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!

This week we did ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 10 on the Ten Commandments.  (We skipped Week 9, which was a review, since we’re really just focusing on the Bible part of the curriculum.)  It seems like we had more discipline issues than normal this week, so we found lots of opportunities for talking about various commandments.  I decided not to do a specific “memory verse” this week because I cared more about Ian becoming familiar with all the commandments, but “Honor your father and your mother,” (which was the suggested verse) did come up a lot over the last few days!

In keeping with my objective of building familiarity with all the commandments, our Bible Notebook work centered around short summaries of each one.  I really like the website BibleStoryPrintables.com (and its sister sites).  Momma C from ABC Jesus Loves Me sent us there to find a few different ideas for activities.  I had trouble making up my mind, so I ended up choosing two (a little reinforcement never hurt anyone!)

First we did this 10 Commandments train craft.  I wanted to put them all on one page, so I shrank the images down.  Ian’s not very into coloring, but he paid close attention as I talked about each commandment and added it to the train.  (In case the “Thomas” jammies didn’t give it away, he LOVES trains!)  The engine has Proverbs 22:6 on it: “Train up a child in the way he should go.  And when he is old he will not depart from it.”  I loved this idea!

For some reason I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the fact that we have ten fingers.  (How did I miss this???)  So I thought I’d work on associating 10 fingers with 10 commandments.  I got out Ian’s fingerpaint set and just let him have fun.  Once his hands were covered, I helped him make handprints.We’ve been trying to work on numerals and counting, so I printed up these 10 commandments cards.  The cards were meant to be full page images to use on a bulletin board, but like the train cars, I shrank them down so we could put them all on one page.  Again, we talked through each commandment (and number) as we glued the cards on.  (Ian and I both liked the little pictures that went along with each one.  He spent a long time looking at each one and wanted to read through the whole page several times.)

I put together an iPod playlist for the first time in a couple weeks, and it was really nice to have something to listen to that went along with our story.  Here’s what we played throughout the week:

• “Train Up a Child” (Proverbs 22:6) and “Honor Your Father and Your Mother” (Deut. 5:16) from the Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CDs
• “Honor Your Father and Your Mother” from Sing the Word from A to Z CD by the Harrow Family
• “Ten Commandments” from The Singing Bible
• “Exodus 20” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing (also includes a song about the 10 Commandments)
• “Trust and Obey” from “100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back“

Once again, I intended to do a Before Five in a Row book, but I just didn’t get to it other than one read through.  I’m trying to give myself grace.  After all, I’m battling the nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, so my life is all about priorities right now.  Ian’s only three.  As long as we do our Bible lesson, I’ll consider myself on top of things!  🙂

We ended up doing two weeks on the story of Baby Moses due to a death in the family and the ensuing chaos.  Ian certainly didn’t mind.  From the first day, the story captured his heart in a way no other has.  He asked me to retell the story with the flannelgraph several times, and then he spent another half hour moving the figures around and telling it himself.  (I wish I’d gotten a picture, especially since it happened every time we got the flannelgraph out!)  Then he started wrapping his stuffed bear up in a blanket, calling it his “baby”, and for days he spoke to it in a soft little voice, rocked it in his arms, and lovingly carried it around in a basket I gave him once I saw how into it he was getting.  SO sweet!

For our memory verse, we used the passage from ABC Jesus Loves Me week 7: “When I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God whose word I praise.” Psalm 56:3-4.  It’s on Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em in Your Heart CD, and again I found myself lamenting that his songs don’t include the reference.  Luckily we review our verses every time we read through our Bible Notebook, so I’m hoping Ian will pick up the references that way for the songs that don’t include them.  Along with the memory verse (which is one of our favorites–we find all sorts of occasions to sing it), Ian really liked the song about Baby Moses from the Lullaby Bible (which I think has a CD, but we just have the book).  He kept asking me to wrap him up in a blanket, hold him like a baby, and sing it to him.

Because of of everything going on this week, I didn’t end up using an iPod playlist.  We did read the story from the NIV several times.  We also watched the first part of The Prince of Egypt  (next week we’ll be talking about Moses leading the people through the Red Sea so we’ll finish it then) and Veggie Tales: Duke and the Great Pie War (also available streaming on Netflix), which includes a story about Miriam taking care of baby Moses.

For our Bible Notebook we did this Baby Moses craft from Little Blots (you have to scroll down the page to find it).  First Ian colored the baby and the basket with crayons.  Then he used blue watercolor paint over it.

Finally, I traced his hands several times on green construction paper, cut them out, and glued them on to be the “reeds” where Moses’ mother hid the basket.

In accordance with the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 6 lesson, we spent a week talking about Joseph’s colorful coat, his dreams, and how he ended up in Egypt after his brothers sold him.  I did use the Bible verse from the curriculum this week (Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21).  I love Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CDs, because they do a great job of helping us memorize Scripture.  I just wish they incorporated Bible reference so we knew where to find the verses!  Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

• “Genesis 37” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing (and the song “Joseph”)
• “Joseph’s Dream” from The Singing Bible
• “Do Not Be Overcome By Evil” from Hide ‘Em In Your Heart CD

For our Bible Notebook, Ian made a “coat” from a tissue paper collage.  I found a paper doll online, then saved the image and enlarged it so it would take up the full page.  Then used it to draw the outline of a coat for Ian to fill in with tissue paper squares.

After it was dry, I cut it out and helped Ian paste it over the Joseph paper doll, along with the hair he chose for him.

Every week when we add our latest creation to Ian’s Bible Notebook, we read through all the previous pages.  He’s getting very good at “reading” the memory verses!

I’m still trying to catch up to what we’re actually learning about, but I do want to put up at least basic posts for the Bible stories we’ve already covered.  A family crisis last week has kept me from writing, but I’d like to be caught up by the end of the day today (which will be a little easier since we ended up taking about a week off of any “school”.)

Ian was already familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, but it’s a favorite so he didn’t mind spending a week on it.  This was the first week we incorporated a “letter of the week.”  Ian really liked writting the letter in a rice tray, and he enjoys the pictures in Big Thoughts for Little People so much, he always wants more than just the page for our letter.  I let him look through the rest of the book, but I tell him he’ll have to wait until “K” week (or whatever) to read about the pages that catch his interest.

For our memory verse, I strayed from the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 3 lesson.  As I was looking at the activities in the lesson plan I came across this verse and it seemed more appropriate.  I want verses that Ian can really internalize, words that will express the feelings in his heart as he grows in his relationship with the Lord.  Psalm 119:10 seemed more “personal,” so I set it to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”:

“I will seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.  Psalm one-nineteen, verse ten.  Psalm one-nineteen, verse ten.  I will seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.”

I did go with her suggestion of teaching “Oh Be Careful, Little Eyes, What You See.”  Ian loved this song and asked me sing it over and over.  I love the message and know we’ll refer to these lyrics many times in years to come.  Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

• “Genesis 3” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing.
• “Trust and Obey” from “100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back“
• “Two Trees” and “God’s Promise” from The Singing Bible
• “Oh Be Careful, Little Eyes, What You See” from My First Hymnal CD

Our Bible Notebook was a big hit this week.  I saw this idea for a fingerprint tree and used the “alternate paint idea” of pudding.  Since I’m always battling with Elijah not to smear food all over his high chair tray, I thought he’d love being a part of this project.  Not so much!  He screamed and refused to touch the pudding, even after I smeared a little on his lips.  Ian, on the other hand, had a blast!

I mixed up a batch of chocolate pudding to use for the trunk (and for us to eat for dessert that night), plus a batch of vanilla to dye with food coloring for play and our notebook page.  Here’s the finished product!