Category Archives: Bible lessons

Long Story Short: God Creates Man

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There is so much fundamental truth packed into the first book of the Bible.  Our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, goes through the Old Testament in 78 stories; the first 26 are from Genesis.  That means it’s a pretty crucial book for understanding the overarching story of the gospel. This week took us through Genesis 2, and even just this one chapter contains so much. You’ve got God creating Adam from the dust and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. Then there’s the Garden of Eden, including the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which will play prominently in the next chapter.  You also see Adam being alone and how it was the first thing about which God said, “It is not good.”  Then Adam named all the animals but none of them were right for being his helper, so God took one of Adam’s rib and created Eve from it.  And so the chapter ends with a picture of the first marriage.

The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New TestamentsOver the course of the week we read through the entire chapter during Bible time before the children went to bed.  The devotional covers 5 nights, which provides a lot of flexibility if we’re getting to bed too late one or two nights.  However, we want to try to keep the habit of doing Bible time every night we’re home at bedtime, so I’ve been jotting down ideas for additional readings when needed.  This week we needed to fill both extra nights, which we did by reading the corresponding story from The Gospel Story Bible (also by Marty Machowski) one night.  As I said last week, this one’s a little wordy for preschoolers, but it was really easy to read “conversationally” with the boys.  It’s not just a retelling of the story, but it also discusses some of the concepts that are in the devotional and helps point to Jesus.  I may or may not use it every week, but it definitely works well to fill in when we need another night of material.  Tonight we’ll finish out the week with Psalm 139:13-16.

My favorite part of using Long Story Short for our Bible curriculum is that even if all we do is our ten-minute devotions at night, the boys are getting solid teaching and growing in their knowledge of God.  Still, I try to take time during the day to reinforce the lesson with various activities.  Here’s what we did this week.

Go-Along Books

I’ve started collecting picture books that go with specific Bible stories. Some we read over and over, while others may only be flipped through.  My point is simply to keep the story in the forefront of our minds throughout the week.  We keep a basket of “school” books in a prominent spot in our living room and the boys pull things out to read several times a day.  A few of last week’s Creation books included this part of the story, so I kept those out:

I also added a new story:

  • Adam & Eve’s New Day by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso (not part of the biblical account, but a thought-provoking story from Hebrew midrash that makes you consider what things were really like for Adam and Eve)

Reading Practice

It seems to me that learning to read has a bit of a snowball effect.  The more success a child experiences, the more he wants to read, and all that practice makes him even more successful.  Ian has begun to pick up some momentum and is really excited about starting to be able to read on his own.  Here’s what we used this week for practice:

The Bible verse cards I made last week were so helpful in encouraging Ian in his reading, I decided to make them a regular part of our lesson each week.  I wasn’t sure if they’d be as successful this time, since the verse was unfamiliar to him until this week.  (“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18) I followed the same steps, however, and I was amazed how well he did.

  1. I laid all the cards out in order and read them to Ian, pointing to each one.
  2. He read them out loud as he pointed.
  3. I mixed them up and had him find the words in order.  I didn’t read any of the cards for him, but I would recite the verse if he couldn’t remember what came next.
  4. He mixed them up and put them back in order all by himself.

Going through these steps meant reciting the verse over and over to himself, which was great reinforcement.  He was having so much fun Elijah wanted to join in, and Ian enthusiastically read words for him and helped him participate.  It was a great learning experience for both of them.

  

Bible Notebook

I’ve been working on Ian with his drawing skills (until recently I couldn’t get much other than a scribble out of him), so I decided to do a little lesson on drawing people (well, stick people).  He did really well with it, but this was definitely a week where our notebook page was beyond Elijah.  I just drew his people for him (don’t laugh, I was drawing upside down).  Ian got really into to and decided to draw some plants (roots and all), since they were in the Garden of Eden.

  

Activities

I usally try to print out a few activity pages for Ian’s “workbook,” but this week the only thing I found was a maze.  We found plenty of other things to do though!  I printed and laminated the “Adam Names the Animals” file folder game from Christian Preschool Printables, though I skipped the folder to make it work with my storage system.  Ian blew me away with his reading ability on this game.   I didn’t read a single word for him.  (Looking at his picture when he’d completed his board, you can see he was almost as proud as Mama!)  I laid out all the animal names and both boards and told him to find the matches.  After he’d completed his board he helped his brother by reading the card and then letting Elijah find the correct picture.  It has been great to see such cooperative learning this week.  It helps boost Ian’s confidence and it drives Elijah to want to learn more to keep up.

