Preschool Parable of a Sower/Garden Theme End

Well, we finally ended our Parable of a sower/Garden theme last week. We didn't get to do too much on Thursday.  We ended up going out for most of the day.  Originally to find out about a little issue with our mini van, but it ended up turning into a test driving, going over pricing on a new van.  We still have our old one for now (which isn't that old! It was six years in August).  Following that 2 hour or more visit we headed to the mall to look around, we also needed to make a few stops at stores for things we needed, like construction paper and paint!  It's not good to run out of paint when you have a four and two year old!

The pictures below are the only ones I was able to get on Thursday.  We didn't have full day, but we did get some of our schedule activities in before heading out.   Below are J and K enjoying rainbow collaging.  Our story for the day was Planting a Rainbow.  I added gold glitter to the glue too!

Below is another picture of them sorting and gluing.

  

Here are their finished pieces of art!  J puts on a lot, K, she keeps it simple!

Here they are in the writing center. I actually had something else at the table, it's moved aside!  They wanted the dry erase boards and markers!  K copies everything her big brother does!  Oh, and yes, we were still in our morning attire!

As I said, we finished up our theme for the week and getting J and I are getting used to a schedule for his workboxes.  He is loving his workboxes!  We didn't get to them Friday during the day (we were all recovering from our very busy Thursday), so when he discovered this little "oversight" Friday evening, he stayed up to finish them all!  Thankfully I only had six boxes and two were games!

In box number 1 I had a bunch of pieces of colored construction paper, scissors and a glue stick. He really enjoys cutting and gluing very much.  This was for him to make his own Parable of a Sower book.  I took two brown pieces of construction paper and cut them in half and stapled one side to make a book.  I had him cut and glue pieces on to make the pathway, the rocks, the thorns and the good soil.  Some I cut, some he did.  It turned out cute.

The next four pictures are pictures of his finished "book" for Parable of a Sower.

 These are the seeds that fell on the pathway that got stepped on and ate by birds.

 Here are the seeds that fell on the rocks, some started to grow, shown by the little bit of green, but did not survive.

 This is when they fell among the thorns, but he cut up the pieces instead of leaving them whole and jaggad (I had cut them like that to look like thorns) - oh well, his book!

Here is the last page.  The seeds fell among good soil... you can see the one seed below the flower on the left.  I had more, but he was tired!  I cut the flower for him.  

Here in box number 2 I had a dry erase marker with a laminated Jj worksheet. I'm not real big on worksheets, but they come in handy to fill those boxes and laminating them makes them more of a game, plus    

they can be reused!

Here is box number 3 the Hide the trowel game!  I got this from homeschoolcreations.com.  He loved this!  I glued the directions on an envelope, made it look a little "pretty" too.  This way we have a place to store the games pieces and the instructions there too!  This game he loved!

Here he is putting all of the cabbages out.  You take the picture of the trowel and hide it under a cabbage.  He giggled every time he found it. Your child guesses which one it's under, but must say the number before they can check!  We had to do every single number!  I'm so thankful there were only 20!!  

 Here are some worksheets I put in box 4.  The top picture are the before he did them, the bottom picture  are the worksheets completed.  The letter Pp one is another laminated like the Jj.  Letter Pp also came from homeschoolcreations.  The letter Jj is a printable from my awesome HP printer.  I just realized, I don't remember what happened to that fish page.  I think he may not have wanted the crayons, he prefers marker.  Usually he'll just use marker, but I think he opted to not do this sheet.

 

The next picture is box 5.  He had a name writing worksheet with the gardening theme, another from homeschoolcreations and a seed mini book to create.  The mini book was a printable from homeschoolshare.com, it is for a gardening lapbook.  I have not taken any pictures of that, but I will have to!

In the next two pictures J cutting out those pages for the seed book.  On each little page is a mini copy of a seed packet and a seed for that veggie/fruit is taped above the seed packet. These are the four seeds we planted, which are now sprouting!  The littles' and the rest of the family are so excited!

 The next two pictures are that name writing worksheet.  I wrote his name in pencil and then he chose a red marker to trace it.  He's loving doing this stuff! He's so cute!

 Here is box number 6 - it's a rhyming game.  This one is also from homeschoolcreations.  We gave this game a try, but he just wasn't liking it.  He wanted a coloring page of an animal instead.  I'm also not real fond of coloring pages.  I want my children to develop their own creativity, but once in a while I'll go along with a coloring page!  It took him saying the name of about 6 different animals (or more) to finally decide on a lion!  BUT.. not just any old lion, a mean lion!  I had to tell him, no more after that! HE HAD TO GO TO BED... mommy was tired!!!

  Oh, yes, he was in his bedroom when he did these!  Another great thing about homeschooling - actually three - 1) you can school anywhere you want (as long as mom and dad say it's okay) 2) you can wear (or not) anything you want and 3) when one thing doesn't work - you can just take it away and add another!

FLEXIBILITY!  I've had to learn a lot of that!  Homeschooling has it many challenges, but I've learned that remaining flexible is a major key!