#20 - Jewel

[Marie]

Lesson #20 Jewel

[Lisa]

Since my son loves crowns, jewels, etc...I had to be a little creative to present something new using this theme. We painted clay pots and hot glued jewels to them, turned them upside down and used the clay saucer on top as a bird bath. We then read the book "Little Jewel Bird" by Rod and Staff publishing...story of a humingbird and sick little boy
We watched to see if our Jewel Bird Bath attracted birds and used this idea to do the nature notebook drawings.
We made the letter J in the shape using the plastic Jewels from craft store.
Also, for younger kids, write the numbers on cards and have them use the plastic jewels to lay on top of the cards, store in plastic ziploc.

This also goes along with the NEST theme.
Lisa

[Winkie]

Books we enjoyed with this unit:

Moon Lake by Ivan Gantschev (reads like a Grimm's fairy tale but not gory; really neat silver foil on the pages)
The Komodo Dragon's Jewels by Diane Redfield Massie (silly story that my boys loved)
The Girl Who Wore Too Much by Margaret Read MacDonald (a folktale from Thailand)

[Texas Gal]

Helzberg Diamonds has small cards with pictures and information on many different types of jewels. You can just go to an HD store and pick up the free cards. This also might be a fun field trip, so your children can actually see some different types of jewels that you might not have in your jewelry box at home.

[nhneubauer]

I used this recipe for salt dough ornaments at Christmas and love the texture and ease of cooking this dough.
So I used it for making "jewel" beads for this unit.

4 cups flour (plain)
1 cup salt
1 1/2 c. hot water

Mix until dough is formed. Roll and cut out (or make beads). Microwave for 2-4 min. (WARNING: These will smoke, burn and turn black. Watch carefully and turn if the item is thick. A coat of paint will cover most black spots.)

(I baked the jewels in the oven on the lowest temp. until dry It did take a while.)

Jewel Cookies (don't know where I got this)

1/2 c. soft butter
1/4 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. flour,sifted
1 egg white, slightly beaten
1 1/4 c. pecans, finely chopped

Cream butter, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla until light and fluffy. Stir in flour until just combined. Refrigerate 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using hands, roll dough into 1" balls. Dip in egg white and roll in pecans. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake 5 min.

Remove from oven and with the end of a wooden spoon, make a depression in the center of each cookie. Return to the oven and bake another 8-10 min. until lightly brown.

Cool. Fill indention with jelly.

Note: I did not put the egg and pecans on cookies. DH allergic. It probably would not hurt to add the whole egg if you don't wish to use the nuts either.

Nicole

[Mom2MnS]

During our jewel study, we really enjoyed these books:

Benjamin's Treasure by Garth Williams
The Queen's Jewels by Leslie Field
The Girl who Wore too Much by Margaret Read MacDonald
Little Jewel Bird by Lucy Ann Conley

Notes: we took a look at several websites about Queen Elizabeth, and Meredith just fell in love with her. That made the book about the jewels she wears extra special.

[Mom2MnS]

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 9:18 pm

Field trip idea: Bead shop

[Erna]

We made our own bracelets with jewel-like beads.

Seeing how our jewel week coincided with Easter we read a lot of Easter theme books about Christ. We also bought some jewels and glued them on a popsicle stick cross. After it dried, we mounted the cross into lumps of clay.

[twinglemom]

Here is a link for printable jewels and crowns.

http://www.printpicnic.com/printable-crowns.html

Another crown.

http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pa ... ring-page/

[cbollin]

Nice DVD at my library to use with both Rock and Jewel units.

Earth Science for Children, All About Rocks and Minerals.
Schlessinger Science Library.
and I didn't hear mention of "millions" of years either. I heard "long time ago".

-crystal

[FreshKid]

We used:
Eyewitness Book: Rocks and Minerals
The Robbery at the Diamond Dog Diner by Eileen Christelow
Diamonds and Toads: A Classic Fairy Tale Retold by Ellen Schecter (teaches that "niceness" has its rewards)


Beverly

[cbollin]

My youngest is in the Jewel unit while the older kids are doing ECC Russia weeks.
Over on the ECC Ideas forum in Russia weeks, there is a link to a neat little paper version of Jeweled Eggs. Thank Jen for posting that. Turns out to work well for my kindy kid in Jewel unit to connect her to what her older sisters are doing. alright! I don't feel "behind" anymore.

Here's her post, in case that kind of craft might help your Kindy kid too (even if you don't have kids in ECC)

We enjoyed getting ideas for, and printing out for the younger children, Russian eggs from this site:
http://www.papereggs.com/russian.htm

-crystal

[patrice]

As my son and I were cutting out the jewels to paste on his crown, we sang the old hymn "When He Cometh." It is a beautiful reminder of just how precious each one of us is to God. Here are the lyrics:

When He cometh, when He cometh
To make up His jewels,
All His jewels, precious jewels,
His loved and His own.

Refrain:
Like the stars of the morning,
His brightness adorning,
They shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.

He will gather, He will gather
The gems for His kingdom;
All the pure ones, all the bright ones,
His loved and His own.

Refrain

Little children, little children,
Who love their Redeemer,
Are the jewels, precious jewels,
His loved and His own.

Refrain

The music is at this website: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/h/whenheco.htm

[tangomoon]

In The Children's Book of Home and Family , edited by William Bennett, Jr., there's a story called Cornelia's Jewels. A rich woman visits her friend's humble home and shows off her jewels. The poor woman responds by showing her "far more valuable jewels", her sons.