  

This story offered lots of chances to learn a little about our bodies.  The opening activity from the devotional involved feeling for our pulse. Neither boy was familiar with the word “nostrils” when we read it, so we talked about that and then reviewed it through the week as we re-read the story.  The creation of Eve also led us to a discussion about our ribs. I found a cute picture from Little Blots to illustrate.

One night our devotion talked about husbands and wives, marriage, and creating a family unit.  We pulled out our wedding pictures and enjoyed looking through them, talking about what a special day it was and what it means to be married.  We’ve been to two weddings this summer, so Ian especially enjoyed seeing the pictures with us in the leading roles.

Our favorite activity, however, was making gingerbread couples.  There’s a delicious recipe at dltk-kids.com. (I substituted 2/3 whole wheat flour and used organic whole cane sugar instead of brown sugar, and they were still the best gingerbread cookies anyone in our family could remember.) We called the flour “dust” and formed our gingerbread people.  (We added “hair” to some of them to create girls.)  Ian went a little crazy decorating them (definitely not “naked” like the real Adam and Eve).  He loved every step of the process and kept asking, ” Can we do this again sometime?”

  

Multimedia

Last week as I was planning this lesson I stumbled across a CD called Questions With Answers Vol. 1: God and Creation.  I was just looking for something to go along with our memory verse but I ended up downloading the entire album.  It’s formatted like a catechism, with a question posed and then answers that are usually directly quote from Scripture.  (Chords and lyrics are available on the Songs for Saplings website.) After listening just once I fell in love.  What a great way to introduce important theological concepts to children!  I was afraid the boys wouldn’t be into it, but instead they kept asking to “do that one again” after every song.  I wish we’d had the album last week, because it seemed a little overwhelming to put all of it on our iPod playlist this time around and many of the songs would have been a good fit with that story.  I chose a few songs to include with our current lesson, and I’m sure we’ll listen to the rest another time.

Our “Listening Lesson” this week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Creates the World

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Well, here we are, back at the beginning!  I started this blog right after Ian turned 3, when we began going through the Bible lessons in the ABC Jesus Loves MeThree-Year Old Curriculum, which took us on a chronological journey through many of the best-known stories in the Old and New Testaments.  This past spring I wrote a post about what our next step should be, and I’m so excited about the route we’ve chosen.  This week we started going through a fantastic family devotional called Long Story Short by Marty Machowski. (Seriously, read the reviews at Amazon or Timberdoodle and you won’t be able to resist either).

The book is broken up into 78 weeks of stories from the Old Testament (the New Testament is covered in the sequel, Old Story New (scheduled to be released this Fall), which also has 78 stories, so together it will take us at least three years to get through all the material, probably more since I’m scheduling in breaks around holidays and vacations).  Each week consists of 5 ten-minute devotions designed to be used with kids from preschool through high school.  While the main story may be from the Old Testament, each week you also look at how it is part of the overall “Gospel Story,” so there are New Testament passages to read as well.  I wasn’t sure if our children were quite old enough for it, but if this week is any indication of how things are going to go, I think they’re going to get a lot out of it.  And maybe in the future we’ll go through it again and they can process things at a deeper level.

This week’s lesson covered Genesis 1.  We started Sunday night so that we could dive into some school activities on Monday.  Daddy read the Bible passage while I helped Ian follow along in his ESV Seek and Find Bible.  Then I walked us through the questions.  If the question was too hard, I just shared the answer as part of our discussion.  Then I told them what the suggested prayer topic was and asked who wanted to pray.  Usually we just had the boys pray, but sometimes Daddy or I would pray as well. They boys really enjoyed this nightly “Bible time,” and they were sad the two nights we didn’t do it.  There are only 5 per week, but it worked out really well because we were out late at a Bible study one night and playing miniature golf as a family another night, so it would have been hard to get more than 5 done.  On weeks when we’re not out late, I’ll use The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski) or a related Scripture to carry us through the end of the week.*)

After the first night, our Bible story was constantly on the boys’ minds.  All day on Monday they kept exclaiming, “God made ______ [dirt, trees, cows, the sky, etc].”  When we had lunch, I prayed, “Thank you, God for making grapes,” which led them to ask about the other foods, which taught them that even if God didn’t make something in the form we see it, He did creat the materials for it.  So then they started saying, “God made the stuff to make ___.”  This continued throughout the week!

