Author Archives: Deanna

Fruit of the Spirit: Love

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When I first starting putting this Fruit of the Spirit unit together in my mind I planned to use one Bible story each week to help illustrate whichever “fruit” we were discussing, covering it in a way similar to what we’ve been doing.  However, as I started planning, I realized that was going to draw the focus away from the point I was trying to make.  This week, for instance, I want Ian to know that our Bible lesson is about “Love,” not about Mary anointing Jesus with perfume.  So while I do plan to use Bible stories throughout this unit, I won’t be covering them as in depth as I usually do since we’re using them mainly to make a point.  In addition to a Bible story and a children’s book (this week we read The Little Rabbit, which I posted about separately), there are also a few things I found that we’ll be doing for each week throughout the whole unit.  We put on “tattoos” to help remind us about “Love” all week.  And we watched the episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit that had to do with love.  (The boys really enjoy this show!)

  Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the Spirit

As I thought about the broad topic of love I wanted to narrow our discussion down a bit.  Since the fruit of the Spirit is about what’s being produced in our hearts, I decided to steer away from talking about God’s love, except as it is the basis for the love we show to others.  Mary showed love for Jesus by using her expensive perfume to anoint him.  Sarah (in The Little Rabbit) shows love for Buttercup by providing for her, spending time with her, and caring for her.  Ian and Elijah show love for each other by sharing things, speaking respectfully to each other, and helping one another.  (Okay, so we’re still working on all that.  But really, they do have a wonderfully loving relationship.)

We also wanted to practice showing love to others by reaching out.  I loved what Amanda at Impress Your Kids did for this by sending something to their sponsor child.  This spring when we decided to sponsor a child, I looked for one who shared Ian’s birthday so he could feel some connection.  We were blessed to find a little boy in Brazil who is the exact same age as Ian (and he even had on a Lightning McQueen shirt in his picture, so Ian liked him right away)!  We haven’t yet taken the time to write to him, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.  We made “scratch and sniff” paint from unsweetened Kool-aid powder and used it to paint a picture of a heart.  I looked up our Bible verse on BibleGateway so we could write “God is love,” on it in Portuguese.   “Deus é amor” 1 João 4:8  I hope he enjoys his sweet-smelling picture!  A word of warning if you want to try this activity: let the “paint” sit for a while so ALL the powder dissolves.  I only waited about five minutes, and it made kind of grainy pictures.  Also, I would water them down quite a bit.  Ours took a few days to dry to the point of not being sticky!

  

We also made pictures for our own “Fruit of the Spirit” notebook, though I haven’t quite decided how I’m doing that.  For now, I’ll just save the pictures.  In addition to reading the story about Mary in The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), we also read The Best Thing is Love by Dandi Daley Mackall , which is based on 1 Corinthians 13.  Ian really liked the repetition on each page and read it with me after he’d caught on to the patter.

Throughout this unit, the only real “memory verse” I expect Ian and Elijah to have down is Galatians 5:22-23 (But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.)  Still, I am planning on have a verse the relates specifically to the “fruit” of the week, especially if I can find a song about it.  So this week we did 1 John 4:7-8, which I will forever know in the King James Version because of this song.  “Beloved, let us love one another.  For love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love.”

The boys have really been enjoying the songs for this unit, so I kept most of the general “Fruit” songs around to help them memorize the verse and mixed them in with some new ones related to Love:

We listen through the list at least once a day, and I’m often getting requests to “do that one again,” especially from Elijah.  They really like singing along, and I think both of them will definitely have their memory verse down by the end of this unit!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Little Rabbit

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Last week we very lightly “rowed” The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn (from Before Five in a Row).  I chose it to go along with our “Fruit of the Spirit” study, in which we were talking about love.  Since we were focusing on the kind of love that entails doing what’s best for someone else even when they can’t give anything back, a book about caring for a pet seemed appropriate.100_7213

This really is such a sweet story about a girl and her rabbit.  We didn’t do a whole lot of “extras” beyond some of the discussions from the Before Five in a Row manual.  One thing Ian specifically requested was to make bunny masks like we did back when we rowed The Runaway Bunny.  (For some reason, he really wanted his bunny to look angry.)

