Fruit of the Spirit: Joy
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.
Ian’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:
- “Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 & 25)” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 2 by Steve Green
- “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back
- “O Happy Day” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back
- “A Joyful Heart (Proverbs 17:22)” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 2 by Steve Green
- “Good Fruit” from our SonHarvest County Fair VBS CD from a couple years ago (links to music played online)
- “Joy” from Music Machine: Fruit of the Spirit
- “The Joy, Joy, Joy of the Lord” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back
- “God’s Love in Me” from our SonHarvest County Fair VBS CD
- “Joy” from Doing Life With God in the Picture (from Willow Creek’s Promiseland curriculum)
- “Happy Day” by Tim Hughes
- “The Fruit” from Seeds of Character by Seeds Family Worship
- “SONG SING FOR JOY” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
- “We Are Filled to the Top With Joy” from our SonHarvest County Fair VBS CD
- “Fruit of the Spirit” from Fruit of the Spirit: Banana na na (Vineyard Music Kids)
- Karen & Kids podcast episode “Fruit of the Spirit – Part 1”
- “Count it All Joy” (Adventures in Odyssey episode #225) on A Time of Discovery
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!