He was so excited to start the “Ss-Sun” unit. He practically bounced into the classroom and was so eager to learn, he could not sit still! I think it was the perfect image to sear into my heart as a reminder that this year is all about cultivating a deeper love of learning. We had a quick meeting about the week. I let him know what we would be learning about and what activities were coming up and then told him to please let me know if he wanted to know more or explore any other topics related to the sun. “This is an adventure and we get to be explorers together!” We started off by spending lots of time OUTSIDE, soaking up some Vitamin D and enjoying the warmth. He built a beautiful teepee with his brothers and a few friends.

And they spent nearly an hour whipping up a “salad” out of all the treasures they had foraged.

His first exploration question was a funny one. “Why do Cowboys ride off into the sunset in stories?” This required a bit of research, so after completing his handwriting sheet, he went outside with his brother and rode on his horse swing while his big brother read a “Billy and Blaze” story aloud. These are the two siblings that quarrel the most often, so even if no “scientific” questions were explored, they shared a sweet moment together and I have photographic evidence. Total win.

Target sells cheap little lacing toys in their dollar section. We bought one, and I will confess, I bought the cards for the box they came in. Perfect tracing tool set! A compartment to hold a letter card and a bigger section to fill with a handful of play sand.  He had a lot of fun tracing out the letter “S” and showing it off to his big brothers. I also let him try and trace the letters he knew while working on our “A-a-Apple” song.

We brought out the light tablet and built letters and made suns out of translucent geo shapes. His little brother joined in on the fun.

I surprised him with a “sunset” bath. Filling the tub with water, I dropped in two color tablets to make orange water. Then I gave him a muffin tin filled with shaving cream I had colored beforehand. He had various sunset colors in the palette and he loved getting to paint a sunset on the wall.

Whenever his brothers were working on their independent art projects or handicrafts, our favorite kindergartner would make a run for the crayon stash and draw this same picture over and over and over again. A sun with the word “JESUS” scrawled in the middle. He was proud of each and every one. Aside from his own name, this is the first word he has learned to write and spell correctly on his own.

We purchased some kite paper and made these lovely Waldorf stars to catch the morning light. Folding this lovely paper is a bit addicting!

When Day 4 rolled around he was ready with a few new questions, specifically the role the sun plays in the process of photosynthesis. We watched the photosynthesis episode of “Magic School Bus” which led to questions about plant cells. We pulled out our Brock Magiscope and checked out a cross section of a pine needle. Our property is packed with pine trees and we loved getting a closer look at one tiny cell and then walking outside and marveling at our lovely giants. His closing observation, “God’s creation is amazing and he cares about every single little thing. Even me!”  No handouts, no complicated worksheets, just great conversation and a taste of good things to come.

On our walk we also looked at a compass and I explained how it worked. I taught him to orient himself with N,S,E and W on our property so that he can begin to relate his stories with directions when relating his nature adventures. We are striving to closely model Charlotte Mason methods in a few specific areas and nature study/play is one of them!

We loved the book basket recommendations given by MFW on our first time through the curriculum. We are sticking with it this time too! And its safe to say, that he loved each and every one. We have also added long term reads to his Morning Meeting time, with a majority of the selections based off of ambleside online‘s list. We are starting to read through “Now We are Six” by AA Milne along with the entire collection of Beatrix Potter’s works. I am hoping to get through them all this year during our Morning Meeting!

We decided to do a different variation on the sun dial. We picked our favorite young tree in the yard and tied pieces of yarn to its trunk and stretched out the yarn in the direction of its shadow every two hours. It made such a pretty, colorful wheel on the grass.

We started our grapes on the dashboard of our car and after the toddler ate them (twice) while I was loading the car for various events, I gave up on them. We made fun prints with black construction paper and tiny dinosaur toys. We ate a yummy sun snack—a clementine with pretzel rods rays and we made three batches of Sun Tea.

Our Sun badge is finished and tacked to the wall of the schoolroom. I know a few people have made beautiful quilts with patches made throughout their K year, but I think that lovely quilt would be the death of me. We have opted for a white Tshirt from Michaels and a set of Tshirt markers. He gets to draw something for each week and on the 6th day of study, he wears the shirt. Good times. Simple times.

And we’re off!

Our main piece of “work” this unit was the Creation book and Creation numbers found in the student sheets. We combined both using a blank book from the Target dollar section. Numbers went on one page and the artist’s rendering went on the other. It got the job done and he is pretty proud to have his own Creation storybook to show off to cornered visitors and unwilling brothers.

Our favorite creation books are:
The 7 Days of Creation by Mindy MacDonald ( A board book that is perfect if your K student has younger siblings always wanting to join in!)
The Creation Story for Children by Helen and David Haidle (pictured above. We love this book. It walks you through creation using scripture and then includes great facts about several unique animals before ushering in a special section directed at your child with tons of scripture verses about their relationship with God and creation)
The Story of Creation: God Made it for You! by Charles Lehman (a storybook version of creation)

This year, I decided to do “Creation Stations” for each day of creation.