I also found a Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood episode “Pets: Children Take Care of Their Pets” which goes along well with this book.   It even has a little segment comparing a drawing with a photograph, which was great since this story uses photos instead of drawings or paintings for illustrations.

And that was pretty much it for this book!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units

Fruit of the Spirit: Introduction

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Over the summer  our Bible lessons will be about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things there is no law.”  Before we start focusing on each of the traits Paul wrote about, I wanted to spend a week introducing the whole idea.

I think the most important thing to remember about the fruit of the Spirit is that we can’t “make” them grow in us any more than we can “make” apples grow on a tree.  The first step is planting the seed in the ground.  Is the Spirit living in us?  I honestly don’t know how to answer that for my kids.  I’ve taught them about Jesus and they believe the truth of the gospel, but they haven’t come to a point of decision saying, “Yes, I want Jesus to be my Lord.  I want to follow Him.”  Still I think their faith is true, if immature.  So I do believe the Holy Spirit can work in their hearts.

Our job is to carefully tend our hearts (and those of our children).  If we were trying to help a tree produce apples we would clear away any weeds that might hinder its growth, fertilize the soil, and make sure it got plenty of water and sunshine.   With regards to the “fruit” of the Spirit, we carefully monitor the influences around them, feed them a steady diet of Scripture, and bring them to church with us so they can experience the presence of the Lord as we worship.

If Jesus Lived Inside My HeartOn our own we can only go so far in trying to exhibit the love, joy, etc. that naturally grow when we surrender our lives to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts.  I want to be be careful throughout this series to make it clear that these virtues aren’t the result of our efforts; they come when we humble ourselves and let Jesus truly be our Lord.  Along these lines, we read If Jesus Lived in My Heart by Jill Roman Lord, which talks about how having Jesus in us affects way we treat others and the choices we make.

My objective this first week was simply to familiarize the boys (especially Ian) with the names of all nine “fruit” in preparation for talking about them in greater detail over the next couple months.  As usual, one of the most effective tools was music.  We listened to our iPod playlist throughout the week as we played at home and drove in the car.  By Friday Ian was singing along to most of the songs, so I’d say I met my objective!  Here’s what was playing this week:

We also read two books that briefly go through the list of the fruit of the Spirit: 9 Fruits Alive by Mindy MacDonald and Jesus in Me by Dandi Daley Mackall.

 

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnBdu-9DQu4BY8DFi4dydmMZBMI31G0txInCnZsRfq5julV29kHgWe played two games that helped plant the names of the fruit in Ian’s head.  The first was a Fruit of the Spirit board game that is played just like Candyland.  I just casually commented on what the pictures showed and how they related to the areas of love, joy, peace, etc. as we passed through.  The second was a Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables which I printed and laminated.  Elijah was able to match up the pairs.  With Ian, we laid them all out upside down and played “memory.”  He loves this type of game.

  

As we start exploring the individual “fruit,” each week we’ll focus on a particular Bible story as well as children’s literature that that help illustrate the concept.  (I want to try to hit most of the Before Five in a Row  books that we haven’t gotten to, but there are a few others as well.) I don’t think we’ll go quite as in depth as we have been during the regular “school year,” but we’ll see.  I’m just trying to give myself permission to relax a little.  Coming up next week: LOVE!

Posts on each week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Blueberries for Sal

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This week we “rowed” Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.  In my opinion, if you can only do one book from from Before Five in a Row, this is the one to pick.  There are so many wonderful discussions and activities that can flow out of this story!  I’ve been holding off on it until the right time of year, and it seemed like a good complement to our Bible lesson introducing the Fruit of the Spirit, which just happened to coincide with the beginning of berry-picking season around here.  This was one book that had really made an impression on Ian when we first went through all the Before Five in a Row stories back when he was two.  He’s requested it several times since, so when he saw me bringing out our little tin pails, he was really excited about this week.

