Love is Patient Butterfly Character Trait Homeschool Unit Study

 

I based this homeschool study on the first character trait of Love in 1 Corinthians 13: Patience. Look up the passage. In fact, I challenge you to read 1 Corinthians 13 with your family for Valentine's Day (check out my 1 Corinthians 13 Valentine's day wreath for a pretty decoration idea). If Valentine's day is about love, then it's especially important for my children to understand what real love is and 1 Corinthians 13 nicely lays it out for us.

 

It's interesting the more we study character traits, the more homeschooling has been refining my character as well as my children's! My patience is definitely something I could tinker for the better! What about yours? 

 

Originally, my sister inspired me to include Character First Education in our homeschooling. It's where you learn about an animal and a character trait that ties in with that animal. Here is a post about the resources we use for our character trait study. Plus until Sunday evening, you can still leave a comment on that blog post to win this character trait book Achieving True Success: How to Build Character As a Family! 

 

Character First Education provides some free resources on their website that have been helpful and you can include that in this homeschool study as well.

To kick off our Love is Patient Butterfly Character study, we read 1 Corinthians 13 (and made this wreath). We read this book about butterflies: Grow with Me: Butterfly that we picked up at the library. We talked about how caterpillars have to patiently grow in their chrysalis until they become butterflies and how waiting can make things better (i.e. food to cool off so it doesn't burn our tongue). Also how showing patience with our friends, family, and siblings shows them love. So if we truly love our neighbor, we must embrace patience!

Because my daughter is part kinesthetic learner, we role-played each stage of the butterfly. We rolled up like an egg, inched around on the ground like a caterpillar, stood very still like a chrysalis, then opened and fluttered our wings like a butterfly. (A great introduction to life cycles)

We then did a word search that I made with most of the vocabulary used in the book Grow with Me: Butterfly. You can print that word search here (for free!): Butterfly Word Search

To have some bonding time, I created a copy and trace coloring page for young kids and a "Mommy Meditation" page on 1 Corinthians 13 (also great for bigger kids who can read). The Mommy Meditation is a way you can lead by example! Get your color on and face-time with your children all while focusing on the word of God!

This Love is Patient Butterfly Trace, Copy and Color Butterfly Page (for young kids): write your name, copy and trace Love is Patient (after reading 1 Corinthians 13), and then color in your butterfly.

For the Mommy Meditation page: color as you like! I also suggest highlighting the word LOVE, then underlining in one color (I used gold) what love is, and underlining in another color (I used red to signify "stop") what love isn't.

Here is Big Blue Eyes and I after we colored our pages!

 

Love this girl! And learning together!

 

We also read page 70 "Monarch Miracle" in the book My Big Book of 5-minute Devotions and page 54 "Patience vs Restlessness" in Achieving True Success: How to Build Character As a Family (you can still win this book - details here).

 

Here is an outline of our unit study and resources below.

 

Language Arts

Love is Patient Butterfly Color and Copy

Butterfly Word Search

Mommy Meditation Page

 

Science

Butterfly Life Cycle Craft from Buggy and Buddy

Life Cycle of a Butterfly pasta activity from the Hildebrands

Comparing Types of Butterflies (or make a Venn diagram with 2 different types of butterflies)

 

Art

Painting B Butterflies: A lesson in Symmetry (I'll post this tomorrow)

Character First's Education Beautiful Butterfly Activity

 

Math

(I'll update this with a blog post tomorrow as well)

 

Resources

Character First Education for Patience page includes a poem, nature story, and song along with a few activity pages and a story of George Washington Carver. Check them out for some more free resources.

 

 

And a bible!
(Purchasing through the book links above can monetarily help/fund support Sweet Roots! I'm thankful to be an amazon affiliate!)

Please comment below if you decide to partake! I'd love to hear your thoughts and any other butterfly-related activities!

Thanks again, my dear readers!

Christmas Lights Decor Art Activity

After we attended our weekly swim lesson, we dressed in our warmest pajamas and hopped in our car for a Christmas Light display adventure. I had made popcorn (with just a little salt and dill) and we brought cups of So Delicious coconut milk eggnog and mint chocolate (mixed with mostly coconut milk because we didn't need the sugar that late).

