Hands-on Learning

Easter Fun Focusing on Jesus

Hi Mommy Teachers! I hope you all enjoyed a fabulous Easter! Many of you may have kids on Spring Break now, or perhaps your Spring Break was last week like my oldest’s was, or if you don’t get a Mardi Gras holiday like we do in Louisiana, yours may have been several weeks ago. Or if you don’t have a child in school, then perhaps every week is Spring Break… or not. What is a break when you’re a mom anyway?

Easter was so much fun this year for my family! The night before Easter, our family had our 4th Annual Glow-in-the-Dark Easter Egg Hunt with friends! While I read from our Jesus Storybook Bible about Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection, the dads threw hundreds of glow-in-the-dark eggs in the field. Jesus is the light in the darkness…great reminder!

Easter

This year, for our egg hunt on Easter morning, we decided to hide 12 Scripture Eggs, or Resurrection Eggs. We followed the guidelines from Your Homebased Mom’s post for the Easter Scripture Egg Activity. She shares a list of items/symbols to include in each of your eggs to have a visual element to better connect to each scripture, the twelfth egg being empty to represent the empty tomb. Her post also includes a PDF that you can print out with each of the scriptures on it.

I know that this post is after Easter, but I wanted to share with you how we adapted wonderful activity to our family and how my kids processed it. Be sure to pin it to your Easter and Holiday Pinterest boards for next year!

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My kids are 7, 5 and 2 and so I decided to hide three sets of Scripture Eggs to avoid a huge fight over who gets to learn about Jesus ;-). I used 12 blue, 12 green, and 12 pink eggs and each of my kids knew which color they were searching for. My kids each got a symbol in their eggs, but I rotated which kid got the scripture reference in his/her egg. My husband had an New International Version (NIV) Bible open (or you can search for your favorite translation online) because the King James Version (KJV) can be confusing for the kids.

The kids were instructed to find the eggs, but not to open them. When all the eggs were found, we sat down together and opened one egg at a time in order. I loved hearing my 7-year-old say, “Hey! There’s nothing in my 12!” and then the light bulb went off seconds later, “Oooooh because the tomb was empty!”

symbols

The whole family really did enjoy this activity! There was a bigger purpose and defined focus for what each egg represented than years past when we filled the eggs with candy… and even my 2-year-old caught on. When my oldest was joking around like they do on VeggieTales saying, “Easter is for chocolate bunnies,” my 2-year-old was the one who corrected him, “No, Easter is for Jesus!”

Easter win!

Oh, and here’s a Mommy win for egg dying…

tongs

I call them “egg tongs.” You’re welcome 😉

Remember to Pin this for next year!

April 7, 2015 by Casey | 0 comments

For Kids Who Can’t Write Their Letters Yet – Building Letters {Part 2}

If you didn’t get a chance to read Part 1 {Click here} – go back and skim through it now so you aren’t wondering what in the world I am talking about.

I didn’t even know at the time that that post was a “Part ONE” but when a Pre-k teacher asked me if I could turn it into a printable, I decided to stay up all night (like the night owl I am) and make it happen.

So, here is how this HUGE set works…
You can have your little one cut up the movable shapes that make up the letters or you can cut them yourself and laminate them, but either way….

I made this so that you can work on a letter a day if you want to OR you can have a bunch of the shapes out and about and let your littles explore with combining them to make the letters (or numbers).

You get an E for effort either way… see what I did there?

The first page acts like a little reference.

I am including this set in my Members Page.

If you EVER have problems with getting locked out of the site or losing your password e-mail me Jessica (at) the mommy teacher (dot) com so that I can take care of it!

Thanks!

November 1, 2014 by Jessica | 0 comments

Building Letters {And Numbers too!}

Let me start this off by saying that this book is one of my new “favorite finds” but it can easily be MADE BY YOU so don’t break out your PayPal account email just yet.

Sean Patrick has been having fun with the book How to Build an A

The pages only give a PICTURE of the letters in block form (not step-by-step) so the book just provides a visual of the letter after you have built one.

But, it does come with the pieces to make /build the letters which is why this is one of my new favorite finds. HOWEVER you can just as easily buy foam at the dollar tree… draw the pieces (straight lines and curved lines) and cut them out to help your little one explore building letters or numbers.

Sean Patrick had so much fun with his little bag of pieces. He carried them around everywhere and he was always either on his way to “Numberland” or “Letterland.” He gave me a great idea to only assist him in making numbers when we were in Numberland (the den) and only making letters when we were in Letterland (the playroom). Kids need to be able to distinguish letters from numbers so this was a great way to compartmentalize the two.

We had a lot of fun with this… especially for my boy who loves hands-on learning. We just play with it here and there…we are not structured in how long or how often we play with this, but here is a glimpse into this activity when we play with it:

I might take the bottom part off of his B and say “If swiper swiped this piece what letter would you have left?” (wait to see what Sean Patrick says) “P” – “I see it too! Let’s find that letter in our book! That silly old swiper – he doesn’t even know that he is helping us make new letters! Your turn to be a swiper…. take one piece away and see what new letter we can find!”

The Letter Construction Activity Set is similar but kind of expensive and you can’t make it. I have an Overhead projector (former teacher here) so I might just have to put it on my wishlist :/ but I am debating that because I don’t think we could keep track of all the pieces if I am being honest with myself!

Letter Construction Activity Set

August 13, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

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