toddler school | the fall

Toddler School has continued!  Since we learned about the creation last time, we've moved onto the Fall.  This is a big topic for such a little girl, but it's so foundational to the faith that I decided that we just had to talk about it.  We focused on the biblical truth that God Is Just and talked a lot about how God's word is true and all we need.

Our letter for the unit was "B", and we put together a box full of all of our favorite "B" things - box, boat, bear, blanket, brush, banana, bee, butterfly, ball, balloon, baby, backpack, bubbles, and Bible!

We focused on the number 1 - after all, it only takes 1 sin to separate us from God.

On our musical play list (they all have a theme of obedience and God's word):

• How Firm a Foundation
• Oh Be Careful Little Eyes
• God Said It
• What a Mighty God We Serve
• Hallelujah, Your Love Is Amazing
• Thy Word
• Wagner's Ring Cycle

We also learned a few ASL signs: sin, snake, garden, and fruit.

Outings:

We went to a local nursery to look at all of the plants!  We talked about the Garden of Eden and what it might have looked like.  We also talked about how it was Adam's job to take care of the plants.  

Rebekah got to pick out one special plant to take home.  We potted it together, watered it, and learned how to take care of it.  She continues to be the one to water it (when we remember!).

We went to the supermarket to check out all of the different types of fruit.  We don't know what kind of fruit it was that Adam and Eve ate, so we just learned about as many as we could!  She got to feel them and smell them.  It was a great field trip!

Finally, we took a nature walk to explore the gardens in our neighborhood.  We collected leaves on our walk to use in a craft at home (see below).

At-home Activities:

We grabbed a variety of fruit when we were at the supermarket to try at home.  I have to admit, this wasn't the biggest success.  Even though she just loved feeling and smelling them, she wasn't so sure about tasting them.  She wrinkled her nose...she cried...but then she decided that kiwi was actually pretty delicious and has been eating it ever since!

Crafts:

We talked a lot about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so we used it as our inspiration for two art projects.  For the first, we took all of those leaves we collected on our nature walk to make our own versions of the tree!  I got us started by coloring the trunk of a tree onto pieces of paper.  Then, I put glue where the leaves needed to go.  Rebekah knew what to do from there.

These trees ended up being a great illustration every time we talked about the Fall, and they are still hanging up in our living room.  Rebekah is very proud of them.

We also took advantage of a pretty day to make a sidewalk chalk version of the tree in the garden.

Our last craft was probably Rebekah's favorite!  She was fascinated with the "sneaky snake" that tempted Eve to eat from the tree.  We made our own sneaky snake out of construction paper and tape.  I might need to start getting worried about how much she loves it, but that sneaky snake has a special place in her favorite chair and is admired by all of her friends who come and visit.  It's one of Rebekah's prized possessions.

Haha, I love her "sneaky" impersonation above.  She's so funny.

Anyway, that was how we learned about the Fall.  And I think she got it!  When we read the story in her Bible, she can identify Adam and Eve, and she knows that they disobeyed God.  According to her, they got a "time out."  :)

toddler school | creation

For a while now, I've felt convicted that life at home with a toddler needed to be more intentional.  Oh sure, I play with her and read books to her, but I've often seen more intentionality out of her secular daycare (in terms of teaching her developmental concepts) than I have out of myself.  It's so easy to slip into the daily routine - laundry, dishes, lunch, nap take a walk, dinner, and the occasional child's television program.  And many times, it's just easier to let her play by herself than to play with her.

I decided that I would start spending more time teaching Rebekah, but I didn't want to limit myself to the ABCs.  I wanted her to have experiences seeing and doing things that would greatly expand her vocabulary and knowledge.  I wanted her to be exposed to art and music so that she would learn to appreciate aesthetic beauty.  More importantly, I wanted to start with the ultimate truth - the Bible.

So, I started at the beginning with Genesis 1 and 2.  I developed a list of activities that revolved around the basic truths of the Creation.  And I called it "Toddler School!"

Here's what Toddler School is not:

• It's not a rigid curriculum.  Rebekah is going to have plenty curriculum in her life.  I want her to enjoy playing and experiencing...after all, she's a toddler!  So this list of activities is just that - a list.  When we find ourselves needing something to do, we pull something from the list.  In her mind, this is just another fun thing that her mommy has come up with to make life exciting.  It doesn't feel like school...and that's the point.
• It's not about me, my perfectionism, or my need to accomplish anything.  If I have a list, I tend to want to complete everything on it.  And I want to do it all well.  I'm having to get over that.  We might not get to everything on my list, and that's fine.  She might not enjoy something, and that's fine - we'll stop it.  We might have a day where we just don't feel like doing Toddler School at all, and that's fine.  

So here's what I came up with for our unit on Creation...


