His Treasure Seekers

We missed a week due to sickness, but now we’re back in the swing of things, just finishing up Week 28 of the Bible lessons from the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum.  I chose to use the story as it is told in John 6:1-13 instead of the suggested passage in Matthew because John mentions the little boy who shared his food and I thought Ian would appreciate that detail.  Our memory verse was “Nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:37.

To introduce the story, I told it to the boys using our flannel board set while I read out of Ian’s ESV Seek and Find Bible.  The story was in several of our story Bibles, but I just had a lot of trouble getting into it this week.  We listened to the ESV story several times on our playlist and enjoyed watching a video, “Bread from Heaven,” together.  It took some artistic license, creating a back story for the boy with the fish and loaves, but it definitely helped Ian understand the story better.  There’s also a a game on the Charlie Church Mouse Preschool CD-ROM that goes along with it.

I have to admit, I was feeling very uninspired this week.  There wasn’t much I could find to go with this lesson from my usual favorite resources.  Then I stumbled upon whenyourise.com. Basically it’s a blog by two moms doing a fantastic job at what I’m attempting to do here.  After perusing their site, I realized I haven’t been tapping into my own creativity very much (something I hope will change!)  I also borrowed one fun idea from them.  We set up all the bears and dolls we could find to be our “crowd.”

 Then I showed the boys our basket with 2 “fish” and 5 “loaves” (goldfish crackers and croutons), though I’d really hidden more of each under the napkin. (Yes, I miscounted my “loaves.”  We fixed it when we started reading from the Bible.)

The food just kept coming!  It was a fun way to have our snack, and Ian enjoyed acting it out so much we had to do it all over again.  Thankfully I had a big carton on goldfish, because it would have been hard to explain that we’d run out of food!

I printed out a basket and some fish and loaves (I set my printer to print 2 pages on 1 sheet so they’d be smaller) to put in it. I just let Ian color, cut, and paste them onto a page for our Bible notebook.  This was the first time I’ve had him try to cut things out himself.  It was definitely a learning experience!

Our iPod playlist this week was short and to the point, but we listened to it a lot.  This is one of my favorite teaching tools since we can use it in the car or during playtime at home.  Here’s what was on this week:

• “A Feast for 5,000” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Fish and Loaves” episode from the Karen & Kids podcast

I’m looking forward to the next few weeks as we talk about Palm Sunday and the Resurrection.  (I try to keep “Easter” as a fun spring celebration with bunnies and egg hunts, etc., while keeping “Resurrection Day” about Christ’s triumph over death.  That way we can still enjoy the fun cultural stuff without diluting the sacred nature of the true holy-day.) Okay, so I got a little ahead of myself!  But at least my planning is done for a while–now I just need to plan THIS week!