After reading through the story on Monday, I broke out several types of blueberries for our afternoon snack: fresh, frozen, dried (chewy, like raisins), and freeze-dried (crunchy, like cereal).  They loved making them go “kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!” in their pails before they ate them.  I had them try all four kinds, but Ian’s favorites were the frozen ones and the dried, while Elijah preferred the dried and freeze-dried.  Only Mama kept going back to the fresh ones.  We enjoyed snacking on blueberries every day this week!

  

Blueberry pancakes are a regular occurence in our family, so to do something special we made blueberry muffins from a boxed mix, which included canned blueberries.  I saved the juice when we drained them and the boys made blueberry paintings before drinking the rest of the “paint.”  (They really enjoyed this activity, and it was less messy than I had anticipated.  Still, I think next time I might try thickening up the paint with some corn starch, though then it wouldn’t be so tasty to clean up.)

For Ian’s “workbook,” I printed out several of the pages from Homeschool Creations‘ printable pack.  I also printed and laminated the math activity. (I was impressed with how well Ian did equations in his head.  I think it’s because of the Inchimals we’ve been using to explore the concept of addition.) I even found some worksheets for older kids that I printed to save in my file since I know we’ll be doing this book again in years to come.

As I said before, this book lends itself to lots of fun conversations.  We talked about canning (I’m going to have to learn more about it for the next time we row), bears storing up food for hibernation, and the dangers of meeting a bear (especially a mama and baby) and wandering off alone in the wilderness.  We also read One Morning in Maine, another favorite by Robert McCloskey.  It features Sal when she’s a little older and loses her first tooth.  Right away Ian asked, “Hey! Is that ‘Little Sal’ in this book?”  Ian’s not quite to the tooth-losing stage, so he was quite intrigued by the story.  I read it several times with him, though it was a bit long for Elijah.  By the time we row Blueberries for Sal with Arianna, Ian should have lost a tooth or two and I’m sure Elijah will love this book too.

To finish off our week, we went out in our backyard and picked berries in our tin pails.  No blueberries, but we are blessed to have an abundance of blackberries at hand!  We’ll go picking once or twice a week for the next month or so and then make jelly to give as gifts and hopefully last us through the year!

     

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

…He is a New Creation (Paul’s Conversion)

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This past week was our official end of the year!  To finish our chronological walk through the Bible, we spent talked about the Apostle Paul’s conversion (found in Acts 9:1-22) and the idea of being a new creation in Christ.  (The final Bible story lesson of the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum was on the “Wordless Book,” but I just couldn’t get excited enough about it to end on that note.  It might work better for us when my kids are a little older.)  Paul was certainly a changed man after his encounter with Christ along the road to Damascus, and while my children may never have such a dramatic conversion experience, the truth is that we ALL become a new creation in Christ. I tied the Bible story into our book of the week, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle to help illustrate the idea of being changed.  Our memory verse was “If anyone is  in Christ, he is a new creation,” from 2 Corinthians 5:17.

We told the story with our flannel board set and read it in Ian’s ESV Seek and Find Bible, as well as The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley).  We also read The Very First Christians by Paul l Maier, which is full of beautiful illustrations and tells many of the major stories from the book of Acts.

Acts 9:8 says “Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened,  he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.” To help the boys get a sense of the story, I blindfolded them (one at a time) and led them around the room to try to find a specific object.  Ian loved this game and promptly had me blindfold myself so he could lead me around as well.

  

To finish odd our Bible notebook for the year, I did the laziest easiest page ever.  I  just printed off this fun page of the memory verse from Christian Preschool Printables.   Ian really liked just spending time reading this to himself.  Obviously not something we would do often, but once again, there’s room for grace.

