Raising Rock Stars Through Living

We are taking our Christmas break so we are not doing any formal schooling right now.  But I decided to go ahead and do a post because we are constantly doing learning through living.

To me, raising rock stars consists of a lot more than planning times of bible lessons.  Raising rockstars involves teaching my kids how to live a life that is pleasing to God.  Raising rockstars involves showing them through example by the way I live my life and teaching them how to make the right decisions.

The other night we went out to eat with my in-laws.  At the restaurant was one of those games where you put in $0.50 and move this little pincher around to try to grab a toy.  Of course it will come just close enough to make you believe that you could get it if you had one more shot.  Before you know it you have wasted several dollars on a toy that is probably not even worth the first $0.50 that you put into the machine.  But of course it is very appealing…especially to little ones…and Seth went over to it and asked if I had any money so he could play it.

Pause there for a moment…

We are teaching our kids about giving and how our money belongs to God and that we always need to give back to him what is due and that we need to give money to help the missionaries.  We make sure that the boys have change every Sunday morning to take to Sunday School to give for missions.  Also, Seth is sitting with us in service on Sunday nights and his favorite thing to do is to put change in the offering plate as it passes by.

Now return to the restaurant with Seth standing in front of that silly game…

Seth asked me if he could have some change to play that game.  I simply gave him an option.  I told him if he wanted to play that game he could but if I gave him change to play that game then he would not have any change to put in the offering plate on Sunday night.

His answer was “Mommy I want to wait and give my money to Jesus”.

YES indeed!!!  I am raising a little rock star for Christ!!

Click here to see more posts on raising rock stars!

Creativity For Kids Giveaway Winner

Well my first giveaway was fun!  Maybe next time I will get more people to participate.

Congratulations to Hannah – comment #5 (chosen by random.org).  I have contacted her and she has 48 hours to respond.

Thank you to all who participated.  I can’t wait for the next product review with this company!!  If you haven’t tried out any of their kits you really need to.  Click here to order a kit online or find a store near you that sells them (our Target sells them).

Tot School – Getting Ready For Christmas

Aaron is currently 29 months old

We aren’t doing much of regular “tot school” this month…but we are having fun learning experiences through making Christmas decorations, Christmas presents and just having some good ol Christmas fun!!

We made a lot of Christmas decorations this week.  We made two different types of Christmas tree decorations.

For one we put felt around a foam cone and then Aaron stuck ball pointed straight pins in the foam for the ornaments.  He really enjoyed doing this one because he was able to do it all by himself.

We also made pipe cleaner trees and stuck beads on them for ornaments.  He had a little bit of trouble doing this but he sure tried hard!

We read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus from the bible while we set up our nativity scene.

Aaron proved to me that he can do simple patterning as we made our ornament ball wreath.  I wanted to thread our ornaments by doing a shiny one and then a glittery one.  Aaron was handing the ornaments to me…saying “shiny”, “glitter”… and was doing a very good job keeping them in the right pattern.  I was so impressed!

As a family we enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and got some really fun pictures in the process!

 

   

Click here for more tot school posts.

Seth’s Week In Review

Seth had a pretty good week this week!  As far as school, we are going to be a bit laxed until after Christmas!  We are too busy making Christmas decorations, and presents, and just having fun!

We are still striving to do a bit of school every day though.  We worked alot on our counting this week (Seth is still working at counting  group of objects…learning how to make sure that each object gets counted and that it only gets counted once).  We also worked on our phonics – concentrating on beginning sounds of words.  He is doing very well with this.

We were busy, like I said, working on Christmas decorations.  Here are a couple of pictures from that.

We are using our nativity scene for our Raising Rockstar lessons this month.  This week we set up the nativity scene as we read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus in the bible.

We also had fun decorating the Christmas tree and getting some really good pictures in the process!

Seth is getting so big!  It is so hard to believe that he is approaching 5 years old (in March).  We are planning on having a great big 5 year old birthday party!!

Our Handmade Christmas Blog is up!

Hey guys!!  I have decided how to share my handmade Christmas presents with you to give you ideas for fun,easy Christmas gifts.

I have created a new blog specifically for this.  The main reason is because my family, who I am making these gifts for, reads this blog and I don’t want to ruin their surprise (so family please please please do not go to this other blog until after Christmas!)

Iwante to be able to share my ideas that I have found in hopes that you will find some ideas so that you too can have a handmade Christmas!!!  I really think too much emphasis is put on how much we spend at Christmas…who gets the most expensive gift.  I do not think that is what Christmas should be about!  Christmas is all about giving (we are celebrating the birth of our Saviour – who gave his LIFE for us).  Christmas should be about creating and sharing memories!  Having a handmade Christmas helps accomplish that!

Some of these gifts my children have helped me with…some of them they haven’t (mainly due to their young age).  I will do my best to give clear instructions.  Most of these ideas I have found from other websites and I will give credit where credit is due!

And I love comments!!  So please please please let me know what you think and if you found any of these ideas useful.  Please feel free to share links to these blog posts!

