Lesson 13: I am Thankful for Birds and Insects

Please see my page on Sunbeams for an overview of my teaching system.

I love the post on Sugardoodle, Collecting the Crickets, though I think I would find plastic bugs to use instead of paper.  Maybe use a timer to see if they can collect all the crickets in a short length of time... making it into a game!

(Because I've fallen behind on my blog, I am posting brief notes at this time, but will come back and fill in details later...)

As with the past few weeks, we will start the lesson off with the Creation storybook by the Barefoot Teacher found on Teachers Pay Teachers ($1.75), that I introduced in Lesson 8.  I printed out the pages, but didn't bind them in any way.  This way I could pull out the focus page(s) when the story was done and place them on the board.  We will repeat this each week for the Creation lessons until we've completed all of the pages.  Reading the same story each week will create a concrete connection between the lessons and help the children better grasp the process of the Creation.

For the introduction activity, I made a cutout of a bird, with the different parts separate - the body, head, tail, wings, beak, eyes, feet.  I basically followed the introduction in the book, but used the visuals.  The children very quickly guessed it was birds (and I put up the page from the Creation book).  But since we hadn't yet completed assembling our bird, I had the children figure out what we were still missing.  Once they identified a missing part, I attached it to the bird.

For the activity selection, I just used cards with the activities on them.  I didn't have much time to prep, or I would have found something better than cards to use... maybe bird cutouts, or a bird puzzle.
Activities: 

• Story:  Elijah and the Ravens (I used clip art found online to tell this story - I will add this later)
• Story:  Crickets and the Seagulls.  After telling the story, I used the activity found on Sugardoodle.  I copied and cutout enough seagulls for each child.  Instead of using the paper crickets, though, I went onto Amazon.  I couldn't find crickets, but I found a package of 72 cockroaches... they looked very similar!  The children loved it!  I printed out some images of wheat, as well as a lake.  I covered the wheat in coackroaches, and had the children pick up the "crickets" and take them over and dump them in the lake.
• Insect Guessing:  see the activity in manual
• Bees:  see manual.  I brought in honey for the children to taste.
• Song:  "In the Leafy Treetops"
• Craft:  Page showing "I am thankful for birds" and an outline of a bird.  Using glue, children glued colorful feathers to their birds. 

Story:  Very Hungry Caterpillar

Black and white poster from Sunday Savers