Harvest Moon and Scary FUN

This week we were all up in our feelings.

We did games and learning that revolved around feeling 

Happy, Sad, Surprised, Mad, and Scared. 

Scared fell on Friday the 13th.

It also fell on the Harvest Moon. 

Boom.

Totally did not plan that!

Our Kindergarten Homeschool year started this week.

We had our first Classical Conversations Community Day (awesome!), continued our love of 

Mother Goose Time, and threw in our Exploring Nature with Children (love it!).

Mother Goose Time had all the action planned to talk about emotions, 

while our Exploring Nature with Children had all the deets on the Harvest Moon.

Here's what we did and you can totally do it at home!

We started our day with a conversation: "When do you feel scared?"

Lately my girl has been acting afraid of the dark... and dragons.

We talked about fear and how 

the Lord has not given us a Spirit of fear but one of  power, love, and self-control. (2Tim 1:7)

Fear makes us want to hide, but if we rest in the Lord, we have nothing to fear at all.

Since she is afraid of the dark, we talked about how darkness can not penetrate the Light...

John 1:5 "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

God created light out of the darkness (Genesis 1:2-3...perfect with our CC week 1), and a little bit of light always keeps the darkness at bay. As a believer, Jesus' light is within all those who believe- His Holy Spirit- therefore, she had nothing to fear.  He is and always will be with her.

 It was the perfect conversation to have before playing with light and dark as we made shadow puppets and read the book My Shadow.

I asked my girl, "What must we have in order to see a shadow?" I turned the lights on and off in our room resulting in seeing shadows and then not being able to.  She instantly knew we needed light to make shadows.  We taped the straws to the die cut pieces provided from MGT; I whipped out our big ole flashlight, and she immediately started playing.  I asked her to tell me a story using her puppets, and this is what she created! Love it.

You can't talk about light and dark without mentioning day and night and having conversations about the Moon!  Especially when it's the Harvest Moon!

We just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods, which had a chapter about the Harvest Moon where Pa could work late into the night tending to the fields because the light of the Harvest Moon shined so bright.  We also read Hello, Harvest Moon again today by Ralph Fletcher.

It has such beautiful language and tons of personification, which led to lots of questions from my girl. For example, "Can the moon really climb stairs?"

We created a piece of artwork using our MGT die cuts from our puppet show, some watercolor paper cut into a circle and painted with orange and yellow watercolors, a blue and a black piece of construction paper, glue, scissors  and some jewels which are not pictured.

I followed some directions from here.  I adore her finished work...

I love the mouse's tail!

Our Harvest Moon/ Scared Study didn't end there!

I let her watch Little Bear's Harvest Moon today and told her we would go on a Nature Walk and check out the Harvest Moon.

Later, my girl asked, "How big is the Harvest Moon? Can we dance under it?"  

I laughed and said sure.  

I never knew that after watching the Little Bear video that my girl thought she would actually be so close that she could touch the moon.

We danced under the moon, and thanked God for providing the moon.  Isn't it amazing that He provided the Harvest Moon to be bright enough to help farmers take care of getting all their crops in before the heavy rains of fall?!  He is so good and all His ways are perfect!

When we left our nature walk, I asked my girl what she thought.

She sighed. "I thought it was going to be big enough for me to touch it.  I'm sad it wasn't bigger."

I chuckled and told her that she could become an astronaut and go to the moon, but that was the only way she was going to touch it.  She said she still had fun, and I hope this becomes a yearly tradition. 

From puppet shows, to dancing in the moonlight (looking like a fool I might add),

these are the moments I will store and treasure in my heart.  

And just because I don't want to leave my handsome boy out, here are some of his precious pics from this week:

Happy Harvest Moon yall!