Day 1: Dark and Light. We took a flashlight and a candle into the darkest room in our house. We talked about the ordering of light and dark and read our favorite bible verses about Jesus as the Light of the world. We also took time to play shadow puppets because its an awesome thing to do in a dark room with a flashlight. No educational correlation or deep meaning, just FUN.

Day 2: Water and Air. We dragged out the kiddie pools for some water play and brought along a few straws to blow things across the water. We filled various containers with water and sealed them and talked about the air trapped in the parts that looked empty. We opened up the hose and let the water flow downhill and placed different objects in its path to divert the flow of the stream. This led to more conversations about gravity and water flow and water quality. We looked through the book “A Drop of Water” by Walter Wick, mostly because my older children just used this book for a water study and my younger kiddos LOVED the pictures, but also because its an awesome book. We talked about the complexities of water and the different states it can be found in. Note: when I say *we talked* I mean that we just glazed over the topic. At this point I am just exposing them to different ideas and answering questions if they have any. No long lectures! Sometimes my older kiddos jump in the conversation and it grows a bit more complex, but for now, simple and straightforward is best.

Also, we didn’t have any on hand this time around but blowing bubbles, flying a kite or playing with pinwheels would be fun to do as well!

Day 3: Dry Land and Plants. This was a fun day! Climb a tree, plant some flowers, roll down a hill, etc. We harvested some kale and read one of our favorite garden books, “Planting a Rainbow” by Louis Elhert.

We went on a nature walk in our backyard. I put some masking tape on the boys wrists (sticky side out) and they stuck small leaves and flowers and feathers and sticks to the tape. Then when we went inside everyone got to share what they had found.  We made a few mandalas out of flowers and leaves that we had found.  They were such fun to make and a pleasure to look at.

Day 4: Sun, Moon and Stars.  We had to watch our favorite episode of Magic School Bus about the solar system. I’m a big fan of the Frizz. We looked through some of the older boy’s favorite books about constellations. Our go to is “A Child’s Introduction to the Night Sky” by Michael Driscoll.

We also played with constellation lacing cards and these free Montessori cards . I cut out a few squares of black construction paper and handed over a pack of silver star stickers and the boy went to town making constellations.

We had all these things on hand after the older boys studied Astronomy in their MFW Adventures year. I’m not sure I’d go through all the trouble just for MFWK, but since we had it, out it came! A pack of glow in the dark star stickers for a kid’s bedroom would be just as fun and much less work.

Day 5: Creatures in the Sea and Air. Obviously, that day called for an extended bath time with safari toobs of animal creatures. We dropped in a few blue color bath tablets for ocean effect and kiddo strapped on his goggles and went in for a little sea exploration. I read “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister while my  other son proceeded to dump 1/4 of the tub’s water content onto the bathroom floor. Incidentally, I managed to do a thorough mop of the children’s bathroom that day.

We spent a bit of time looking at our nature collection of sea life. Again, this is something I had on hand thanks to older children.

Then it was time for kiddo to don his halloween costume and learn about creatures of the air.

We read through all of our birds books and ran around the house screeching and pretending to upchuck owl pellets. You know, the usual stuff.

Day 6: Land Creatures & Man. This was a great day to march out all the plastic animals from our collection and let him have at it! I had planned to make animal print cookies but we ran out of time. Want the recipe? Its pretty complicated, but I’ll share it with you. Ready? A package of tear and bake sugar cookies (the kind with gluten and preservatives works best) and plastic toy animals. Tear the cookies apart, place them on a baking sheet and start baking. When they are *just about done, pull them out and press the animals feet into the dough to make the prints before the dough cools. Crazy complicated, I know. Hand junior a magnifying glass for added pizzazz and ask him to guess which animals left which footprints.  You can also skip the cookie doh and do this with play doh. We also had fun playing animal charades and guessing which animal each person was pretending to be.

Later in the day, I cleared all the siblings from the kitchen and called my favorite kindergartner in. I lit a nice smelling candle, played his favorite piece of classical music and set out a tasty snack just for him. We looked at his favorite piece of art (Starry Night) while we cuddled on our favorite soft blanket. We talked about the five senses and the special, unique way God made us with so many different ways to engage his creation and appreciate beauty.  We discussed how we are made in God’s image and the importance of our bodies as temples. I told him all the unique things I see in him that I appreciate and how God is already using him in this world.  It was a sweet time.

Day 7: Rest. Yeah, I made everyone take a nap. We are still under the weather and I sure needed one!

And that wraps up our Creation Unit! My goal for the week was to get this kiddo excited to learn about God’s World. My first year, I handed my two kiddos a Kindergarten readiness test to see where they stood. Ever wish you could travel back in time and kick yourself in the pants? Sigh. This year, I set out to instill a love of learning in my child. We had a great week. We talked about so many different topics, we made memories, we sang songs and played games and at the end of the week he proclaimed “Kinder’s Garden is my most favorite garden in the whole wold.”

Looking forward to starting Ss-Sun tomorrow!