My Father's World, Kindergarten, Lesson 4

This past lesson was on letter/ sound "A" and Apples.

We continued adding a straw to our cup each day and adding a number to our 100 chart, and tracking the weather and date on our calendar. This week, we read the story of John Chapman, better known as "Johnny Appleseed", made a book about apples, and practiced handwriting, drawing, and reviewed letters & sounds.

Ella enjoyed making this beautiful apple tree using her arm and hand as the trunk and branches, a green oval as the leaves, and her finger dipped in red paint to make the apples.

I introduced simple fractions 1/2 and 1/4 with apples.

And we cut an apple in half horizontally to see the "star" inside, and Ella counted the five seed pockets.

Ella also really enjoyed tasting 3 different types of apples and learned that green "Granny Smith" apples are sour, and they are now her favorite.

We also made applesauce, which I already blogged about, and we read some really good books that we already had but definitely fit in this week. They were

"Apple Farmer Annie" and "Apple Picking Time".

We also checked out several books from the library, such as "Ten Apples Up on Top", and "Berenstain's A Book", which Ella can read a lot of before she gets tired and has me finish. We checked out several other books, such as "The Aminal" which was really cute and funny and "I Stink", which is about a garbage truck. He eats an apple in it, which is why it came up when I checked the library catalogue for "Apple". Although it was hardly relevant to our lessons and a really disgusting book, it was hilarious to my kids, and we've read it several times. Our vocabulary words for the week were core, orchard, market, scale, half, quarter, and remain. And we made a fruit collage too.

Our words to remember were "If I stay with Jesus, I will have much fruit." One of the bible verses we read is John 15:4-5 "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can fo nothing." This verse is where the words to remember come from. We also talked about the fruits of the spirit from Galatians 5:22-23a "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

We talked about the fruits of the spirit throughout the week and I used examples in life to teach them. At one point, Ella's grandmother, "Gugga" came over with iced banana bread and Peanutbutter cookies. It is no secret to anyone we know that I am working on losing weight, so I told Ella, "Mommy is going to have self-control. That's one of the fruits of the spirit." Ella said, "Oh, I am NOT going to have self-control!" Haha! Well, at least she knows what it means now. She ate the banana bread with icing, and I went and brushed my teeth.