The first night it was a little difficult to keep Elijah engaged, so after that I tried to come up with ways to keep everyone listening.  For example, when we read through the days of creation, I asked the boys to raise their hands every time they heard “God said…”  We talked about how even though only God can create by speaking, we also can create things.  We just have to start with paint, playdough, or some other sort of material.  (And then, of course, we had to get out our paints and spend one morning creating our own masterpieces.)

  

Go-Along Books

We have several Bible storybooks, but since there are lots of other fun books related to Creation, I decided to set those aside for this lesson.  Here are some of the books we read or looked through this week:

Reading Practice

I want to help Ian practice his reading skills by finding things at his level related to our Bible lessons.  This week I had two good resources:

  • We Learn About God from Rod and Staff Publishers (a beginning “reader” that’s right at Ian’s level)
  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (still a little too hard for Ian to read on his own, but he got good practice following along as I read.)

The other thing I did was print out our Bible verse and then cut up the individual words.  (I laminated the cards to keep in my Creation file, but that’s just so I can use them again with the other children).  I did something similar to the reading lesson Charlotte Mason described in Home Eduction (Volume 1 in the Original Homeschooling Series) Part V, chapter 4 “Reading“.  He was already familiar with Genesis 1:1, and he knew a few of the words by sight already, so I didn’t read it in order to him the way I would have with something new.  Instead I just mixed all the cards up and asked him to put them in the right order.  I helped him recite the verse so he’d know where to start, but then I was amazed how quickly he laid out the whole verse.  After he was done, I had him read it to me, pointing to each word as he read.  He was so proud of himself and immediately mixed them up and did it again.  He also took great pride in repeating the feat for Daddy that evening.  When we did “Bible time” before bed, he turned turned to the first page of Genesis in his ESV Bible and read the first verse as he pointed to the words.  He was a little confused why it didn’t say “Genesis 1:1” after “earth,” which opened up the door for talking about chapters and verses.  I pointed out the title “Genesis” and the big and small numbers, and soon he understood.

  

Bible Notebook

I really liked making a notebook as a record of our journey through the Bible the last time around, so I decided to do it again.  This time I’ll be doing them with both boys, so I’m going to try to do different activities than I did with Ian the first time. This week I printed out out the mini-book from Christian Preschool Printables to use for the boys’ Bible Notebooks.  I made up a page that had the Bible verse and a number for each day.  For Elijah, I cut out only the pictures and had him glue them next to the number on the page.  I had Ian trace the words and numbers for the day before gluing them over the printed numbers. (He’s been asking how to write letters a lot lately, so I want to start having some sort of “copywork” for him each week.  This seemed like a great starting place.)  It was nice being able to make the same activity developmentally appropriate for each boy.  They were both incredibly proud of their work, especially Elijah (“Grandma, I glued!”), since it’s the first official “schoolwork” he’s done.

  

Activities

There are lots of wonderful activities from Christian Preschool Printables, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the boys, so I tried to restrain myself.  I printed and laminated the Memory Match Game.  The boys did a good job just matching them up, but we never got quite confident enough to play “memory.”  We also each colored a Creation Wheel from Oriental Trading Company, which Ian loved turning to reveal each day.  Elijah only colored the top page and then lost interest.  I was a little irritated that they put a rainbow on it, since that’s a prominent part of the story of Noah, but we talked about how God created that too, just later on.

  

I really wanted to give the boys a chance to observe some animals, but with temperatures in the triple digits I just didn’t feel up to a trip to the zoo.  Instead, we took a field trip to a local pet store, where we saw cats, dogs, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, snakes, iguanas, and lots of varieties of fish (and even got to pet most of the mammals).  Both boys loved it, and they soon were back to their gleeful exclamations of, “God made ___!”

