January 2012- Jesus loves you snow much

Doing Advent activities and finding ways to teach about baby Jesus during December was so much fun, I've decided to incorporate a biblical theme each month going forward. I think intentionally having an underlying message of God and His love for us will provide a wonderful foundation for the boys. I didn't want to lose momentum and focus afforded by preparing and celebrating Jesus' birth.  Going forward, these themes will most likely occur about the 2nd or 3rd week of each month since I place my monthly school supply list on the first business day of the month. Next year I'll be more proactive and be a month ahead with my ordering and then have the entire month.

I saw so many fun wonderful winter activities come across Pinterest that so I decided for January we would do "Jesus loves you snow much". Feel free to browse my January board for a peek of a ideas of what we will do. In addition to the ideas on my board, I also purchased a couple of great pre-made crafts from Oriental Trading Company. One is a snowflake foam craft saying God made us all unique and the other is a snowman saying Jesus loves you snow much. I have a few books on order as well as themed preschool pack printables.  There are some great scriptures and lessons to be found in God's creation during winter. I had scheduled in some free spaces in my original lessons plans and I think this will be a great way to reinforce some academic skills as well as focus on God in everything we learn and do. I'm hoping for actual snow the week we begin this. It's been topping off in the 70's here in North Texas for the last few weeks so we have time for everything to come in.

I have different themes ideas centered around God and His love for us planned through July and am currently adjusting my lesson plans, school supply list and budget accordingly.

UPDATE: Here are a couple of pictures of our resources. The last of my book orders were delivered today on the 17th.  I'll do a blog post of Munchkin doing them when we're done.

Doing some snow flake crafts. We talked about how God mad each snowflake different and special just like how he made people.

This face just melts my heart

This month, we also did snowman activities

Snowman pu

Sorting

Size

Dressing our snowman. Munchkin likes wearing the tabogan.

Building ice cream sundeas

Shaving cream snowmen

Marshmallow snowmen.... (Before he started eating it)

Dot art with blue tape. We lifted the tape to reveal the snowflake

Fun foam craft from Oriental Treading Company