Disciple

Conversation with Manasseh at dinner.  We were sharing the story of Jesus sharing Passover with his disciples.

Mama: Jesus had dinner with his disciples, the people that followed him.

Manasseh: Am I a disciple too?

Mama: Disciple means that you learn from someone like Jesus.

Manasseh: That's right, I told my Awana teacher I am a disciple, and she said "no".

Ah, yes - my 4 year old gets it.  I love hearing that he is discussing theology with his teachers.  This boy blesses me!  

Countdown to Easter: Week 1

Jesus as a Boy

We have begun our countdown to Easter.  Week 1 is done, 12 weeks to go!  It was a tough week for us to start, as we were still wrapping up our Christmas holidays.  We only slipped in a couple of activities before the end of our week.

 

We began our story learning by reading from one of our many children's Bible story books.  This is a children's study Bible that we really enjoy.  The pictures are fun.  Each book of the Bible gets a child friendly introduction and the stories are told by people who were part of them.  The boys really enjoy reading this Bible as well.

As we discussed and reviewed the story, the boys ripped paper for a project.  

Once we finished reviewing and ripping paper, we talked about the letter "b".  B is for boy and Jesus was a boy.  We practiced the sound of the letter.  The boys used school glue to make the shape of the letter with their torn paper pieces.  

 

Next week's story: Jesus Baptism.

Looking forward to Easter

You read it right.  Easter. Christmas, the celebration of Christ's birth is over.  now it is time for us to begin looking forward to the celebration of his death on a nasty cross so that we could have an intimate relationship with God. 

Randy and I have begun preparing our home and family for the Easter celebration.  Okay, okay - so we have started in small ways.  The tree is still up (for today), there are still assorted Christmas goodies around the house.  We even have some more Christmas celebrating to do in the next week. 

Still, we have begun talking with the boys about the next celebration.  We want them to know that Christ's birth is a BIG deal.  Even more than that, we want them to know that his death means that we can live. 

As we are preparing for the next year in the life of the Crum family, we have laid out a course of study for the first 3 months of the year.   We will be exploring the gospels with the boys from January 1 through March 31.  Each week we are focusing on a different story as a family and will be learning it through a variety of formats - crafts, music, reading, games and more.  You are invited to follow along with us on my Friday posts. 

Here is our road to Easter schedule:

January

Jesus as a child

Jesus' baptism

Jesus calls disciples

Jesus loves children

February

Lazarus

Water into wine

Jesus heals the blind

Walking on water

March

Jesus calms the storm

Feeding of 5,000

Passover

Good Friday

Easter

Looking back on Advent

I can hardly believe that we have reached the end of the advent season.  We have truly been blessed this month as we have anticipated the celebration of Christ's birth as a family.  The advent calendar has given us purpose to our meal times and family together times.  It has helped us be intentional about remembering others and sharing the story of Christmas. 

My favorite activites from the last month:
*Christmas at the Farm - I love watching my boys experience the story first hand.  Manasseh has begged several times each week to go back. 
*Making Christmas ornaments.  The boys get so excited about art.  It is fun to help them complete projects.
*Collecting money and sending it to Heifer International. What a joy to work toward a goal as a family and bless other families around the world!
* Making presents for friends was a lot of fun too, the boys loved coloring wooden cars for some of their friends.  Their friends were blessed by them.  In fact, one friend added colors to his car and named it his "teamwork" car because Cassius had started it for him.
* The boys have loved every excuse to play with the nativity set and act out the Christ story. 

I am already looking forward to advent next year.  We have started talking about what activities we might add, and what we might change.  I urge you to begin considering practicing advent with your family next year.

Did you practice advent this year?  What are your favorite advent activities?

Advent Day 17

Do your kids love to play but sometimes need direction?  My boys would play all day long - jumping off of things, climbing anything they can find, rolling on the floor, tackling each other, etc.  They do play with their toys some, but they frequently need help to use them well.

Last night's advent was perfect for helping them practice using toys in a story-telling fashion.  Tonight they put the Little People Nativity Set up on the table and acted out the story of Christ birth.  They also had a lot of fun making up stories with the animals.  I love helping them learn the art of story telling through toys, through words, through song and art - any way they can practice it!  Here are a few shots from their nativity adventure.

I'm sure the safety guide would recommend that you do not put the manger on top of another manger.  It seems like a safety risk.  Apparently Mary and Joseph did not know better.

The horse was giving wagon rides to anyone that wanted them.  I especially enjoyed the turkey vulture getting a ride in the wagon.  Do you remember the part of the story where he swooped down to pick up the dead animal in the road?  Me neither, but in the boy's story there HAD to be a turkey vulture.

I also loved the positioning of the animals.  We had 3 baskets of food for them all to crowd around.  One of the camels and one of the donkeys decided that they needed a little nuzzling.

Have you used the Christmas story to help your children practice or learn story telling?  How have you done this with your children?

Advent Day 16

It's another "Candle Sunday".  This week our theme is "joy".  We talked about joy being like happiness.  They are similar because joy is actively choosing to recognize our contentment because of God's gifts in our life.  We talked about the gift of Jesus and sang "Joy to the World".  

We lit the candles together and remembered what each of the purple candles on our wreath stands for.  The boys prayed thanks to God for the joy that we have and for giving us Jesus.  To close our devotion time at the dinner table, they each got to use permanent markers (with very close supervision) to color an ornament that says "joy" on it.  They later put pipe cleaners through the small holes at the top of their ornaments and hung them pridefully on the tree!

Thank you God, that even in times of sorrow, you are our joy.  Your joy is my strength and when I have fear and doubt myself, I can rely on that strength to accomplish my daily tasks.  Amen.

