His Treasure Seekers

This week we continued learning about prayer through the story of Samuel as planned for us in the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Week 15 lesson plan.  I love that between the week on Samuel’s birth and this week on him as a boy, we learned both about presenting our requests to God and listening for his voice—both such important parts of our prayer lives!

Ian had a lot of fun this week playing with our flannel board set.  I just left it out all week and he kept coming back to it, usually asking me to tell the story as he manipulated the pieces to act it out.  I am SO glad that I went ahead and bought this great resource!  It seemed expensive at first, but it was worth every penny.  (And I used money from our tax return so it wouldn’t cut into our normal budget.)  It has been such a great investment, even if none of our other kids ever get as into it as has Ian.  It brings the stories to life and allows him to re-enact them over and over, planting Bible truths deep in his heart.  I highly recommend the Betty Lukens small deluxe set!

For our Bible verse, I deviated from the ABCJLM plan and went with 1 Samuel 3:10, which we sang to the tune of “Mary had a little Lamb.”

“Speak, Lord for your servant hears, servant hears, servant hears.  Speak, Lord for your servant hears.  First Samuel 3 verse 10.”

For our Bible notebook, I was inspired by one of the ideas from the ABCJLM lesson plan.  She had links to some print-outs of large ears, but instead of stapling them to a headband, I printed out a picture of Ian’s face and had him color the ears and glue them next to the picture along with the Bible verse.

We watched Samuel the Boy Prophet from Nest Entertainment’s “Animated Stories from the Bible” series.  (These DVD’s are great, but rather expensive for our budget, but sometimes you can find cheaper copies on Amazon marketplace.  I also discovered that they are shown on TBN and BYU’s satellite stations, so I took advantage of Grandma and Grandpa’s DVR and set it to record every episode.  Then I made note of what we have so I can use them when the appropriate stories come up in the curriculum.)

On our iPod playlist this week:

• “1 Sam 3  Samuel is Chosen By God” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing (also includes a song, “Hear the Voice of God”)
• Karen & Kids podcast: “Samuel Part 2” (see this post to find out more about how we love Karen & Kids)
• “Samuel, Samuel” from The Singing Bible
• “Voice in the Night” from Songs from the Beginner’s Bible

A few final words on ABC Jesus Loves Me.    Although I mainly use the Bible element of the curriculum there is SO much more to each lesson if you’re looking for ideas of how to teach your child all the basics.  And there’s now a whole schoolyear’s worth of curriculum for 2-year olds!  I love it because it’s not a structured program (which I don’t think is appropriate for little ones) but rather just a thoughtfully prepared plan for introducing all the sorts of things you want your child to know.  I would have loved to have this when Ian was two!  (I don’t know that I’ll use it with my younger ones simply because I think it will be easier to let them just tag along with my plans for Ian.)  My main goal in teaching during these “preschool” ages is to be intentional with giving the kids things to learn and filling their hearts with God’s Word.  This curriculum helps me in fulfilling that goal better than I could have dreamed.  I am so thankful for all the work “Momma C” has put into all three years of ABC Jesus Loves Me!

This week we learned about Hannah, whose faithful prayers were answered when the Lord blessed her with a very special son named Samuel.  It wasn’t an ideal week.  We had another family funeral (!) which pretty much wiped out our entire Monday, but I didn’t want to let a short week derail us when we just got back on track with our Bible lessons.  So I plunged ahead with the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 13 lesson plan, which just happened to include the next book on my Before Five in a Row list (see my previous post on The Runaway Bunny).

As usual, I introduced the story using our flannel board set.  I love sharing Bible stories that are completely unfamiliar to Ian.  He seemed particularly charmed with the story of Hannah praying for a baby, I think because we’ve talked so much about the baby we’re expecting by the end of the year.  (And having the priest named Eli probably helped too, even though our “Eli” is really Elijah.)  It’s a simple story that contains such a wonderful message about the power of prayer.  We retold it several times in the morning, and then because I had left it out all day, Ian asked to do it later after dinner and again throughout the week. He liked putting the Samuel figure up in the air “so he could talk better” to Eli.

I’m already excited for next week when we get to talk about how God moved in young Samuel’s life.  Our lesson challenged me to be more faithful in praying for each of my children, for I’m sure Hannah’s prayers did not end when Samuel was born.  On our first day (I’ve been really bad about remembering this the last few lessons) I started singing the Bible verse to the tune of “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” as suggested in the lesson plan:

1 Thessalonians 5:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing,” “Pray without ceasing,” 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

I tried to sing it throughout the week whenever I thought of it: bedtime, bathtime, in the car… Even Elijah was trying to sing along, though his gibberish didn’t make much sense to Ian.  “Pray without ceasing, Eli!”  Come on, 1-year old!  Can’t you get the words right?

