K is for Kingcup Fairy, Blessed Kateri, and Kindness!

We took a full two weeks on letter K, because we had some meetings and feast days throughout the past two weeks, so we took our time!

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual.

Our K poems for the week from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet

~Circle Time~

Caroline and Cecilia brought some stuffed kittens for Show and Tell. There were keys in the mystery sound pouch this week.

Songs and Rhymes

Old King Cole

Sing a Song of Sixpence (on the "King" theme again)

Seasonal (for Advent):

See the Candles Burning Bright

Advent is a Time...

Waiting for Jesus

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

O Come O Come Emmanuel

Mary echo pantomime (of the Annunciation/Visitation)

St. Nicholas pantomime and song

~Foods for K Week~

kiwi for snack

fruit kabobs (which also included kiwi!)

Chicken a la king - first time making this, and I didn't care for it, even though it had a whole stick of butter in it!

Kung Pao Chicken

We also had kale chips and Kix cereal. I also would have liked to have had kielbasa, but I like to avoid nitrites and couldn't find any without it. Maybe at Trader Joe's? I'll have to look when we are there over Christmas... Also, I should have made Korean BBQ - so, so yummy - how could I have forgotten it????

~Tea Time~

We had Three Little Kitten cookies for teatime, which we'd made a few days earlier as our baking project of the week (see further below). We'd also made a couple of batches of our Christmas Bark this morning, so the girls each sampled a piece. Cecilia wouldn't eat hers... how can you not like butter, brown sugar, chocolate, and saltines??

Rambo enjoys tea time (I swear, she does this headband thing herself!)

Here's a close-up of the teatime snacks... they also had some blueberry tea (what, no kiwi tea?!?)

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Kk using playdough

writing K's in cornmeal

Cut and Paste K Collage... Caroline also noted that "kids" is a K word, although she didn't write it down by their images on the K collage

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Kk

~Flower Fairy for Letter K: Kingcup~

Caroline coloring her flower fairy page from the Flower Fairies coloring book

Caroline's completed Kingcup Fairy

~Saint for Letter K: Blessed Kateri~

painted Blessed Kateri

Copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and illustrating Blessed Kateri

Caroline's completed work

~In the Book Baskets~

Favorites for Letter K:

Katy and the Big Snow

Mrs. Katz and Tush

Katie Meets the Impressionists

Katie's Sunday Afternoon

Katie and the Sunflowers

Liturgical Year and Religious K Books:

Kateri Tekakwitha

The Legend of St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend

Saint Nicholas

The Miracle of St. Nicholas

various other Advent/Christmas books

~Picture Study: K is for Kiss~

Caroline drew the painting Virgin and Child by Dieric Bouts, which shows Mary and the infant Jesus sharing an intimate moment.

Caroline's work next to the original

~ABC Virtue of the Week: Kindness~

These are virtue coloring sheets found here. Using the great idea of another Catholic homeschooling mom, I am reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them. This weeks's story was about a girl who made a gift for her little sister.

Cecilia wanted a kindness picture as well... here it is, alongside an Our Lady of Guadalupe picture that she helped to color. She got to use markers, and oh, how she loves them! She will sit for a long time and thinks she must cover every bit of white space - well, that is what real artists do, isn't it? ;) I know somebody who's getting washable markers for her third birthday! Caroline was so concerned that Cecilia would run out her blue marker while doing the kindness picture!

Caroline's copywork from the K poem in God's Alphabet

The girls also had a coloring page of the word "kneeling." Caroline saw that it had a silent k. We also sorted words with the k sound into piles of words beginning with k and words beginning with a hard c.

~Activities for K Week~

Another silent k... knitting!!!

Finger knitting, that is

Caroline was so patient with this... she made a couple of mistakes, but overall, she was able to do it all on her own with little help from me after I got her started! She was excited to be making a doll scarf to give to Cecilia for Christmas, and she said she was going to keep going even though it was hard, because she was making a sacrifice for Cecilia (the Holy Heroes Advent Adventure is really paying off! ;).

I should have also taken a photo of her with the finished product, but it is already wrapped up now... I will try to get one after Cecilia opens it! I found the directions for how to finger knit on this Youtube video. It was really easy, and the directions are very clear.

~Cooking Project: K is for Three Little Kittens Cookies~

We recited the Three Little Kittens and then made cookies - I got the idea for this here. Caroline opened the can of pumpkin so we could make the recipe for pumpkin rollout cookies, one of my favorite rollout recipes.

Mixing the dough...

...rolling it out...

...using the letter K cutter to cut out cookies (we also used a cat shape - from Halloween, but oh well - and I freehanded a mitten shape)...

...lifting the cookies to a baking sheet...

...adding some "pie filling," aka jelly...

The kittens got their mittens pretty messy eating that pie! ;) They even got some on their paws and on a few Ks!

Yum!

~Chores/Practical Life: K is for Kitchen~

unloading the dishwasher

Caroline also did her usual daily kitchen chores of sorting clean silverware into the drawer and setting the table, and the girls helped with some cooking, particularly starting to bake Christmas treats to give as gifts!

~Outdoors: K is for Kicking~

Now for a break for the rest of Advent and the Christmas season. We'll be on to L week after Epiphany!