My Father's World--The Letter E (Elephant)

I know I'm a few weeks behind on getting this posted, but life has just been really busy.  "E Week" was tough because Jer had a very high fever for most of the week and we ended up taking him to the doctor twice.  He just had a bad ear infection and antibiotics cleared it up, but it made for a very exhausting week.

So, while Ali completed her regular My Father's World schoolwork, Jer and Justy were allowed to slack off this week.  Technically they aren't supposed to be in school anyway, so I tried not to beat myself up about it and forced myself to just relax.  Besides, we'll be doing this curriculum again next year! 

Learning about elephants was fun.  We've seen them in the zoo, but I found myself learning a lot of new things about these giant animals as we read books about elephants together. 

My aunt's best friend passed these elephant toys on to the kids a few years ago and they are well-loved!  Boy and Ella as they've affectionately been named, get played with every single day.  Since we don't have a zoo with elephants in it nearby, playing with these stuffed elephants was the next best thing.

I had Jer do the "E" pages in his cusenaire rods book.

Ali drew a blue elephant (hard to see here due to bright flash) she wanted me to take a pic of

The kids did their binder pages by using elephant stencils to make elephant shapes on their pages. 

We talked about how elephants supposedly never forget.  Our key words were, "I will remember what God has done for me."  One way I encouraged the kids to remember God's blessings and faithfulness was by pulling out their old Gratitude Journals, which they used to color in daily back when Ali was in homeschool pre-school and they colored things that they are thankful for and looked back over their old entries.

One morning, when Jer wasn't feeling ill, we went and helped my friend who coordinates the Backpack Ministry for needy kids in the schools.  The kids helped me fill backpacks with canned goods/cereal/granola bars which we delivered to the schools so needy kids can have food on the weekends that they otherwise wouldn't have.