Multimedia

I found several resources online that Ian enjoyed playing around with:

Our “Listening Lesson” had a few more items on it than the last time we discussed creation.  This year I want to start being intentional about learning both traditional hymns and also some of the worship songs we sing in our Sunday services.  This was an easy lesson to incorporate a number of such songs into our iPod playlist:

I’m so excited to be starting this journey!  By the third night, Ian was begging for “more Bible time!”  By fourth night, both boys were eagerly volunteering to pray at the end of our time (when both have been extremely reluctant in the past).  Okay, so Elijah’s prayers in any setting are now about thanking Jesus for rocks, and the sky, and every animal he can think of, but I love that he’s excited about prayer!  “Bible time” is now something we all look forward to at the end of the day, and I love that they’re going to bed treasuring God’s Word in their hearts and minds.

—

*Here are a couple of ideas I came up with for filling in extra nights:

  • Psalm 19:1-6
  • Psalm 95:1-7
  • Romans 1:19-20
  • Psalm 104 (for older kids)
  • Job 38-39 (for older kids)
Posted in Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

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Well, we didn’t exactly finish our Fruit of the Spirit unit with a bang, but we did make it all the way through, and I’ll just have to be satisfied with that. 🙂 Certain things fizzled out along the way, like our “tattoos,”  the Fruit of the Spirit board game (although we did play this one quite a bit until just recently), and the Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables.  As far as the books we used throughout the unit, 9 Fruits Alive by Mindy MacDonald was a big hit, especially with Elijah.  He’s requested it several times a week for the last couple months. Jesus in Me by Dandi Daley Mackall, however, pretty much just sat in our basket after the first couple weeks.  (Truth be told, I forgot about it.  I probably could have pulled it out and they would have enjoyed it.  Oh well.)

For this final week on “Self-Contol,” we really didn’t do anything extraordinary.  In fact, it mostly consisted of videos. {*cringe*} I intended to watch the Pleasure Island scene from Pinocchio and discuss the consequences of doing whatever you want and not exercising self-control.  We may not turn into donkeys, but it’s definitely not good for us and prevents us from being all that God has made us to be.  However, we never got to that one.  We did watch the older storybook animation of the self-control from Character Builders.  I loved this line from it’s song: “Get yourself some self-control or self will give you trouble.”  So true!  And of course, Ian wouldn’t let us get through the week without watching the episode on self-control from our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit.

We read one of Ian’s favorite books from Before Five in a Row, Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  This book was as much a hit with Elijah as it was when I first read it to Ian when he was two.  Both of them requested it several times throughout the week.  We tied it in with the fruit of the Spirit by talking about the man’s reaction and discussing whether or not he demonstrated self-control.  They enjoyed this book so much I might just have to keep it out and do some of the activities from the B4FIAR manual since we didn’t really “row” it this past week. (Post to come!)

Our “Listening Lesson” was shorter than it’s been, mostly because I’ve just about had my fill of some of the songs that we’ve used throughout the unit!  Here’s what made the final cut

I’m so glad we did this whole unit.  It was a great fit for summer.  It kept us in the Word without requiring a lot of planning time, and it laid a solid foundation for deeper study in the future.  I don’t think either of my boys will ever forget the nine traits listed in Galatians 5:22-23, and we’ve built a lot of fun memories along the way!

 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Against such things there is no law.

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness

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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:

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!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

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It’s hard for me to believe we’re coming close to the end of our Fruit of the Spirit unit, but last week we finished up faithfulness, which only leaves us two more weeks to go!  To help Ian understand faithfulness, I defined it as “keeping your promise no matter what,” whether that be a promise to God or another person.  To illustrate this trait, we spent time talking about Ian’s favorite Bible story: Daniel in the lion’s den (found in Daniel 6).  Daniel chose to worship and pray to God alone, even when it meant he would probably be eaten by lions.  What a powerful picture of faithfulness!

For our Five in a Row book we spent the week with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, which I wrote about in a separate post.  Mike was faithful to Mary Anne, continuing to work with her when newer and better construction equipment took over most of the jobs.  He even stays with her at the end of the story, when she’s no longer used for digging.  It’s a great demonstration of being a faithful friend.

We spent a lot of time on Mike Mulligan, but somewhere in the course of the week we also watched one of the two episodes related to faithfulness on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit.

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

Our “listening lesson” was pretty long this week because we included a lot from a CD of  Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel from Maestro Classics, as well as some music from our first “composer study” (post coming on that soon).  Here’s the part related specifically to our faithfulness lesson:

We’re in the home stretch now!  Coming up next: Gentleness.  With two rambuctious little boys, this could be a challenge!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness

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We continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit with another light week because we’d just come home from camping and I headed to a homeschool conference Thursday, but we did manage to spend enough time that it felt like we’d covered goodness.