Bible Truth: God as Creator – Genesis 1 and 2

• We read the Creation story in her Children's Bible, but I also read her Genesis 1 and 2 from my Bible.  I think it's important to expose children to the language of scripture at an early age so that they won't shy away from it as they grow older.  She was definitely comprehending a lot of it, especially when we would act it out.
• I talked a lot about how the Bible is God's word, it's true, and we can trust it!
• Throughout our day, I would use the words "create" or "creation" as we made different things, and then we'd talk about how God created the world!

Music Time:

• We like to sit down at the piano and bang on the keys together.  But now, we also learn a new hymn that we continue singing throughout the week.  Hymns have wonderful theology in them, so they are an excellent way to teach Biblical truths to children.
• I make a playlist on Spotify of music for the week.  As we play with toys, we have that playlist playing in the background.  She now will sing along with just about all of the songs, including the hymns.
• Sometimes, while we are eating lunch together, we will find videos of our music on youtube.  She loves that!

Hymns:

• All Things Bright and Beautiful
• This is My Father’s World
• Creation Sings (by Keith and Kristyn Getty)

Children's Songs:

• He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
• Over in the Meadow
•  Old Macdonald 

Classical Music:

• Vivaldi's Four Seasons 

Letter and Number: A and 7 (for the 7 days of creation)

• We had apples for a snack - A is for apples!
• I used tape to make a big A and 7 on the floor.  We traced them, danced on them, and stacked blocks on them.
• I found A and 7 coloring sheets online (just a simple google search), and we used those during art time.

At-home Activities:

• Watched Miss Pattycake – God’s Great Big World 
• Read All Things Great and Small together and identified all of the animals that God made.
• Created things out of play-doh!  We made 7 balls, an A, and here Rebekah is creating a snowman.
•  Look through vacation photos to identify geographic features – lakes, mountains, rivers, etc.
• We went into the closet and turned out the lights.  We talked about how the earth was dark. Then, talk about how God said, “Let there be light!” - at that point, we turned on the light.

Big Adventures:

• We went to the local pet store to look at all of the animals.  We learned their names (and about how Adam named them) and talked about how God created them. 

• We went to the library to check out books about God's creation (animals, plants, etc.)

• We went on a nature walk outside to find all the things we could that God created.
• Finally, on a total whim, we went to the zoo!  We had such a great time together.  Here are just a few of the things we saw there.

 

Rebekah loved seeing the elephants and giraffes!  We had been reading a book about a giraffe that thought he couldn't dance, so Rebekah easily identified where the giraffes were.

 

This guy even came up to meet her!

Rebekah decided to learn to drive while we were there. :)

And she got to meet a monkey, face to face!  Haha!

The meerkats were cute - her new favorite animal to draw!

Penguins!

The zoo had a children's petting area, which gave us a great chance to talk even more about what God had made.  She got to feel the fur, hear the noises, etc.  These goats were her favorite part of the day!

So the results of Toddler School?  We loved it!  It actually took a lot of pressure off of me - I had a whole list of ideas for things to do with her, so we spent more quality time together with less stress than we've ever done before.  I'm going to be keeping it up.  We're not going to do a different theme each week - I'm much less formal than that - but we will be continuing to learn God's truths through different activities and experiences together.

Next up - Genesis 3 and the Fall!

rebekah turns two

On Super Bowl Sunday, our little baby turned two! 

We didn't want to compete with the big game, so we celebrated on Saturday with an alphabet-themed party.

I made alphabet cereal balls...

...and delicious confetti cupcakes!

But Rebekah was the star of the show - didn't she look beautiful!

We have a tradition every birthday.  On her first birthday, we took a picture of her holding her newborn photo.  On this birthday, we've got pictures of her holding her first birthday picture.  It will be fun to see how the pictures change over the years.

We invited all of the friends on Rebekah's prayer list.  Every night we ask her who she wants to pray for, and, unprompted, she lists off several of her friends.  Then, she tells us to put our hands together, she bows her head, and she says "Thank you, God" and names all of those friends.  It's downright adorable.

After they played their hearts out, we got ready to sing and eat cake!

Rebekah loved hearing everyone sing her Happy Birthday.  She's celebrated so many people's birthdays the past few months, she was excited that it was finally her turn.

She blew out the candle all on her own!

And then she totally face-planted her cupcake. :)

Happy girl!

We struggled over Christmas getting her to open presents, but not anymore!  She knew exactly what to do with the presents she got.

And she wanted to play with everything right then. 

All in all, it was a great birthday.

Now...here's hoping time slows down a bit before the next one. :)

long overdue - finishing out 2013

I guess it's official...we fail at blogging.  We haven't put up an update since this summer!  

