Raising Rock Stars

This week we worked on the letter C lesson from Danielle’s Place.  We focused on the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den and talked about courage…and how not to be a scaredy cat!

Our Memory Verse was Isaiah 41:10a Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God

Of course – we had to watch our favorite Veggietales DVD, Where Is God When I am Scared, because it fit so perfectly.

We made lion face bean bags.

We ate our lunch on lion zoo pal plates.

I took some more lion zoo pal plates and punched holes all around the edges and cut a piece of yarn for the boys to lace around their plates.

We made scaredy cat books!  I had Seth draw pictures of what he was scared of.  He drew a picture of a snake and a picture of his basketball goal falling over (this happened in the middle of the night one night…and it scared him real bad and apparently still scares him even today).

 

Seth is really starting to ask questions about salvation and we are having some really good conversations about Jesus and what he came to earth to do for us.  I have a feeling he will be one of the ones that will accept Jesus at a pretty young age!  I am just daily praying that God will give me the right words to tell him and that it will penetrate his heart and that he will understand.

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!  :-)

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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!!

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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.

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Raising Rockstars – Our Seeing Eyes

Weekly Theme – God Made Our Seeing Eyes

Well we were finally able to get back to our Raising Rockstar lessons after our couple of weeks off due to the big kitchen remodel!!  The boys were super excited about getting back into their normal routine again!

We are still focusing on how God made us and this week we talked about how God made our eyes so we could see his beautiful creations!  We had some really good discussions about all things we can do because we have eyes and all the wonderful things we can look at.  We focused a lot on God’s creation.

Memory Verse

We learned this verse using hand motions.  for “The hearing ear,” we pointed to our ears, “and the seeing eye,” pointed to our eyes, “The Lord hath made” we pointed up “both of them” we put one finger on an ear and the other on an eye.

I was very proud of Seth memorizing this entire verse this week!

Books We Read

We read the bible again, of course!   We read our memory verse (Proverbs 20:12) and talked about how God made our eyes. We read Psalm 25:15 and talked about how to keep our eyes on the Lord.   We read in John 9 about how God healed a blind man.

Oh – I have to put this in!!  There was proof this week that my son listens to his lessons at church :-)  On Monday when I introduced our lesson before we even got in the bible Seth said “God healed a blind man by putting mud on his eyes”.  I was so proud of him!!!

I checked out some books dealing with the seeing and the 5 senses to read during our lessons to learn more about our eyes.

 

Songs We Sang

Our song we sang all week this week was “Oh be careful little eyes what you see”.

We also sang “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”  (this is one of Aaron’s favorites)

Activities We Did

I checked out one of those I Spy books from the library and the boys enjoyed using their eyes to find all of the little objects in the pictures.  I have to admit it was quite hard at times.  Mommy even had problems finding some of the objects.

We went outside and talked about all the things we could see with our eyes.

Crafts We Made

We didn’t really do any crafts pertaining to our rockstar lessons but we did make an eye snack.  (sorry for the picture…it really didn’t turn out well.)

I cut a piece of bread in an eye shape (or the best I could since I was free-handing the cut).  Then we spread cream cheese on it.  We put a kiwi slice in the middle for the iris and then a blob of raspberry preserves on top of that for the pupil.

I didn’t realize until I sat down to write this post that I didn’t get any pictures this week of us and our lessons.  But you know what…that’s not important.  The important thing is that we did spend time together this week in bible lessons and learning more about our Lord!

Next Week’s Theme – Our Listening Ears

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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...

Raising Rock Stars – Halloween 1

Weekly Theme – Halloween Week 1

Last week and this week are going to be kind of off weeks for us.   We are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen (new cabinets and new flooring) so things are a bit chaotic.  We are not doing any regular school but I am trying to at least get a little bit of Raising Rock Stars lessons in.  We did pretty good last week (which is what this post is a review of) but it is going to be a bit harder this week considering I have no kitchen cabinets or countertops and everything from my kitchen is either in my room or the school room!

But you don’t want to hear about that do you?  Since we are in a bit of chaos I decided to take a break from our God Made Me theme and focus a bit on Halloween and Where Is God When I am Scared?