What is goodness?  I think of it as things being as God originally intended.  I love what C.S. Lewis said about good and evil in Mere Christianity:

“ …badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness . . . Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.” C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity, II, 2, para. 10.

“Goodness” and “badness” are not two equal and opposing forces.  If there had never been good, there would have never been any possibility of evil.  “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31.  The only reason we’re not all oozing goodness is because sin entered the world when Adam and Even chose disobedience in Genesis 3.  So when we do the opposite of what they did, when we turn from sin and live God’s way, we are manifesting “goodness.”  What beautiful fruit!

As we talked about it for this lesson I didn’t want to focus on DOING so much as BEING.  But how do you describe the essence of “goodness” to preschoolers?  I liked some of the ideas in the song “Goodness” on the Music Machine: Fruit of the Spirit CD:

“Bees make honey and it sure tastes good. Did you ever smell a flower? Well it sure smells good…”

Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the SpiritThat seemed as good a place as any to start about having God’s goodness in us.  The idea was reiterated when we watched the video on Goodness from the older version of Kid’s Character Builders on YouTube. (The newer version, with updated animation, is also available on DVD.) The video says your heart is like a honeycomb that God wants to fill with “goodness.”  After watching it we enjoyed honey sticks and talking about how good they were.  We also watched the episode on goodness from our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit (still a favorite around here).

For our “listening lesson” this week I added a couple poems just for a little something different:

And that was pretty much it!  Most of our summer disruptions are over (at least the planned ones), so I’m hoping we’ll be able to dig in for the next three weeks and have a strong finish to our study of the Fruit of the Spirit!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

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!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

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We continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit this past week talking about patience, which I defined for the boys as “waiting without complaining.”  There were two Bible verses we focused on:

“Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God…” Philippians 2:14-15

“Be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:2

Ian knows the first one well already from a song (see our iPod playlist below), and I was surprised how much he enjoyed the lesson all week.  I guess I thought it would come across as nagging, but that must be from my own childhood baggage (*grin*).  I must have been an impatient little girl, because I remember countless times when my mom broke into song:  “Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry…”  Quite the catchy tune.

Even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard the Music Machine album (I had the vinyl as a kid, but we do have a CD now), if you’re from my generation you’ve probably heard the song on it about patience.  It must have been a favorite, for most of my friends seem to know that one.  It tells the story of a snail called Herbert, who in his younger days was a little too speedy and wreaked havoc as he crashed through spider webs and collided with crickets.  But his wise father taught him a little ditty that helped him mend his ways and take his time crawling through life (though it made the ants mad and the beetles, well, “they would fume.”  The point of the song is that when you start to get impatient with other people, remember that not only is God patient, but there are times when other people have to wait for you as well.  (We watched this video on YouTube for more about Herbert.  If you like it, check out the newer version with modern animation on from the DVD set Character Builders.)

Ian loved the song, and I decided it would be fun to spend some time with snails up close.  So one morning we went out snail hunting.  The day was already hot and dry so it wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated, but at last we managed to find three little friends to join us for our morning lesson.  We put them on dark paper so we could see the slimy dotted trail they left behind them.  The boys were fascinated!  We talked about the different parts of the snails anatomy to squeeze in some “official” learning, but mostly we just had fun watching them.  Ian set up races (a great chance to practice patience!), had fun redirecting them whenever they’d get close to the edge of the paper, and really would have liked to keep them around a lot longer, but alas, Mama wasn’t really keen on that idea.

  

For more Bible connection, we also discussed the story of Simeon, the man who waited to see God’s promised Messiah (see Luke 2:22-35).  It was a story Ian had never heard before, which made him curious and therefore very attentive.

For literature, we read the book The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss (part of Before Five in a Row).  I asked Ian why he thought I had chosen that book to go along with our lesson. We had planted seeds a while back in anticipation of doing this book, so he had no problem connecting it to patience.  We were rewarded for ours by seeing our little green shoots and lots of roots!

