Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness

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The latest installment in our Fruit of the Spirit unit was kindness.  Between my nieces visiting, the 4th of July holiday, and a quick camping trip, it was kind of a light week for us as far as school.  As I was preparing for our lesson, I saw that lots of people combined “kindness” and “goodness” when going through the Fruit of the Spirit.  I considered doing the same because of the factors I just mentioned, but I decided against it.  There’s obviously a difference or else Paul wouldn’t have listed them separately in Galatians 5:22-23.  I really wanted to do some study on the two Greek words (just for me, not necessarily to share with the kids), but that just didn’t happen.  (Big surprise.)  I chose to discuss kindness as the choices we make as far as what we DO, whereas when we discuss goodness, we’ll focus more on the essence of who we ARE.  I honestly have no idea if that’s anywhere close to the biblical definitions, but it will work for us (for now).

There are so many great Bible verses that can be used to discuss being kind.  I LOVE the  “Kind” clothing collage and hanger ideas Amanda over at Impress Your Kids shared that help illustrate Colossians 3:12, “So put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes.” (NIrV). Another great verse for this week is the “Golden Rule” (“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Matthew 7:12).  Along those lines we watched Veggie Tales: Are You My Neighbor?  I’m afraid that’s about as close as we got to any sort of Bible study this week.  We also watched 2 videos on kindness from the older version of Kid’s Character Builders on YouTube. (The newer version, with updated animation, is also available on DVD.)

Our literature connection for the week was The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (see my separate post), but we also read a fun book about encouraging others called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.  After we finished it the first time I made a point to say something encouraging to each of the kids who was listening.  My 5-year old niece immediately broke into a smile and exclaimed, “Hey!  You just filled my bucket!”  It was a great tool for demonstrating kindness.

For our “listening lesson” this week we pretty much just kept up with the same CDs that have been getting us through this whole unit:

The boys and I are loving this whole study.  Ian looks forward to each week’s new “fruit,” and Elijah can recite all nine of them faster than my husband or me!   If you’re doing a similar unit, I hope you’ll share about some of what you’ve done (or post a link if you’ve blogged about it).  I’m keeping a notebook with all the ideas I’ve collected (including many we’re not using), because I know we’ll come back to this whole concept in a few years!

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