I will admit Halloween is my least favorite holiday.  I could sit here and say that they shouldn’t even have the holiday and wish it away…but that is not going to make it go away.  The fact that Seth is having a lot of fears right now and is seeing the monsters in his room at night doesn’t help matters. But I have decided the best way to tackle this is to  just take a different approach on it…instead of trying to ignore it, find a way to enjoy it!

So one of our major focus was on the jack-o-lantern.  I LOVED Carissa’s Rock Star post last week on their view of the jack-o-lantern and the poem she had.  We have adopted that view ourselves.  In our house we have Matthew 5:16 Jack-O-Lanterns (you can read the verse below under the Memory Verse heading).  You can now ask Seth when you see a jack-o-lantern what it represents and he will tell you “The Light of Jesus shining through you”.

Our other major focus has been the Veggie Tales episode “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”  Seth has begun to love Veggie Tales and this episode is exactly what he has needed.  We have had many good discussions on monsters and scary stuff and how most of it is not real but most importantly God is bigger than the boogie man and He is watching over Seth.

Memory Verse

I had Seth concentrate on learning the first part of the verse “Let your light so shine”.  He has grasped it too!  The other day I asked him “why are we calling them Matthew 5:16 Jack-O-Lanterns?”  He said “let your light so shine!”

Books We Read and Videos We Watched

Of course we read the bible. We are concentrating on Matthew 5:16 and Psalm 56:3 (What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee).

Every night before bed we have been reading the book “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”.  We have been making sure in our nightly prayers that we thank God for his creation and thank him for watching over us.

We have also been watching the DVD “Where Is God When I Am Scared?”.  It has the story that is in the book along with the story of Daniel and the lion’s den.  We have talked about how much God took care of Daniel and that he will take care of us too.

I want the book “The Pumpkin Patch Parable” but I have not been able to find it yet.  I am going to look at Target tomorrow.  We have talked about the story (I know the story, have read it before) even though we don’t have the book yet.  We talked about the story as we carved our jack-o-lantern.

Songs We Sang

If you haven’t already guessed our song that we have been singing over and over is “God Is Bigger”.  Here are the lyrics to the chorus.

God is bigger than the boogie man

He’s bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV

God is bigger than the boogie man

And he watches out for you and me.

We have also been singing “This Little Light of Mine”.  The boys love for me to have the pumpkin sing it.  I sing it in a real deep voice and change some of the lyrics to things like “hide it behind my icky gooey stuff – NO! I’m gonna let it shine”

Activities We Did

We carved our Matt 5:16 pumpkin.  As we were carving it I told the parable.  I tried to get the boys to help me get out all of the icky gooey stuff but neither one would…they don’t like to get their hands dirty!  So Mommy did all the work and they just watched.  We really had a good discussion though. 

 

We went to a Sunday School costume party over the weekend.  Everyone was to bring Halloween theme goodies.  We decided that we would stick with our Matthew 5:16 jack-o-lanterns.  I made homemade jack-0-lantern shaped corn tortilla chips (baked – forgot to get pictures) and a jack-0-lantern decorated brownie (orange frosting with candy corns around edges and choc chips for features).

 

And here is something to add to that…I made their costumes…I thought I would show you the pics (if you will allow me to chase this rabbit for a minute hee hee)

Seth wanted to be Super Man.

Aaron wanted to be Buddy the T-Rex from Dinosaur Train (his favorite show!!)

Alyssa was a poodle!

Here was a family picture taken at the party (yes I know my cat ears turned out to be a little too big! Please don’t laugh)

 Crafts We Made

We didn’t get our crafts done like we wanted.  Hopefully we will get them done this week ":-).

Our Family Project

We had Granny and PaPa over for dinner one night so that we could tell them about what we were learning and our new take on Halloween.  We made pumpkin bread for dessert!!  It was so very yummy!!!

Even though we didn’t do as much as we would normally do for a week of Raising Rock Stars it was still a good week and I think there were still some very good lessons learned.   Hopefully after this week my house will be back in some order so we can get back to our full lessons.

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