Loving our Bible Studies

No Focus on Thanksgiving post to put up today :-(  We finished working on our secret project that I can't share on here until after Thanksgiving so I don't ruin the surprise for our family members.  Aaron and I are headed to speech therapy today and then the two of us are going grocery shopping to get the stuff to make all the yummy food for our celebrations!!  :-)

I do want to share today about how well our bible lessons are going!  If you have followed us then you know that we are using Grapevine Studies and it is fitting really well with MFW.  The first lesson of Grapevine Studies was creation.  Since MFW spread out creation into a couple of weeks we were only doing one box of stick figures at a time for the creation lesson.

Well - that has all changed now.  Today was our first day to do a full Grapevine Studies lesson - the story God forming Adam and Eve and Adam's job in the garden.  Actually it was two lessons for Grapevine Studies - God forming Adam and putting him in the garden, and then God forming Eve and putting her in the garden.  But since MFW had them as one lesson we combined them as one lesson.

I actually used the story from the MFW teacher's manual to tell the story - using the stick figure drawings from Grapevine Studies.  Here is a picture of my teacher's manual - I made small drawings at the points where I wanted the drawings to go into the story.

After we finished the story (the boys drew the pics in their notebook as I was drawing them on the board) I had each boy go to the whiteboard, and retell the story back to me, using the pictures.  They both did a very good job of retelling the story!

I think they really liked getting up there and "playing teacher", telling me the story.

I really think this method is going to work well for us!  And I love how well the two programs work together! :-)  I think using the Grapevine Studies to supplement the MFW just helps in comprehension and retention of the stories for the boys!  (and it is a good way to get Aaron involved :-) )

Ok - got to go get ready for the afternoon!

Until next time,
Kellie

A Part of God's Plant

I really liked the illustration that the curriculum had you use in the leaf lesson for the biblical concept of "I will grow in Jesus".

It started on Day 1 with you showing the children a healthy green plant.  I forgot to get a house plant (but probably for the best because I kill house plants) so we decided to find a nice plant outside near the schoolhouse.

We found a nice little plant growing at the base of one of our trees in our yard.  We talked about the leaves on this plant and how they are happy living on the plant.  Except for one little leaf who decided that he did not want to live on the plant anymore.  He wanted to be free and doesn't think he needs the plant and wants to go somewhere else.

He decided to live in a dark area of the schoolroom.

 (you can't see the leaf in this picture...it is on the floor between the desk and the filing cabinet)

I then explained to the kids that God is like that plant outside and we are like the leaves.  If we are God's child then we are like a leaf that is growing on the plant and God gives us what we need.  but some people don't want to obey God and want to live without God.  They are like the leaf that decided to live in the dark shadow.

During the 6 days of the lesson we would check on the plant outside and observe how well all the leaves were doing.  We would then check on our poor leaf that decided he could do better by himself.

By day 5 the leaf had withered away to almost nothing.  We focused on how, just like a leaf needs food and water to grow and needs to stay with the plant, our spirit, the 'real' us, needs to stay with Jesus to live and grow.  I explained how the bible is like our 'food'.  We read several bible passages that went along with this concept (Psalm 1:1-3, Jer 17:7-8, and 1 John 5:12).

I think Seth did a good job of grasping this concept.

We also sang the song "Read Your Bible, Pray Every Day".  Seth was excited about this because he remembered the song from Vacation Bible School this summer.  We had a lot of fun acting out growing and shrinking!  Alyssa was even trying to do the actions with us :-)

My prayer is that Seth will remember these lessons as he continues to grow!

Letting Our Light Shine

We are enjoying our moon lessons!  I have several posts I am working on from these lessons :-)  Hopefully I can get them all up in the next few days.

I have really liked our biblical theme this week!  The theme is "I am the light of the world".  We have been talking about how the moon doesn't actually have any light - we see the moon's glow because of the sun's light being reflected on it.  We are learning that we are like the moon and Jesus is like the sun and how, if we know Jesus, we are to 'let our light so shine'... and how other people need to see our light shining brightly!

One of the activities that is mentioned in the curriculum is to plan ways to let our light shine to people we know.  We have some friends who lost their house.  I was already planning on making some food to take to them and so I decided to work that into part of our lesson.  Seth made a card for them to cheer them up.  We took the food to them today.

