"P" week

"P" week was a week of "P" foods at our house.  We made pancakes TWICE.  And, I let Gemma help both times.  Which is big.  I'm, um, not a huge fan of help in the kitchen.  At least not help of the four-year-old variety.  But it's good for her and good for me so here's to pancakes and "P" week.  We also had homemade pizza for dinner one night, and daddy made a punkie (pumpkin) pie for a special treat!!  Like I said, lots of yummy "P" food!!

To the right is Gemma with our Museum ABC book.  We use this book at Circle Time on Friday mornings for our weekly "art study".  I keep this pretty simple.  Each letter has a theme (P was for peacock, for instance) and then four famous works of art centered around that theme.  We compare and contrast each of the pictures, talk about colors, shapes, lines and textures, similarities and differences, and Gemma chooses which picture is her favorite and explains why.  I bought this book at the recommendation of a homeschool mom friend, and am so glad I did.  It really is a great addition to our Letter of the Week library.

We did a religion craft/activity for "P" week that I'm really excited about.  We made a prayer cube.  I got the idea from our Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum book.  Instead of using a styrofoam cube and construction paper though (as the CI book suggested), I got a small wooden cube from Hobby Lobby for $.99.  Gemma helped me think of the title of prayers to write on each side of the cube (and I came up with some new ones for her to learn).  We ended up with Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Heart of Jesus, St. Michael prayer and Memorare.  Then Gemma colored each side of the cube with non-washable markers, and there you have it.  Now, each morning when we pray for our sponsor child from CFCA we roll the cube to see which prayer to pray.  I am also looking forward to using this during Lent when we pray our family intention each night after dinner.  This should be a great way to introduce some new prayers, as Gemma doesn't yet know the St. Michael prayer or Memorare.  I am contemplating making another one sometime with prayers like the Apostle's Creed and Acts of Faith, Hope and Love.

Some of our favorite "P" books were:

If You Give a Pig a Party

Puppies are Like That

A Pocket for Corduroy

If You Were a Penguin

Curious George and the Pizza

Curious George at the Parade

The Poky Little Puppy

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade  This book was so cool.  I think I could do an entire blog post just over it.  Suffice it to say if you are studying parades, or looking for a good book for Thanksgiving week, this is a gem.  It was informative enough that I'd recommend it for any preschool or grade school-age child.  Heck, I learned a lot.  The illustrations were fun and funky and it was just nice having something historical and true rather than just your run-of-the-mill picture book.