Mm- Moon

This week we learned Mm if for moon. Our words to remember were "I am the light of the world." The moon has no light of it's own. It's only a rock, but it reflects the light of the sun. Jesus is like the sun and we are like the moon, reflecting his light to the world.

Both Boo and Sis learned a lot in this unit. Sis said she never thought about how the moon gave off light, because she knew people can walk on it. We did a reflection activity where we shined a light into a mirror and looked at the light reflected onto the wall.

 For our tactile letter activity I drew a big "M" on a piece of paper and Boo placed colored Popsicle sticks on top to build  M's.




We used this book Usborne Beginners Sun, Moon, and Stars for our information lesson on day 1. We also read a lot of books for our story time this week: Happy Birthday Moon, The Moon Shines Down, The Moon Might be Milk, Moongame, and Goodnight Moon.

We talked about astronauts walking on the moon and then we sampled real astronaut food that I found at a craft store...a space freeze dried ice-cream sandwich! I am NOT a fan of crunchy ice-cream! Boo didn't like it either, but Sis on the other hand ate the whole thing. Still it was kind of fascinating knowing we were tasting what they really eat in outer space!

We learned the phases of the moon using Oreo cookies. Boo learned the words "Full moon, New moon, Half moon, and Crescent." Sis learned all 8 proper names of the phases. Then we ate our moons.

On Wednesdays we're suppose to make a badge as our craft, but since I decided to reward her with badges at the completion of each unit, we've been coming up with our own crafts to remind us of our words to remember. I got the idea to make moon tambourines, because our curriculum suggested we sing "This Little Light of Mine." I thought it would be fun to play an instrument as we sing. We covered paper plates with aluminum foil to make shiny round full moons. It was perfect, because we talked about how our lives should reflect the light of Jesus and we realized we could see our reflection in our foil moons. We glued our words to remember on one plate and on the other we decided to cut some moons out of paper to glue on. We made a full moon, half moon, crescent, and new moon and labeled them. Then we filled our plates with dried beans, stapled them together and sung our song. We changed the words to the song, and took turns trying to come up with as many places as we could think of to let our lights shine. Some of their ideas: "Let it shine at Taco Bell, Let it shine at the park, Let it shine at gymnastics." It was fun. I think they could have gone on singing it all day.

We also went to the zoo for our first field trip of the year!

SIS HIGHLIGHT:

Sis is really enjoying learning about the American Revolution and the activities related to that. Her favorite thing this week though was beginning her writing journal. Last year she kept a creative writing journal once a week. She enjoyed it so much that we decided to do one this year too. Grandma found us these fun story cards to use with her journal. She always says she wants to write stories "like Mom" someday, so these will be perfect. There are 32 story prompt cards to help her come with ideas for stories.