Week 4: Noah's Ark

Week 4 turned out to be very interesting for a few reasons:

First, it rained ALL week.

Second, Daddy was home ALL week due to the rain. (This was fantastic!)

Third, we were not able to get together with our co-op group.
Therefore, I ended up making it a "light" week of preschool and chose Noah's Ark.

We have the Noah's Ark story in a few different children's Bibles and since hurricane Sandy was blowing through the area it was the perfect theme for our week.  

A few months ago I picked up a Noah's Ark magnet set from a local five and dime store.  These type of sets work wonderfully on cookie sheets. The letter and number sets for the fridge are also fun. 

Next we worked on the colors of the rainbow.  I played an "I Spy" type of game with them.  The object of the game was name the color I held up and then find something in the kitchen or outside that was the same color.  Simple game, they thought it was the greatest!

I printed out a few different Noah's Ark boats, which they colored.

This was my favorite activity of the week.  Fruit loop rainbows! Ifound this craft idea on Teaching Tiny Tots.  Just simple Fruit Loops (I had to send my husband to the store on a special mission since Fruit Loops is not a cereal we eat every day), a paper plate, and regular school glue worked great.  My daughter was very interested in this craft and enjoyed actually putting the different colors on the template I drew. My oldest son ate most of his.  The 15 month old thought they were a great snack as well! 

Since Halloween was also in the middle of Noah's Ark week here are their costumes.  It was raining so I let the kids dress up and stay up a little later to help hand out candy. 

Once again Grandma was here for the cooking lesson. On the menu: Peanut Butter Haystacks. Grandma briefly explained to the kids that Noah needed to have food on the ark and he could have had a lot of hay aboard.  If you like peanut butter, you will love haystacks. Easy, no-bake cookie recipe.  My intent was to also go into detail about other foods the animals would have eaten on the ark but we never got to it.  There will be plenty of other opportunities to discuss that topic though.

We have a really great app on our iPad called Noah's Ark. It is an interactive version of the Bible story written by TabTale.  It was $1.99 but a lot of their other interactive stories are free to download and work on iPad or iPhone.  The kids love playing with the iPad and often ask if they can play "Noah's Ark". 

Last, but not least, the kids played with a really interesting toy called Tier Toys Stackers Noah's Ark.  The object of the toy is to build Noah's Ark.  There are 12 layers and within each layer different animals get put into place like a puzzle. The toy comes with 22 different animals, two of each, 44 pieces total.  Noah and his wife are also included and fit on top when the ark is assembled.  I loved this toy because it took us a good half hour to forty-five minutes to complete. It is currently sitting on the shelf in our living room and because it locks closed I do not have to worry about them bringing it out whenever they please.  I would definitely recommend this toy and I will be looking into others made by this company.  I saw quite a few other Tier Toy Stackers on Amazon.com.

With week 4 under our belt I was more than happy to move onto to week 5.  We are currently working on Runaway Bunny. Already I feel this has been a much more productive week than the last.