On the way home Seth asked "Momma do you think they saw my light shining?"

I think he is learning this concept! :-)

Raising Rockstars – The Ant

We have started a new year – therefore we are starting a new series of lessons for Raising Rockstars.  We are going through the ABC’s I Believe series from Danielle’s Place.   So far I am loving these lessons.

Our first week was on the letter A – Consider the Ants.  The memory/theme verse is Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”.

We talked about how ants are busy workers.  There are many different jobs on an ant hill and every ant knows their job and they do it.  They don’t worry about what other ants are doing.  They see something that needs to be done and they do it.  Through the lesson I tried to hammer in the concept that that you need to “do your work without being told to do it” and we talked about different things that the boys can do around the house and that they should be doing without having to be told to do it.  God wants us to be like the ants – be hard workers.

This worked perfect for this first week of the new year because I introduced new chores and chore charts this week.  So it helped in explaining why our chores are so important and why everyone needs to do their part.

Here are some picture highlights from the week.

The boys colored their memory verse sheet.

 

My pictures didn’t turn out well…but we made ant antler headbands to wear while we are doing our work  (even though the boys don’t like wearing them now…oh well…they were cute for a moment).

I found little whisk broom and dust pan sets at Target on the $1 aisle.  The boys are learning how to sweep up their mess off the floor after meals.

I am really thinking I am going to like this series of lessons.  We are doing 30 minutes every day of our Raising Rockstars bible lessons.  I am excited to say that this is one of the boys favorite times of the day!  :-)

Click here for more Raising Rock Stars posts.

Raising Rockstars - Creation

We had a fun filled week studying about Creation!  The boys really seemed to like the new schedule and the activities that we did for our bible lesson.

Our Memory Verse:

Books we read & Videos we watched:

To kick off our lessons for the week on Monday we watched A Beginner's Bible video on creation.

Of course we read the creation story from the bible - Genesis 1.

We read The Creation Story from DK Publishing (we checked it out from the library).  The kids really loved the illustrations in this book 

Songs we sang:
1. He's Got the Whole World In His Hands


2. Creation Song that I made up
(to tune of He's Got the Whole World In His Hands)

He created the whole world with his voice (repeat 3x)

He said let there be light on Day 1 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created the skies and the seas on day 2 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created land and plants on day 3 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created the sun moon and stars on day 4 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created fish and birds on day 5 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

He created animals and man on day 6 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice


The good Lord rested from his work on day 7 (repeat 2x)
He created the whole world with his voice

3. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
(this is Aaron's favorite song but we change a line in the song (bolded below)...it went well with the creation lesson)


Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
God placed you right where you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
God placed you right where you are



Games we played:

Adam Names the Animals file folder game from here.   The boys took turns finding the animals when I would read the name card.  Seth enjoyed helping Aaron find the animals.

Activities we did:

1. Play-doh creation.  I gave the boys each a blob of play-doh and told them they had 2 minutes to create anything they wanted.  (I was helping Aaron and made a man for him...he then started putting on the eyes, ears, nose, etc...it was so cute to watch.)  Then I took up the play-doh and told them to create something...they realized right away that they can't create anything out of nothing...this led into the story that day...we talked about how God did create the world out of nothing...

Crafts we made:

Animal jungle scene foam craft that I got from Wal-Mart

Our Family Project For the Week

We made puppets as our family project this week.  I found a Martha Stewart kit of 4 animal puppets (2 dogs and 2 cats) on clearance.  It was one of those kits where you just had to stick the pieces to the bag (which was fabric covered by the way).  There was no need for glue or scissors.  We talked about the creation lesson. Seth told Daddy his bible verse and we talked about how God did not create animals the way we were...he used his voice to create everything.  When we were done making them the boys did a puppet show (kind of)...and had fun playing.

Here are some pictures from our family time:

Next Week's Theme: God Made Me!!

Click on the button below for more Raising Rockstars Posts!

 

Note: I am getting most of my lessons and craft and activity ideas from Danielle's Place.  This is a great site that has so many good ideas.  I am using their resources as my core and then adding in additional things as I think of them or come across them from other sites, stores, etc...