Friday

Letter of the Day: Ww

I thought about what we could do today as our opening play time.
I realized that we had not yet played with "Thomas the Tank Engine" tracks and trains!
I love keeping all the tracks in a big Rubbermaid container
so that each play time the children can discover new ways of setting up their tracks.


It's so interesting to me how many times we've played with these tracks
and how few times we've repeated the assembly of them!


I was asked, as I always am, "Can you dump out all the tracks?"
Although to a mom it looks like a complete mess,
 to a child it's just easier to explore!


Let the experiments begin!
I asked them all to try and make one oval and one circle and see compare them.
An oval, they discovered, requires straight tracks and curved tracks,
 but a circle requires only curved tracks.
(So smart!)



Once they made one circle, the challenge was to make as many as they could.
Every time they made a new circle I had them count them!



When they had just about finished I showed them a track that could connect them all.
That was fun!


When we were done we left everything right where it was for later.
(I could not ask them to clean-up).

We had our Circle Time with a special helper today.
We are working harder and harder as Joy School is coming to an end.
Just a few more weeks and my little ones will have graduated!

In our Bible time and for the letter of the week, Ww, 
  we studied the story of Jesus' first miracle-'Water into Wine'.


We talked about how Mary, Jesus' mother, told the servants,
"Do whatever He tells you."
I shared with them how Jesus asked them to fill six jars
that could hold between 20-30 gallons of water each!
It took alot of energy to obey Jesus.
It took alot of self-control not to question Him.
But they obeyed and they were blessed to be a part of His first miracle.


We talked about how we need to learn to obey our mommy and daddy
quickly and obey with excellence
because one day God is going to ask us to do something for Him
and we need to be ready to obey quickly and do it with excellence.


Here, pinned the colored circle behind the pitcher and
it appears as if water is being poured into the cup.
 As they continue to spin the circle
the 'water' turns into 'wine!'




After a morning of hard work they always look forward to the prize box!



Thursday

Letter of the Day: Vv

We are back from our Easter break
and I couldn't wait to start the day
by reading to them!
We read
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.

We talked about the four different stages of a caterpillars life and ...



marveled at how beautiful the butterfly is!


So, what better plan could we have than to make a beautiful
butterfly of our own?!


I taught them about "marble" painting.
They were all very curious.
"But Ms. Ellen, How are we going to paint with marbles?
Don't we need paintbrushes?"
(They are TOOO CUTE!)


Each child received a box, a butterfly print, paint and five marbles.


Then they got to paining!


They were so quiet as they concentrated on getting the marbles just
where they wanted them to go.


They did great!


When they were finished,
we put our painted butterflies outside to dry.


While we waited, we had our circle time, snack, and moved into our Bible time.
Today we focused on the story of Samuel.
They thought it was funny that every time Samuel heard his name being called that
he ran to Eli. They laughed when Eli said, "No, I didn't call you. Go back to bed."
Three times this happened, but then...


                                                 Samuel waited in his bed for God's voice.


He sat up in bed and said,
Speak Lord, for your servant is listening."
I asked them, "Does God talk to us today?"
They said, "Yes."
I asked, "Can we hear God's voice too?"
They said, "Yes."
I than said isn't it exciting to know that God hears our prayers
and He wants to talk to us?
"YES!"
After we finished our Bible time and Bible craft we found that our
butterflies were dry.


They came out just as beautiful as I had hoped!



Today they went home with homework-
butterfly homework of course!




When all our work and worship time was done,
we went outside to play while we waited for the mommies to come =)



Thank you Lord for the blessing of these children in my life!
I love them all so very much.