects that we've done. We did the sun, moon, and stars project that you can see in the picture above for day 4 of creation. We also did one where she colored birds, butterflies, and fish, I cut them out, and she glued them where they belonged - the sky or the water. Check out the picture below.
For day three of creation we did an activity were I put water in a pie dish and we added a stone to show land and how it separates the water. Then we put a leaf and flowers in the dish, on the rock to show plant life. We also put apple seeds in there too and talked about fruit and seeds. She really enjoyed this activity, but I didn't think to get pictures that day.
This is pretty much what we've been doing. The lessons take us from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the activities and how active she is. She tends to pay better attention and be most involved the the hands on stuff at the end of the lesson. We've both enjoyed learning this together and I'm so glad I did it. Not sure how much we'll do after the baby comes, but I know for sure I'll start back up in the fall and I'm going to do letters- and some how link it with God. It will come to me just like this idea did! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or want to know more, I'd be happy to share.
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