We drove downtown, oohing and ahing over all the lights and colors. We then drove through a couple neighborhoods, trying to spy more. It became a little bit of a scavenger hunt at the end.

My five year old kept exclaiming, "I'm so excited. Wow! There's one! There's one!"

At the end of the night, her and I were laughing and exclaiming loudly, "WOW!" whenever we saw more lights then bursting into giggles. The bigger the display, the bigger the Wow!

All in all, it was a fun time. Relatively inexpensive (we made our own snacks and drinks) good, family-bonding time.

This morning, I woke up thinking "How can I carry this into our school/craft time?"

So, this is my answer. Black paper. Washi tape (she used this for the roads). Gel pens. Christmas stickers leftover from last year.

I left the activity pretty open. I told her she could create and decorate her own house or a neighborhood. She chose a neighborhood.

An easy Christmas craft!

 

Also through December 14th, I highlighted some books because Amazon is having a rare 25% off coupon. Details here.

Learning about the Night Sky and Chocolate Night bark

This last year, I've been doing Motherhood On A Dime's God's Little Explorers preschooler program with my four year old. We've really enjoyed it. It's flexible and easy to add or change if need be. Big Blue Eyes loves that we read a story from the bible each week (the weekly plan centers around that as well) and she particularly enjoys the songs. I love the addition of chore ideas (learning to fold laundry, sweep the floor, etc.).

This idea stems from U is for Up in the Sky. It's week 27 in the God's Little Explorers program.

 

Big Blue Eyes really enjoyed the pinpricking constellation idea and then drew with a white crayon to connect her constellations (picture below). We also checked out Fancy Nancy: Stellar Stargazer! from the library and did some nighttime sight-seeing.

 

 

We used to have a preschool/kitchen book but I was not pleased with the ingredients in most of the recipes so I was trying to come up healthy alternatives or just starting from scratch. When I was trying to think of a "whole food" alternative to making constellations or an edible night sky, I received Sarah Britton's cookbook My New Roots: Inspired Plant-Based Recipes for Every Season in the mail. I was flipping through it and I found a recipe for what she deems "Night Sky." I was sold!

Her recipe is a wonderful totally-from-scratch chocolate bar recipe so please buy the book so you can try it her way (plus you'll get to enjoy all her other amazing recipes). Here, I've substituted chocolate chips for an easier alternative for Moms and children. Then I laid out the "Star and Moons" toppings in little glass bowls for Big Blue Eyes to decorate the bark with. She had lots of fun and was excited to enjoy her Night Sky treat! This would also be a great gift idea for children to help make.

I know I mention "healthy alternatives" and here I am showing you how to make chocolate bark. Shame on me! This is, of course, a treat. But a fun one!

 

Night Sky Chocolate Bark

3 cups chocolate chips (Enjoy Life semi-sweet and Enjoy Life Dark Chocolate are both dairy-free)
Large tablespoon coconut oil
 

Star and Moon toppings:
Bee Pollen
Rose hips (dried)
Coconut flakes
Pink sea salt
Goji Berries
Chopped Nuts and Seeds
Dried Blueberries
Freeze-dried raspberries or strawberries

1. In a double bowler, melt chocolate chips and large tablespoon coconut oil.
2. Once melted, spread chocolate on a parchment paper-lined tray.
3. Sprinkle with star and moon toppings.
4. Let cool in refridgerator then cut and enjoy.

All the toppings can be found at your local natural grocery store, amazon, and Mountain Rose Herbs, my favorite place.

I'd really encourage you to buy her Sarah Britton's cookbook. I usually steal borrow my mom's cookbooks but this one I knew I needed my own copy.
 

And if you are looking for a homeschool program, make sure to check out Motherhood On A Dime's God's Little Explorers preschooler program. I plan to do that program with my next child when he is old enough. For now, I am planning Big Blue Eyes' kindergarten year. Excited and pumped for a new year of homeschooling!