Here’s what was playing all week for our “Listening Lesson”:

It will be two weeks before I write about our lesson on “Kindness.”  There’s lots of stuff going on around here (visitors, vacations, and of course, 4th of July), and since we’re halfway through the Fruit of the Spirit, it seemed like a good idea to take a break!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

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We didn’t do a lot of activities last week related to our Fruit of the Spirit unit, but Ian and I had some great conversations on the subject as we talked about “peace.” Last week I wish we’d talked more about “joy” as it relates to stories in the Bible, so this time I was very intentional about reading in the Bible, putting passages on our playlist, etc.

Our Bible story for the week was Jesus calming the storm from Mark 4:35-41.  It was a review for us, since we just covered this passage a few months ago, but it was neat to see how many of the details Ian remembered when I asked him about it on Monday.  When we got to the part where Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” I asked Ian what the word “peace” means.  He wasn’t sure.  I defined it as “not feeling worried but trusting God even when things around us seem bad.”  I asked him about times in his own life when it might seem like these were bad or crazy and could make him worry.  He immediately said, “When it’s dark.”  Like most kids his age, that’s a big one for him.  We talked about two of the Bible verses he knows songs for that can help him to find peace when he starts to get scared.

“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”  Psalm 4:8

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God whose word I praise.  In God I trust; I will not be afraid. ” Psalm 56:3-4

I loved watching peace come over him even as we talked about this.  Scripture is so powerful, and I will use any means possible to get it into my kids’ hearts and minds!

The other Bible passage I focused on was Matthew 6:25-33 where Jesus exhorts his listeners, “Do not be anxious…” about finding the clothes and food they need, because they can trust God to provide, just as he does for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.  What a gift, that we can set aside our worries and rest in the peace of God.

Our iPod playlist was rather long this week, but the boys were still very enthusiastic about it.  They really like the songs that list all the “fruit,” and they noticed that I’ve started taking a break from a couple each week.  (I figure we’ve got all summer, so let’s rotate a bit!)  Here’s what we had going this week:

That was about it for our week.  We read The Quiet Way Home by Bonny Becker (one of the books from Before Five in a Row), but we didn’t do anything besides some discussions from the B4FIAR manual.  We skipped our tattoos this time, though we did watch the “peacefulness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit and play the Fruit of the Spirit board game.

Auto-B-Good Faith Collection: Fruits of the Spirithttps://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnBdu-9DQu4BY8DFi4dydmMZBMI31G0txInCnZsRfq5julV29kHg

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

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This week for our Bible lessons we continued our Fruit of the Spirit unit by talking about joy.  I’m finding it hard to break out of the pattern of what we’ve been doing for Bible over the last year.  I really want this to be a simple, fun overview, not an in depth study.  So if all we do is listen to our songs about joy all week, I want that to be enough.  And actually, we did more than that this week, but I don’t want to feel like I have to do a lot for each “fruit,” especially since I know these first few weeks are the “easy” ones, for which I’ll be able to find lots of things to do.  So I have to keep reminding myself not to feel guilty if we don’t do anything but listen and sing!

On Monday we put on “joy” tattoos, but Ian didn’t want to wear one this week.  Instead he offered it to his sister.  Since our Arianna Joy does live up to her middle name, I went along with his idea.  She got it on her belly, where it made me smile every time I changed her over the next few days.

And we watched the “joyfulness” episode on our Auto-B-Good DVD Fruits of the Spirit, as well as playing our Fruit of the Spirit board game and Memory Match game from Christian Preschool Printables.

Fruit Of The Spirit Faith PostersIan’s learned to read “love” and “joy,” and I’ve been hanging the appropriate poster each week from the set I got from Oriental Trading Company. Each poster has the word, followed by a related Bible verse. There are only these six, so there will be a few weeks we miss, but I still like having them on the boys’ bedroom door each week.

Thanks to our iPod playlist, both Ian and Elijah have pretty much memorized Galatians 5:22-23 (But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.)  We had lots of fun songs to add about “joy” this week, and one of our favorite joyful activities was breaking out the rhythym instruments to play along.

  

We also did lots of joyful dancing (like Gerald in Giraffe’s Can’t Dance, our book of the week)

  

They requested “our lesson” over and over this week, both in the car and at home with the instruments, so I’d say it was a hit!  Here’s what it included:

Coming up next, peace!  I think we should just nap all week.  In a hammock.  By a bubbling brook with a gentle breeze blowing over us as we rest.  Somehow I have a feeling our lesson won’t quite look like that though.  Stay tuned!

Posted in Bible lessons, Preschool
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