Our iPod playlist was fun because we got to listen to a few songs from the old Bullfrogs & Butterflies albums, which went perfectly with our week:

Whew!  And that’s the end of our first full year of lessons!  We’re going to spend some time talking about the Fruit of the Spirit this summer and then we’ll plunge back into another chronological journey through the Bible!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

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Last week spent some time with one of Elijah’s favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  It was a great go-along for our Bible lesson on Paul’s conversion and how we become a new creation in Christ (post on that coming soon).  Everyone was already quite familiar with the story, so I got busy on the laminator to prepare some activities for extra interest.

We put these cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler in the correct order to retell the story

and then did the same with these days of the week sequencing cards from Making Learning Fun (lots of great ideas here!) while singing our song about the days of the week.

  

Maybe next year we’ll get our own butterfly garden, but this time we were content watching watched our friends’ caterpillars and chrysalises. (Thanks, Christine!)  Their butterflies weren’t out yet, but it was fascinating just seeing the first couple stages.  (Did you know they wiggle in the chrysalis?)  I was going to have the boys go through some life cycle cards but we never got to that.  We did watch a couple short videos on the subject though: “The Caterpillar and the Polliwog” (on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video); Wonder Pets episode “Save the Caterpillar” (from Season 1, available streaming free for Amazon Prime Members and on Netflix); and of course, The Very Hungry Caterpillar video itself.

I’m not really big on crafts, but we all love to paint around here so we did make some “butterfly prints.”  We started by putting drops of paint on the paper, then blew through a straw to move the paint around, and finished by folding the paper in half to make symmetrical “wings.”  I love how Elijah’s first one turned out!

  

Posted in Literature Units, Preschool

Night of the Moonjellies

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Last week for Five in a Row we read Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha.  I chose it  to go along with our Sea World field trip on Wednesday, and I’m glad we started doing activities/discussions from the book over the weekend, because we were too wiped out to do much after that long day!

The one thing about the book that was a little hard to explain to Ian was identifying true moonjellies.  Mark Shasha used it as a nickname for comb jellies (ctenophores), but there actually is a different sea creature named a “moon jellyfish” (Aurelia aurita).  Since they’re not really fish, the new trend is to call them jellies, which means when you come across things labeled “moon jellies” (such as we did in an aquarium at Sea World, much to Ian’s delight), they may not be the same creatures you were reading about!  I decided it really didn’t matter.  Ian enjoyed the story and seeing the Aurelia aurita just as much as if it had been a ctenophore.   Still, we talked about the differences (comb jellies don’t sting) and enjoyed looking at online pictures of the ctenophores Shasha was remembering in his story.  There was a lot of good information on the author’s website, as well as fairly basic descriptions and good pictures from the Simple English Wikipedia and  earthlife.net.

To add to our look at ocean creatures, we watched the Magic School Bus episode “Take a Dive” and read The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole.  Ian loves this series, and while I don’t read all the information on every page, he still learns a lot.

I’m sure we’ll come back to this book in a couple years and do some of the more advanced activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1).  Right now every book has something new and exciting for a 4-year old.  We’ve got lots of time to dive deeper into all there is to explore!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Peter and John Went to Pray…

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“Peter and John went to pray. They met a lame man on the way.  He asked for alms and held out his palms, and this is what Peter did say: ‘Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!’ He went walking and leaping and praising God…”

Do you know that song?  The language may be archaic, but it sure sticks in your head!  It tells a wonderful story of how the Holy Spirit enabled two of Jesus’ disciples to walk in the same authority and power they had seen Christ exercise time and time again as he healed people. (Acts 3:1-10) It also included our memory verse: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” Acts 3:6

This is one of the best stories in the Bible for acting out.  What preschooler doesn’t love leaping and around the room?  And since I have a reputation for being “anti-fun” (I just don’t do silly very well), it was a wonderful opportunity for making my kids laugh.  They couldn’t get enough of me singing the song and bounding across the living room.

For our Bible notebook, we did a simple handprint print (I figured it could either be the beggar’s palm asking for alms, or else Peter taking him by the hand and helping him to stand.)

