Creation
Here we go! I’ve been a little slow getting this blog up and running, so I wanted to look back over the last few weeks since we started “officially” doing some school work. As I’ve said, the most important element of school to me is studying God’s Word and helping my kids hide it (“treasure” it) in their hearts. So while we are touching on a few other things, the main priority is our Bible lesson each week. If for whatever reason we don’t have time to get to anything else, that’s fine.
We actually spent two weeks talking about Creation. Our memory verse was Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Ian loved holding up a 1 on each hand, and had it memorized in minutes! We sang it to the tune of “Are You Sleeping?” as suggested in the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 1 lesson plan, as well as the Scripture Rock version on our iPod playlist (see below).
Although I purchased a Betty Lukens Small Deluxe Set (flannelboard and felt pieces) on eBay to use with our Bible lessons, I borrowed these felt circles from our children’s ministry at church to help talk about what was created each day because I liked the way each day was visually distinctive.
There is a seventh circle in the set, but I didn’t think it clearly communicated the message “God rested” to my three-year old, so we didn’t use it.
I want to keep a record of the stories we study, so we started a Bible notebook. It’s just a 3-ring binder that provides a place for our memory verses and some sort of craft to remind Ian of the story. For Creation, I’d already been thinking I wanted to do something for each day, so I started brainstorming and looking for inspiration. I got some good ideas from this Creation book, raided my sticker stash and some magazines for pictures, and to label each day, I printed out these flash cards and just cut out the text and numbers. Here’s what we ended up with:
Pretty simple: just yellow chalk on black paper.
Ian got a fingerpainting set for Christmas, and everytime he makes a masterpiece, I save it to use for collages. So we cut the water for each of these days out of one of his blue paintings. He loved spreading the cottonball clouds on Day 2, and collecting the leaves for the plants on Day 3. (The flash makes it hard to see, but that was a magazine picture of a pink flower as well!)
For Day 4 we found several “suns” in magazines, so Ian chose his favorite. No luck with a moon, so I just cut a crescent out of a fun print I found, and Ian loved the star stickers. He found some feathers on one of our walks that week, so we figured they could represent birds and added them to our collection of stickers and magazine pictures. (My favorite was the whale’s tail.)
Animals for Day 6 were easy to find, but I couldn’t figure out what I was going to do for Day 7. The best I thought I’d find was pictures of babies sleeping. Then I came across this picture advertising a spa around Christmas time, and while it may be a little stereotypical with the white beard and all, I figured a resting Santa was more appropriate than babies.
Here was our iPod playlist for the week, which Ian just listens to as he plays:
- “Genesis 1” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing.
- “Children Listen/Creation” from Songs from the Beginner’s Bible
- “In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1)” from Scripture Rock (Vol. 1)
- “Six Days” from TrueRassic Park VBS (which our church used a few years ago)
- “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands” from a CD of Bible songs I found at the 99-Cent Store
- “God Made the Universe” from The Singing Bible
We also worked a bit on recognizing the numerals 1-7 since Ian doesn’t know any of those yet and it tied in well with this story. And that was our week!