Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness
This past week was one my favorite parts of our Fruit of the Spirit unit. Gentleness is not something my boys manifest terribly often without prompting. Having a baby sister (and a mama with a severe aversion to chaos, especially the loud variety) has given them plenty of practice, however, and I am so proud of how well they do at setting aside their nature “rough-and-tumble” nature and putting on gentleness. Actually, I’m kind of in awe of it. These boys adore their sister, and my heart just melts every time they snuggle in next to her and start speaking so softly in a higher pitcher “motherese” voice. Are they always that way? No. But on the occasion one of them is just too wild and she burst into tears, they are quick to respond and make things right.
We didn’t do a whole lot extras this week. For Bible, I chose to focus on the idea of the Lord as our shepherd. We watched the “gentleness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit. And we read Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets, one of the books from Before Five in a Row (though we didn’t do anything out of the B4FIAR manual, just read it several times). Ian loved this story about a little girl who learns that running after animals and trying to catch them isn’t nearly as rewarding as sitting quietly and being still. It never uses the word “gentle,” but I think it’s a beautiful picture of gentless, and Ian saw the connection right away.
Because we had memorized Psalm 23 back when we studied David last year, much of our “Listening Lesson” this week was a review:
- “The Fruit” from Seeds of Character by Seeds Family Worship”
- “Gentleness” from Music Machine: Fruit of the Spirit
- “Psalm 23” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
- “The Lord is my Shepherd” (classic Bible song)
- “Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 & 25)” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 2 by Steve Green
- “Good Fruit” from our SonHarvest County Fair VBS CD
- “God’s Love in Me” from our SonHarvest County Fair VBS CD
- “The Lord is my Shepherd” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back
- “Psalm 23” from the Sing the Word: A New Commandment by the Harrow Family
- Karen & Kids podcast episode “Fruit of the Spirit – Part 2”
- “The Lord is My Shepherd” from John Rutter’s Requiem (beautiful, gentle choral rendition of Psalm 23)
There is so much more we could be doing with each part of this unit, but I’m content with what we have done. I wanted to keep being intentional about staying in God’s Word, but at the same time I wanted to feel like we were getting a break. I know we’ll come back to the Fruit of the Spirit in a few years, so I’m saving lots of ideas and enjoying taking it easy for a while. One last week coming up on self-control, then we’ll take a week off before diving into our next Bible adventure!