To be fair, a lot has happened that has kept us busy.  And, now that Rebekah's walking, we just don't seem to have a chance to sit down at the computer anymore (and when we do, she instantly walks up and says, "my turn!").  

But, nevertheless, we've been remiss with keeping up with our announcements.  Consider this our "catch up post" to help us close out 2014...

Summer

We very much enjoyed our trip to California for my graduation.  We loved going back to Yosemite and Napa Valley and seeing several of our friends.  Rebekah was a real trooper on the trip - all that time in the car driving out there, and she still was full of smiles.

 

Yosemite was beautiful.  We were only able to spend a few hours there, but it was well worth it, even if it was unseasonably chilly.  

 

My parents (aka. Granny and Pappy) joined us on the trip.  Her dad kept telling everyone that he saw, "My daughter's getting a Ph.D.!"  I found it a bit embarrassing, but it's great to know that he is proud.  We enjoyed all of the time we got to spend with them.

After we returned to Texas, we wished we were in California - it was soooo hot!  We took Rebekah to the local splash park on numerous occasions.  She enjoyed it for the fun - we enjoyed it to cool ourselves off.

Can you believe how big she's getting?  And look at that blond hair!

 

A huge (meaning really, really, really, really, really, really large!) classic car show came to town over the summer, so Rebekah and I took Nathan there to check things out.  We spent several hours - there were literally hundreds of cars.  I got a bad sunburn, but Rebekah just turned golden.  One more way she's just like her daddy.

6th Anniversary

We celebrated our 6th anniversary twice!  The 6th anniversary is traditionally the iron anniversary, so we had both been on the lookout for "iron" gift ideas since early summer.  Nathan found an absolute winner - a wine glass chandelier!

He bought it right when it found it, but had to give it to me early in order to make sure it worked before his ability to return it expired.  So, we had our first anniversary celebration in July.  I went out shopping while Nathan installed my surprise - I loved it!  Then, we all went out to eat to celebrate the day.

We celebrated on our actual anniversary as well by taking a family selfie. :)

We had a cast iron dinner of chili, cornbread, and pazookie to complete our "iron" celebration.  And I gave Nathan a few things, one of which was the book As Iron Sharpens Iron by Howard and William Hendricks.

Nathan had picked up some wine called "Irony" to add to the celebration, but ironically we couldn't drink it.  Why?  We found out just a few days before our anniversary that we were expecting another child.  So, we put the Irony back into the pantry and enjoyed some wine glasses full of RC Cola instead.

Note: We unfortunately lost that pregnancy at 11 weeks in early October.    


We continued our anniversary celebration with a trip to Oklahoma City.  We dropped Rebekah off with Nathan's parents and spent a day on the town. :)  We first stopped by Pops, an awesome gas station on Route 66 featuring every kind of soda you could imagine.  I got a caramel butterscotch root beer, and Nathan got a chocolate soda.

We ate a delicious lunch at Hideaway Pizza - fried mushrooms, salad, and the most delicious meat-lovers pizza ever!

We spent the rest of the day on our "Christmas List" date, where we walk around the mall talking about what kinds of things we are interested in.  After the date, each of us writes the other's Christmas list based off of the ideas we got.  It's great because by the time Christmas rolls around, we don't remember anything that we mentioned liking, so everything is still a surprise.  Nathan loved this blue t-shirt...guess what he ended up getting for Christmas several months later!

Speaking of Dates...

We've struggled to keep up with regular dates, but we have had a few creative ones!  One night, we had a "blackout date". :)  We turned off all things electronic - laptop, television, lights...even the kitchen appliances!  We pretended we were having a blackout!  We lit all the candles that we owned and played board games while we had some great conversation.

For another date, I bought a groupon for ice skating, and Nathan reluctantly went along with it.

Halloween Happenings

We love the month of October for all of the festive fall events that go on.  A plant nursery opened up just up the road from us and hosted a fall festival for children.  Even though it was a frigid, rainy day, we took Rebekah to enjoy decorating a pumpkin and planting her own pansy.  She loved walking around among the plants and pumpkins, and as long as no strangers looked at her, she was all smiles.

Rebekah and Nathan both dressed up for Halloween.  Nathan made a minion costume (from Despicable Me) to wear to work.  He's wearing my pajama top and overalls, and he made the eyepiece out of his underwear.  Classy. :)

Rebekah loves bumblebees, so me and my mom made Rebekah a bumblebee costume.

We took her to a pumpkin patch to pick out her very own pumpkin.  She wanted to pick up everything she saw, but fortunately they were a bit too heavy for her.

We got Rebekah involved with the pumpkin carving this year.  She didn't want to actually touch the pumpkin, but she did help Dad remove the seeds with a spoon.

This year's pumpkin decoration...Mickey and Minnie!  As always, Nathan did a great job with the design.