So if you would like to see what we are doing for our handmade Christmas please click here to go to the blog (family please please please do not click that link!)

Window Clings

Here is another great Christmas decoration idea.  I found this idea online…I knew my kids weren’t quite old enough to do it themselves this year but I wanted to try it to make sure it worked and it did!!

An easy way to make fun window clings – simply take dimensional fabric paint  (I was making snowflakes so I used white and silver glitter paint).  Make your design on wax paper and let dry overnight.  (If you need to you can draw your design on a piece of paper and place under your wax paper).  After you let it dry for about 24 hours simply peel it away from the wax paper and stick on the window.  It will cling to the window!!

Here are the snowflakes I made.

We will definitely be doing these every year (I don’t think I will try to save them…I don’t think they will survive the summer heat in the attic) and I am already thinking of ideas for other seasons that we can do with these since they are so easy and so cool!  We could do hearts for valentines, eggs and bunnies for Easter, flags and fireworks for 4th of July, etc… Oh the possibilities are endless!

Raising Rockstars - Christmas

I want to make sure my kids understand as early as they can the true meaning of Christmas.  Therefore all this month our Raising Rock Stars focus will be on the story of the birth of Christ…the true meaning of Christmas!

We put up our Christmas decorations today and we tied our Raising Rock Stars lesson in with setting up the nativity scene.

The first thing we did was gather at the buffet where we were going to set up the nativity scene (as you can tell it was a pj day!!)

I pulled out the bible and turned to Luke 2 and started reading about the birth of Christ.  I brought out each nativity figurine at the point that they were mentioned in the story.

We talked of Mary and Joseph and that they came to Bethlehem and that baby Jesus was born in a stable.  He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

We talked about how the angel came to the shepards in the field.  (Our nativity set did not have an angel so I decided to use the angel that is usually our tree topper)

The angel said that there would be a sign for the shepards – they would find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

We then went to Matthew and discussed the wise men that followed the star and brought gifts to the newborn king.  (side note…the pic above cracks me up…it looks like that camel is smiling for the camera from the angle that I took the picture).

We will come back to this table many times in the next few weeks, reading the story over and over, looking at the figurines and learning the story of the birth of Christ.  This is where our emphasis is going to be during this Christmas season.

Click here to see other Raising Rock Star posts.

Making Our Christmas Decorations

We had a busy day today putting up, along with making new, Christmas decorations.  Below are pictures and instructions for the decorations we made!

We made 2 different kinds of Christmas trees. For the first one I took a cone-shaped floral cone and wrapped it with green felt.  We wrapped a red pipe cleaner and a shiny green ribbon around it.  I then had the boys take colored ball pointed straight pins and stick them through the foam for ornaments.  They boys enjoyed this because it was easy for them to do :-).  We then took pom poms and pinned them to the top of the tree and a few more around the tree for added effect.

 

For the 2nd tree I took a green pipe cleaner and folded it in half and twisted it.  I then took other pieces of pipe cleaner and twisted them around the first piece to make branches.  I stuck the tree in a piece of floral foam.  I then had the boys put plastic beads on the branches for ornaments.  We put a sequence star on the top.

 

Here are some pictures of the finished trees (on top of the piano mixed in with other decorations).

 

Another thing we did was take some mini foil muffin cups (red and green) and cut a hole in the middle and put them on Christmas lights to give the lights a glow.  Really the only thing the boys could do for this one is point to where they thought I should put them.  They really turned out cool…with all the lights out they have a pretty cool glowing effect.

 

I tried to get some pictures without the flash to capture the glowing effect…these pictures really didn’t capture the effect…but they kind of looked cool anyways :-)

Another thing we made was an ornament wreath.  I bought some pretty red balls (some were shiny and some were glittery).  The site where I found the idea said to use a wire coat hanger…but I can never get those to work very well…plus I don’t think I had enough ornaments to fill one of those…so I just used heavy guage floral wire.  I twisted two pieces together to get the size circle I wanted.  We then put on the ornaments (this was actually a good simple patterning lesson…and Aaron did very well with it…he would hand me a shiny one saying “shiny” and then a glittery one saying “gitter”.  I would ask him what was next and most of the time he gave me the correct one!  I was so proud).

Now my wreath looks more like a pile of ornaments instead of  a circle…but I still think it looks pretty :-)

  

I was so excited when I opened one of our decoration boxes!  I had totally forgotten that we had made garland for our tree last year until I saw it in the box!!  It brought back memories of last year!!  It made me even more excited about this tradition we are starting of making seasonal decorations to enjoy every year!

(this garland was simply a foam bead kit that came with the stringing wire and plastic needle!  We bought two kits and it made enough garland to wrap our 6 1/2 ft tree.)

 

And don’t you love Alyssa’s stocking?  If you didn’t catch the post about us making this stocking then click here to go see it…it includes a giveaway for a Creativity For Kids kit (any kit you would like to try)