The boys both enjoyed reading the story in various Bible storybooks: the original version of The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury, and the original version of The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes.  (I talked a little more about the different versions of these Bible storybooks in this post on the Red Sea.)

For our Bible notebook, we adapted a craft from Danielle’s Place.  It’s quite a ways down the page, but if you search for “Praying Hands Picture” you’ll find it.

First we did a tissue paper collage for the “stained glass” window. (Ian took this work very seriously, though he got tired of putting all the pieces of tissue paper on, so we ended up with him being mostly in charge of the watered-down glue and me leading the way with the paper.)  Then instead of using the premade silhouette from the pattern for the hands, I used Laura’s suggestion from ABC Jesus Loves Me and traced Ian’s hand along the fold of black construction paper so it would open up.  He LOVED it!  As soon as I had cut out his hands and explained that he could put them together to pray, he started playing with them and recited the memory verse, completely unprompted.  (Well, he managed, “Pray without ceasing.  5:17,” but I was pretty proud, especially because I hadn’t said anything about writing the verse in it later).  I tried to write the verse with a white crayon, but it was too hard to squeeze inside the hands, so I ended up writing it again on the outer portion.  If I were to do it again, I think I might have printed it out on white paper and pasted it on, because it was just kind of hard read.

I didn’t have much for an iPod playlist this week, but the three things we had were fun:

• “1 Samuel 1 Hannah’s Prayer” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “God is So Good” (I had it on several CDs of Bible songs)
• Karen & Kids podcast: “Samuel Part 1” (see this post to find out more about how we love Karen & Kids)

Even though we didn’t have time every day this week, I was really pleased with all we managed to do (including our Before Five in a Row activities).  Ian had so much fun with it all, and as we prayed at bedtime Thursday night he wanted to be sure to thank God for his paper plate bunny mask.  I’m glad he likes to share with God about all the things in his life.  I hope it’s the beginning of a long life full of prayer.

I finally managed to be intentional about including Before Five in a Row in our week’s plan, and the book I’d scheduled months ago just happened to be the book of the week in ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 11 lesson plan.  So Monday was all about Goodnight Moon (see my post about our week with GM here).  On Tuesday I introduced our Bible story for the week: the Battle of Jericho!

As usual, the first thing we did was tell the story with our flannel board set.

Ian was curious about the picture of the covered ark.  I explained what it was and told him they were carrying it on poles because it was so special/holy no one was supposed to touch it.  Of course a minute later he took one of the men who had his hand raised and made him “touch” the ark.  I told him the story of Uzzah from 2 Samuel 6:6-7, who died after disobeying God by touching the ark.  He liked the way I took the man and threw him on down on the table to show he was “dead”, so of course then he just wanted to make men touch the ark and die.  I think he understood the story since we also read it in the old version of The Beginner’s Bible (see this post for more about the Bible story books I like), but I decided we should stop Bible time before that was all he got out of it.

The flannelboard pieces only depicted the story from in the distance, which missed all the excitement.  So on Thursday we built a “city” wall and marched around it seven times, trying really hard to refrain from blowing our trumpet until the last time.  Then we put on  “Be Strong” from Scripture Rock Vol. 2 (I decided to use “Be strong and courageous” Joshua 1:9 as our memory verse this week.)

Unfortunately, our walls didn’t fall down with a mighty shout.  Thankfully, Ian was more than willing to help with that part of the story.  He enjoyed it so much we had to rebuild the walls and do it again, this time with Elijah joining in the destructive fun!  And long after the blocks were cleaned up and the trumpet put away, he kept asking to do it again.  Glad it was a hit!

I had trouble finding a ready-made activity for our Bible notebook.  Everything seemed to be either just a coloring page or else something 3-D which obviously woudn’t suit our purposes.  So I made one up.  I have lots of color strips from trimming construction paper down to notebook size, so I chopped those into “bricks,” which Ian then glued onto the wall I had sketched onto his paper.

I searched Google images for pictures of the battle of Jericho, found a couple I liked, and printed them out.  Then I cut the figures out and we glued them in front of our “wall.”  I wish I’d shrunk them a bit, but oh well.  Ian liked them. (And again, he kept trying to make someone touch the ark so the would die.  Oh dear.)

We watched two videos related to our story: Veggie Tales: Josh and the Big Wall (available streaming on Netflix) and Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.  He also really enjoyed listening to our iPod playlist this week:

• “Be Strong” from Scripture Rock Vol. 2
• “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho” from the 50 Bible Songs CD I found at the 99-cent Store
• “March around Jericho” from The Singing Bible
• “Joshua 6: The Battle of Jericho” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing (also includes a song, “Be Strong”)
• “Siege at Jericho” from Adventures in Odyssey #22 (Changing Times)

He kept asking me to put on the “Jericho song” so he could march around with his trumpet.  I’m just glad he got something out of the story this week besides killing off men who touched the ark!