The Holidays

We spent Thanksgiving in Omaha, Nebraska with my family.  It was amazing - we spent most of our time in a one-bedroom apartment - my sister, our brother-in-law, my parents, grandmother, and us - all 8 of us in a one-bedroom apartment....and nobody got hurt!

my sister Elizabeth, her husband Ande, and my parents Dolly and Wayne

We brought my sister back to Texas with us for a week-long visit.  While she was here, we enlisted her photography skills...isn't this one cute!

and this one of Rebekah and her "best friend" Dora...

and this other cute one of Rebekah!  Let's face it - we know who the star of the family is! :)

Unfortunately my sister's stay was cut a bit short by the crazy ice storm that pelted Dallas at the beginning of December.  We got 6 inches of solid ice!  We were stuck at home for a good 4 days (thankfully, I had done some grocery shopping in advance).  During that time, Rebekah enjoyed sledding (or "boating" according to her) down the driveway.

My birthday celebrations were also disrupted by the ice.  We had planned on going to a concert a church the day before and then going out to eat after church on the day of.  Nathan was going to make me a big birthday dinner and cake that night.  Instead, the concert got canceled, church got canceled, and we couldn't even get down our driveway to go out to eat (I doubt any restaurants were open anyway). 

Nathan then gave me one of the most thoughtful birthday presents ever.  Since he knows how important birthdays are to me, he bundled up, put on his huge overnight hiking backpack, and actually hiked across the ice to the grocery store several blocks (and across a major road) away!  He returned with all the ingredients for dinner stuffed in that backpack, including a half gallon of ice cream.  He then made me a delicious dinner of chicken fried chicken, fried okra, salad, and sweet potato biscuits.  For dessert, we had a warm, fudge-filled cake and ice cream.

During the weeks leading to Christmas, Rebekah and I enjoyed our time together, shopping for Daddy's presents and decorating the house. She learned to watercolor for the first time...

...and she also took up cooking!  While I prepare the meal, she enjoys "cooking" with her bowl of cornmeal alongside me.  It's one of her new favorite hobbies.

On Nathan's birthday, I took him to see the new Hobbit movie in the theater and then we enjoyed a fun dinner at one of our favorite places, Cowboy Chicken.  When we got home, he opened presents after blowing out the candles on a Mississippi Mud Cake.

The next morning, we celebrated Christmas morning at our house.  It was important to me that we have Christmas at home, but we were going to be traveling over the holidays.  So, on December 21, we woke up to presents under the tree! 

Rebekah was pretty funny - she was more excited about the raisins that she found in her stocking than any other gift that she got.  She didn't even want to open presents...she just wanted to eat raisins!

After our Christmas morning at home, we headed to Nathan's parents' house in Oklahoma to celebrate Nathan's birthday with his family.  One of their traditions is to decorate the Christmas tree on his birthday.  Rebekah got to put on the candy canes...she took that job very seriously.

On Christmas Eve, we headed to Kansas to visit my family for Christmas. 

Nathan and I have been very intentional about trying to figure out how to make Christmas less about presents and more about Jesus.  I'm sure I'll do a more detailed post about that some other time (maybe next Christmas), but one way we changed things up this year is by having a birthday party for Jesus.  Instead of the focus being Santa and the gifts he left, we talked to Rebekah about Jesus and how we would be celebrating his birthday.  She loves, loves, loves birthdays and birthday parties, so she was very excited.  On Christmas morning, when she walked into the living room, she found the room filled with birthday balloons!

Haha...she loved the balloons so much that it actually took until 7:30pm to finish opening the presents...she just wasn't interested (which, I guess, is exactly what we wanted!).

After our Christmas dinner, instead of just grabbing dessert and going to sit on the sofa, we all sat down at the table to continue the birthday festivities.  We had made birthday cookies for Jesus, put candles in the pies, and wore party hats!

After singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blowing out the candles, we enjoyed our desserts.

Somebody really enjoyed hers!

We ended up celebrating Christmas two more times - once at Nathan's grandmother's house and again at Nathan's parents house.  By the end of our trip, Rebekah got pretty good at opening presents.

One Last Thing

This is just too cute not to share.  Rebekah got her first haircut over the holidays!  Here's the before picture...

Aaaaand, here's the "look what my mom just did to me!" picture...

In my defense, the phone rang right as I took the first cut, and she moved her head.  Fortunately, Granny was there to fix it.

And the beautiful after photo!

So that's pretty much it.  That's what we've been up to in the past six months.  In many ways, it's been a very difficult time period, with the loss of a baby, some financial difficulty, and lots of stuff not working out as planned.  But in many more ways, it's been so, so blessed.  We're thankful for all that God has done in, for, and through us, and we look forward to seeing what He's got in store in 2014.  No matter what, we'll keep walking with Him!

The End :)