Life with the Bjorks: God Made Families

This week and last week we learned that God made our family, God wants us to serve our family, and who is in our family. We used the story of David serving his family by caring for the family sheep and bringing his brother's food on the battle field from 1 Samuel 17:12-19. We did some fun activities from our Toddlerific curriculum and pinterest. Rachel liked turning the paper plate story wheel from our curriculum and was really gentle with it. I am surprised it is still in one piece. We colored a "Daddy, Daddy Who Do You See" mini book from playingwithwords365.com with our little friend who spent the day with us last Friday. It was fun to have her join in Tot school for the day. We also read some board books with family pictures I made Rachel for Christmas. They are a fun way to teach her about family members she does not see very often as well as a baby safe way to look through family memories. In addition to all our family books, we played find the family members with large face cut outs I colored that were hidden in the living room and pulled puzzle pieces out of beans with family pictures glued on the back. I have to talk more about the puzzle because it turned out so cute and was fun to make. I saw an idea on pinterest to glue family pictures inside each puzzle cut out. I couldn't wait to do this for Rachel, but I did not want her to have to just rely on matching the shape of a puzzle piece by covering up the picture or color. She is little and still learning about matching. I wanted the puzzles to be doable for her so I glued the picture on the back of the piece. On a side note, after meeting Grandma and Grandpa's dog over Easter Rachel calls the picture of Grandma and Grandpa "Howie" (the dogs name). I think it is cute, but I'm not sure Grandma agrees with me. Rachel is also working on how to label herself. She has learned she is not "Ila" or "baby" (well she is, but she is more than that). She can't say "Rachel" and doesn't seem to really understand pronouns yet, so we have been practicing pointing to herself when she sees a picture of herself and is asked "Who's that?" I also provide the pronoun label when she points to herself or if I point to her so she is hearing the correct label. There is the speech therapist in me sneaking out during play time. I still have a couple more activities for this week including a family tree to glue family pictures on and a my neighborhood mini book to color. We will see what we get to in the next couple days.