Unit 2: Moon

Unit 2 is all about the letter Mm and the moon. We learned that the moon does not have any light of it's own, but reflect's sunlight. The moon is a light only because the sun shines on it. Caleb learned he is like the moon and Jesus is like the sun. If Caleb takes the time to know Jesus and spend time with him reading, praying, and obeying then Jesus' light shines on him and he becomes a light for other people to see. Jesus said, "You are the light of the world . . . let your light shine in front of others. Then they will see the good things you do. And they will praise your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 5:14-16

One of our activities was to go into a dark room and shine a flashlight onto a round object. Here our flashlight represents the sun and the earth is our moon. As you can see the moon is reflecting the sun's light. Caleb loved this activity and stayed at a long while.

Caleb learned the phases of the moon. He likes to look up in the night sky and tell me what phase the moon is in. Ah, what joy to know your child really does listen even if it seems like they are not.

Moon cake anyone? We made craters and even had a tiny volcanic eruption. Unfortunately, we did not have any regular white milk so we used chocolate soy milk instead. What fun! Only the cake tasted terrible.

   Full Moon

Half Moon

Crescent Moon

 New Moon

In Math Caleb learned the terms same and different. Here he had to match the same pattern and cross out the picture that was different. As teacher, I have to learn to let him answer it on his own after we've reviewed and then discuss if he's wrong and why. Difficult to do sometimes.

He finished the month of April writing in his numbers and continuing with the pattern. Boy did he get upset when I told him there were not 31 days in April. He insisted since we had a velcro dot on the big calendar and it was missing a number. I did my best to explain why. We'll see how the month of May goes.

Handwriting practice still looking great.

Caleb is getting plenty of practice in sound discrimination in preparation for reading. He learned the letter /m/ sound and crossed out any picture that did not begin with /m/. One evening when Larry, Caleb and I were out to dinner we were all playing a game of how many things we could name that began with either the /s/ or /m/ sounds. That was so cool and enjoyable.

This units read aloud was Moonbear's Shadow by Frank Asch. I didn't make it to the library for additional books so I started to read On The Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caleb likes the chapter books, but misses the pictures he always asks to see the pictures. Plus he asks a lot of questions like what is a Pa and Ma or why is Nellie so mean and on and on. Sometimes we hardly make it through a chapter. I am happy to answer his questions.

Our instructions: move slowly and gracefully around the room with a beanbag on your head. Well, no beanbags just little teddy bears and not so gracefully either. We danced to Mozart's: Eine Kline Nachtmusik ["A Little Night Music"] (I. Allegro). A super long song we thought would never end.

 Finally, we were reminded that God made the sun.

God made the moon and the stars. This now hangs off the dining room kitchen light. Caleb likes to turn it everyday when it changes from light to dark and dark to light.