Here was our iPod playlist for this lesson:

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Make Way for Ducklings

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This week for our Five in a Row (FIAR) studies we read Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.  I chose it because we’ve been enjoying watching the webcam of a hawk nest at Cornell University.  All three eggs hatched this week and we got to see them in almost every stage of the process.  It was amazing!  I left the site open on my computer and often we would just sit watching in awe.  It seemed like the perfect time for this story!  I know I saw this book as a child, but I don’t remember ever reading it.  I missed out!  Ian and I both enjoyed reading this one over and over throughout the week.

On Wednesday we went to a local park to try to find the mama duck and ducklings Grandma had spotted the day before, but to no avail.  Instead we just enjoyed watching the adult ducks and I taught the boys the differences between the males and females.  Ian was really disappointed not to see any ducklings, so we prayed that God would give a chance to see some.  On Friday morning as I was getting Arianna dressed, it occurred to me that we should try another park that day.  The boys were thrilled at the sudden plans (I am NOT a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type of person) until they found it we were returning to the scene of our unfortunate duck incident back in January.  (Elijah still reminds me at least once a week out of the blue, “Mommy, the duck ate my chicken.”)  Ian insisted as we drove there, “I do NOT like that park.  I don’t EVER want to go there again.”  Mean Mommy wasn’t giving in.  Thankfully, the ducks and geese were all on their best behavior.  The boys relaxed and we enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine along with the cool breeze as we walked along the water’s edge.  And lo, and behold…

Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!  Hello, Ducklings!  There were only 5, but of course Ian started to call them by name: “Jack! Kack!.. Mack!… Pack!… Quack!” We spent quite a bit of time watching the family before moving on towards the playground for lunch.  Needless to say, this is now Ian’s FAVORITE park.

  

Other things we did at home this week (in addition to many discussions out of the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2):

  • I found lots of ideas from this unit study, including a great collection of “uck” word family activities.
  • I also used some of the pages from the lapbook at HomeSchoolShare to do one of the math activities in the manual.
  • We watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones,” which talks about other animals that lay eggs.  Ian was so fascinated and delighted in telling all about how turtles lay eggs too!
  • For our mapping activity, we went on a Google Lit Trip, which was fabulous!  It was so much fun to see Boston on the map and “travel” around the city to all the places in the book with real pictures of what it looks like today.  (We first watched it on YouTube, but the pace was a little quick for me.)  Someday I hope we’ll make it to Boston to see the Public Garden in person!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

The Holy Spirit (Pentecost)

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We’re almost through the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum, but I wasn’t ready to end our Bible lessons with Jesus returning to heaven, so for the next few weeks we’ll be on our own as we finish up the New Testament.  This week we talked about the disciples receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It’s a hard story for me as an adult to fully wrap my mind around, so my goal was just to present the whole event as told in Scripture, touch on some basic concepts, and then let it go.  Sometimes I’m content with just laying a foundation for future learning.  Here were the concepts I wanted Ian to understand:

  • Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to His followers.
  • If we follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts and helps us become more like Christ.
  • The Holy Spirit helped the disciples speak other languages so everyone could hear the good news about Jesus.

For our memory verse, I chose Romans 5:5, which we sang to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”:

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts, through the Holy Spi-rit. Romans chapter 5, verse 5; Romans chapter 5, verse 5. God’s love has been poured into our hearts, through the Holy Spi-rit.”

Most of my teaching centered around listening to our iPod playlist and having LOTS of discussions.  Here’s what was playing this week:

We talked about what languages are and I shared little bits of French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swahili with Ian.  (I SO wish I were fluent in another language, but unfortunately I just know a few basics in lots of languages.  Helpful for finding my way around in foreign countires, but it doesn’t exactly help me really communicate!)  He was really fascinated by the whole concept.  He’s heard people speaking Spanish and Korean, but I don’t think it really clicked with him what was going on until this week.

I’ve kind of slacked on our Bible Notebook with the last few lessons.  I hope to do a few more pages this year, but then I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.  I don’t like being so inconsistent, but neither do I want to let myself get so caught up in “producing” something tangible that our lessons suffer.

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool
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