Pre-school Light: Creation Day 1

I decided to a light version of pre-school with Amaia this year.  She knows almost all of her letter/colors/shapes already and soaks up so much from everyday life, but learning is always a good thing and I happen to love structure, so a plan was hatched!

I perused some curriculums and other ideas that I found online and ultimately mish-mashed some of the ideas I found along with ideas of my own.  SO, our first unit is going to be the days of creation.  Each day of creation is the theme of our week.  This week was day 1: light and darkness.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said 'Let there be light' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God seperated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." Genesis 1:1-5

Throughout the week we read the beginning of the creation story out of her Jesus Storybook Bible (which I love so much!!),  read the same verses out of my bible and learned a little song.

We made a light box as a way to demonstrate what the Earth was like before God created light. We painted the inside of a shoe box black.  As a side note I have to say I was so impressed with her painting skills.  I had her do this half-dressed and outside because I was pretty certain she would get paint everywhere, but she did an awesome job listening to my instructions and painting only in the box.  So proud of her! I then cut two holes in the box: one for her to look into and one for me to shine a light into.  I had her look into the hole and describe what she saw: "black" "darkness".  Then I turned the light on and explained that God created light.

I made a little "sun" out of a paper plate and clothespins to practice matching lower and uppercase letters.  You can't see if very well here, but the lowercase letters are written on the plate and the capital letters are written on the clothespins.  The coordination of opening up the clothespins and putting them on the plate was actually a bit of a challenge for her, so we will be continuing to work on this one.

She also had a lot of fun playing with the flashlight and turning a lot of lights on and off throughout the week.  Overall it was a really fun week and I think we both totally enjoyed our first week of "school"...if I can even call it that :)

AND Haddon did some learning of his own this week!  I gave him some cheerios to see how he would do with them and I was so impressed with how quick and determined he was to pick them up.  I had to assist in actually getting them in his mouth, but he definitely has that pincher grasp down.  Also, I love his sweet baby cheeks!