L is for Leaf

For our “L” letter of the week, we really wanted to do some leaf picking in our neighborhood. I wanted Timmy to pick and choose all sizes of leaves. But there were days when it was scorching hot outside (this was late May and it still felt like the peak of Manila summer!). Leaf picking at night was not a good idea either because Timmy wouldn’t be able to appreciate the colors and shapes of the leaves. I’m not allowed to get exposed to the sun because of my Lupus so we had to find a compromise.

Thankfully, there were tiny plants sprouting in our garage! They may be small but a leaf is a leaf no matter how whiff! Yes, that’s my pathetic attempt to recreate Dr. Seuss’ “a person’s a person no matter how small.” Haha! Anyway, here’s how our week went. 🙂

Books and the Bible

L is for Love so we read our love-related books such as Guess How Much I Love You, I Love You Forever (with matching singing), How Do I Love You, and I Love You Because You’re You. 🙂 One of our favorite storybooks is The Lion Who Wanted to Love. It’s about Leo the Lion who instead of being wild and fierce prefers to make friends and help other animals. 🙂 We also read a couple of Mo Willems—Leonardo the Terrible Monster (because he’s too cute to scare anyone) and Listen to my Trumpet. Llama Llama Red Pajama is another favorite! It teaches your little one not to be so clingy but in a sweet way. 🙂 We’ve been reading this since he was two (he’s four now)! 🙂

The Little Engine that Could is a classic that everyone must have in their shelves. We would chant, “I think, I can! I think, I can!” repeatedly with a chugga-chugga-choo-choo vibe to it. 🙂 It’s a story about perseverance and believing that you can do things even if you think you’re “small.” 🙂 Lenny’s Lost Spots is a cute one! It’s about a ladybug who lost his spots and found it again. The rhyming verses are fun to read, too! I mentioned before that we love Mr. and Mrs. Green books and the Lucky Days is another compilation of three awesome adventures of the crocodile couple. 🙂

The Little House is another classic. It’s not as colorful as other storybooks so it always takes extra animation for me whenever we read it. 🙂 It’s about a little house that has seen all sorts of changes in its environment. From being at the countryside to seeing fields turned into roads, buildings being constructed, and getting lost in the crowded city. It gets saved by the family who previously owns it. It’s a touching tale about modernization told from a little house’s point of view. 🙂

Aside from watching the video, we learned about the different ways we can show our love for God and each other. 🙂 We also discussed how great Jesus’ love is for us by giving His life to save us from our sins. My husband and I have been explaining to Timmy in the simplest terms the sacrifice that Jesus did. It’s heartwarming to hear your child say, “Jesus saved me because I can’t save myself. Jesus died for my sins!” 🙂

Writing

L is a pretty easy letter to write so to make our writing and letter familiarization more exciting I asked him to stamp L on his big L and small l templates. 🙂 He loves stamping, by the way, so it’s a win-win activity! 🙂 He also wrote L words like love, lion, and Lot 5B, Blk 6 (the address of his grandma…HAHA!). Too cute! 🙂 He patiently traced letter L on his colorful flash cards as well. Timmy wanted to show his bunny how to do it that’s why he’s there. 🙂

Math

For math, we’ve done less-and-more activities before and I decided to do a review on it. 🙂 It has been a few months since we did our last practice so I first did a visual exercise for him to be reminded of the concept then gave him another one which had numbers only. 🙂 Whenever I teach this to him I interchange synonymous words like lesser/less than, fewer, and smaller so that he knows that they basically mean the same (i.e. in terms of numerical value). I do the same with more, greater, and bigger.

It’s L week so we practiced the “less than” concept. It wasn’t in the instructions but it was the word I was using to explain what he needed to do. 🙂 Okay, let me just say that this technique works for us. If interchanging words confuses your child, don’t do it. 🙂

Arts and Crafts

We did our leaf art! 🙂 One morning, we were on our way out when I saw small plants in our garage! Yay! I asked Timmy to pick some and place it inside the plastic I brought. He picked two big leaves and teeny tiny ones. 🙂 The next day, I asked him to form an L using the leaves! We also did letter stamping ala Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. 🙂 I drew a coconut tree and asked him to stamp the falling letters. So fun!