Letter J, Russian history, southwest Asia, and the phases of the moon (cycle 2, week 10)

I don't know about all of you, but this time change is not my favorite!  But...at least we'll have lots of opportunities to observe the moon phases : ).  There is an abundance of things for our science work this week and I also found some cute letter J activities for my big boy.  So I'm just going to dive in!

Letter J
When I started looking for some letter J activities, I found there were more than I realized.  With the holidays coming soon, I thought this was very cute:
J is for Jesus...LOVE these printables, although the site it directs you to wasn't AS easy as some others I've used, eventually I got the J is for Jesus tracing/coloring sheet printed for today.  We also read a story (Golden book) called "The Story of Jesus" that I thought was ok.  Not spectacular.  I think reading something out of the Jesus Storybook Bible or The Big Picture Storybook Bible would've been better.
Letter J activities with a focus on J is for jellyfish, with free printables
Here is our jellyfish craft that we did...I love how it turned out!

 I cut a piece of light blue cardstock in half for each child, along with small strips of tissue paper (it paid off to save all that tissue paper from birthday parties! : )). I used mini muffin cups because that's what I had, but you could use the regular size, too.  We folded the muffin cups in half, drew eyes on them with a black crayon (the activity I saw used the plastic googly eyes...I didn't have any), and taped the muffin cups to the paper.  Then we put four dots of glue on the inside and let the kids put their strips on each dot of glue.  Perfect for preschool age.  That's it!  I just wrote the Jj is for jellyfish on the paper with a pen.  The kids loved them!

More letter J stuff...I love the Jack and Beanstalk idea...among others.  There are some good links on this page.
*Other letter J ideas:
~Jewels--glue jewels onto a letter J
~Jellybeans--eat them, fun facts from the Jelly Belly website
~Jam/jelly--put some on toast, make a pb and j for lunch, make some
~jacket--fashion show?, sewing?
~juice
~jigsaw puzzle
~Jack and the beanstalk--story and/or movie
~jack-in-the-box

On to CC for this week:
History--the history of Russia
~Lesson Guide for week 10 by a CC mom.  Lots of good info on here for Russian history and then some!
~Time (magazine) for kids--info on Russia with some pictures
*I'm having a hard time coming up with a lot of links for this one, but I think these two things will give you some good info.

Science--the phases of the moon
There is a HUGE amount of stuff to do with this!  Lots of fun stuff, too.  I'm going to try and put some of my favorite links here, but I've got several ideas on my Pinterest page (Classical Conversations Cycle 2).
~We'll start with this free coloring sheet
~ This looks fun...and easy!
~5 moon activities for kids...these definitely look doable, interactive, and fun for young kids
~Good explanation of the moon phases...audio is not great, but understandable

~cute moon phase song
~informative video called, "Why the moon changes shape"
~free phases of the moon cookie sheet and questions...I think it would work great with the oreo cookie instructions on this page, which also has some free printables including some observation pages
~make a moon phase record
~more moon phase activities!
~and last...but NOT LEAST...the amazing project on the Sola Gratia Mom blog.  I love looking at the stuff they do!

Geography
Love this!

And that's about all for now.  I'm actually finished before midnight!  Yay! : )