[Poohbee]

Thanks so much for that recommendation, tangomoon! I have The Children's Book of Home and Family on my bookshelf, and I wasn't aware of that story. I found it today, and I will plan to use "Cornelia's Jewels" when we get to the J unit in K. There are also some other great stories in there. We are studying Germany now in ECC, and there is a story about grandparents from the Brothers Grimm. We'll be going to Kenya soon, and there is an African story in there. Thanks so much for reminding me about this great resource!

[Julie - Staff]

Hi, we are starting Our Father's World this year with our oldest daughter. We are buying one recommended book from the reading list for each category. Can anyone recommend a good replacement book for "A Jewel Cache"? Thanks so much!!

Postby tangomoon » Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:20 pm
In The Children's Book of Home and Family , edited by William Bennett, Jr., there's a story called Cornelia's Jewels. A rich woman visits her friend's humble home and shows off her jewels. The poor woman responds by showing her "far more valuable jewels", her sons.

Postby Poohbee » Fri Jan 21, 2011 2:07 pm
Thanks so much for that recommendation, tangomoon! I have The Children's Book of Home and Family on my bookshelf, and I wasn't aware of that story. I found it today, and I will plan to use "Cornelia's Jewels" when we get to the J unit in K. There are also some other great stories in there. We are studying Germany now in ECC, and there is a story about grandparents from the Brothers Grimm. We'll be going to Kenya soon, and there is an African story in there. Thanks so much for reminding me about this great resource!

Postby hollybygolly » Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:56 pm
A favorite of mine that sort of centers around a jewel was Too Many Tamales. My girls love that book~and it has a good teaching lesson in it about obeying. ~Holly

[lea_lpz]

I am looking for books and am really having trouble with finding enough read aloud material for this unit. So far, I could only locate 3 titles on the book list (this is the first time this happened!) through my library. I did find some of the books suggested on the idea board for this unit: The Robery at the Dog Diner and The Girl Who Wore too Much. So I thought maybe I could expand the unit to include treasure and gold. With this in mind, I added:
Rumpelstiltskin
Kind Midas
The Golden Goose
Max and Ruby's Treasure Hunt by Rosemary Wells
The Bernstein Bear's Seashore Treasure by Stan Berstein
The Treasure by Uri Shulevitz

We were able to find:
Benjamin's Treasure
Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns
Gemstones

Another idea I had was to also review money as a math concept for this unit and explain how paper money represents gold as a currency.

[bethinga]

On the first day of this unit, we used adhesive jewel stickers from Michael's craft store to make the J shape on paper. On it we wrote "Jewels" and "Jesus is more valuable than anything else!"

On another day, after reading the hummingbird book, "Little Jewel Bird", we made a hummingbird feeder. There are lots of YouTube tutorials. It was VERY easy! We wrapped the plastic bottle in red adhesive jewel strips, since hummingbirds are attracted to red. We spent the week not only talking about how valuable Jesus is, but also how valuable we are to Him, so I read to them Matthew 10:29-31 about sparrows. Here are links for the feeder, and adhesive jewel strips.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=IUZ6v57Z ... UZ6v57Z9n8


http://www.funnyfacebeauty.com/2012/12/ ... older.html

Later in the week, we made a hummingbird cut out of construction paper and pasted on a picture where we drew a tree and our feeder hanging from the branches. They decorated their hummingbirds with colorful feathers (also found at Michael's), adhesive jewels, and oil pastel crayons. They were very pretty! On the picture, I wrote Matthew 6:26, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

As a treat on the last day, I let them watch Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure. Tinkerbell accidentally breaks a precious moonstone jewel and has to search for a new one. The value of friendship is the point of the movie.

[lea_lpz]

I'd really love to have done Little Jewel Bird but I think we might save that for the Quail unit and just do the book day for little jewel bird. My mother in law feeds hummingbirds and has always had feeders, so as a surprise my dh is going to get them a hummingbird feeder (we have a bird feeder) for that unit and have them help make the sugar water and hang it up. I think they'll love it. I wanted to hold off on getting the book since I couldn't find it in the library (probably don't carry Rod and Staff books) but am strongly considering buying the whole jewel books series to use for next year, pending really how muchwe are able to spend on extras.

This week has been fun. We did a field trip to the jewelery store and it ws really a wonderfull experience. The sales lady was very sweet to my 3 & 5 year old. No customers were there so she told them names of all the different jewels, helped them find their birthstones, listened to them and answered all their questions and was just really pleasent. I was so glad because they are sometimes shy to speak to grown ups they don't know and it helps if they have more positive experiences to feel more confident. They even had a very large geode with amthyst crystals in it that the children got to see the layers of (cracked open), and it was about 3 feet tall!

We found some very affordable bead / jewel kits at Hobby Lobby that we'll be going this upcoming week. They even had crown kits for boys and girls a $3 a piece that came with stick and peel jewels. I tried to find a crystal growing kit and tumbler but they were very pricey in town (about $40 each) but looked online and found the crystal kit much more reasonably priced at $15, so I ordered that and a $10 crystal excuvation kit and $10 break your own geode kit. The rock tumbler was still very pricey, so didn't order that, but figured I scored being able to get 3 items for what I'd have paid for one. Only problem is I did the free shipping so we'll be on another unit when we get here, but it'll still be fun to do with the kids I think even so, plus we can review what we've learned during the last unit.

[lea_lpz]

At Hobby Lobby, for $4 a kit we found Tierra and king crowns by The Orb Factory called sticky mosaics. An added bonus is the stickers are put on by number so they are practicing number recognition and of course fine motor skills . A great buy for the price if you don't want to figure it out yourself with the crown activity directions.