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

Maybe you've seen it on Facebook, maybe not.  I just finally decided to watch this one from Fairfax Church of Christ today and I love it!  I have to share it with you.  Take 5 minutes out of your day and enjoy the story.

Have you seen any excellent videos about the Christmas story this week?  Leave the links below!

Advent Day 13, Heifer International

We started this project over a month and a half ago!  As a family we set to work making crafts that we could sell at a church craft bizarre so we could raise money to help impoverished families through Heifer International.  The boys decided that we would make a goal of raising $150 so we could buy a goat and a beehive.  That would help 2 different families and matches some of our own interests.

Tonight was the night that we counted our money and ordered the gifts to send to another family.  We did not have quite enough for a goat, so we had to alter our plans.  The boys enjoyed looking through all the options with daddy and picking out their gifts.

Next it was mama's turn to help them out.  I got to do the ordering of their selection.  Instead of helping 2 families, we get to send animals to 3 families!  The boys chose a flock of ducks, a flock of geese, and a beehive!  They were still so thrilled to be able to bless another family.

This might not been the most fun and exciting part of our advent, but we all loved that with the help of friends and family, we were able to bless others.  This is an activity that has helped the boys learn so many important virtues that we want them to practice every day!

Thank you to everyone that has helped make this donation possible.  You have made an impact on my little world-changers.

Advent Day 11

Okay, I'm out of order.  It's been a busy few days.  

Tonight for advent we scheduled Christmas Caroling.  Then we had a flat tire that ended up keeping the boys and I away from home until dinner time.  That meant late dinner, and late bed time.  We decided to change our project (and we are thankful that our boys can't read yet).

We chose to make baby Jesus out of play dough!  The boys LOVED the project.  We had fun talking about what Jesus looked like (our babies have mustaches).  Here is a quick clip from our family time.

Advent Experience: Week 1 Review

This is the first year we are practicing the celebration of Advent.  We are excited about the idea, but uncertain about how it would all work out.  Randy and I sat down and briefly reviewed our week together tonight so that we could talk about what, if any, changes we would make during the next weeks.

What we like:
- We have an excuse to sit down at our table every night - it's easier for us to say no to going out to dinner when we have a planned activity after dinner. 
- We've got a planned conversation topic for our meal.  This really helps with engaging the boys.
- It's given purpose and shape to our learning with the boys.
- The boys have changed in their prayer life (even in this week).
- It helps us focus on the birth of Christ.
- The boys look forward to our special family time.
- We are building beautiful memories and new family traditions!

What we are not so sure about:
- It's been more difficult to schedule our time at the gym.
- The boys are staying up later because it has changed our routine.
- We sometimes struggle to focus on the reason instead of the activities.  We'll modify some of our activities for next year.

Overall:
We are enjoying the celebration of Advent.  We'll absolutely make it part of our family tradition as our boys grow.  The boys have changed even in this week from begging to eat dinner out, to thanking God in their prayers that we can eat healthy food at home instead of at a restaurant. 

Advent Day 6

December 6 is St. Nikolas Day!  Children traditionally celebrate by leaving stockings or shoes out for St. Nick the night before in hopes that he will leave gifts for them.  We had Awana on December 5, so decided to wait.  As part of our St. Nikolas Day celebration, we decorated stockings and hung them by the fireplace.  December 7 we woke them early to open their stockings and again shared about who St. Nikolas was and why people like to remember him.

Advent Day 5

Oh how beautiful the lights of Christmas!

Lights on one of the pedestrian bridges downtown.

It's hard not to love the breathy "WOW"s of my boys as we drive through the neighborhoods and see all of the decorated houses.  Our advent activity was driving around town to look at the lights.  I freely admit that I was hoping they would also fall asleep on the drive (they did not).

As we looked at the lights, we were reminded that Christ is the light of the world.  Thank you for the gifts of hope and light.

Advent Day 4

On the 4th day we set up the nativity scene under our Christmas tree.  The boys were really excited about taking it out.  Manasseh immediately set to work putting it together exactly how he thought it should look and was incredibly frustrated that his brothers wanted to play with it as well.

We also finished decorating our tree during this time.

Surprise, at the bottom of the ornaments was a second nativity.  Manasseh chose to combine the two for an interesting, festive look.

Advent Day 3

For our day 3 activity we chose to make a paper chain for decorating the tree.  I admit, I was highly skeptical about our children's ability to maintain interest in such a project, but my dear husband was eager to do this with them.

He won.  They loved it.  The boys glued, he built.  While they built together, Randy told them about when he was a child and they did not have any decorations for their tree one year because they had just moved overseas.  Since they were without, they made paper chains to decorate the house.  I love that as we celebrate advent, the hope that we have in Christ, the boys are able to connect with their own history on a deeper level.

Beginning Bible: Week 1

This week our story was Creation from Genesis 1-3.  We read our story from different books at least 1 time every day and said our memory verse together several times a day.  (Monkey likes to tell me "no" before every line, I don't mind because he's still saying the verses).  We did 2 activities each day to help us practice and remember the story.

Daddy read the Bible story on Wednesday

Creation:
Memory Verse - Genesis 1:1.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Math Activities - Counting toy animals (up to 5), Counting days of creation (1-7), Identifying written numbers (done while counting), Animal puzzles (these can easily be made by using magazine or book pictures and gluing them to construction paper, then cutting them into 2, 3, 4+ pieces)

Science Activities - Water play with water animals that God created, Identifying toy animals

Science - Water Play

Art - Finger painting God's earth, Play-doh creation (we created something that God made on each day)

Monkey is helping make the sun out of play doh for art

Free play - Name animals like Adam did using little people for Adam and animals

Crackers is not so good at matching, but he is good at free play

Language - See animal names, matching animals to flash cards with pictures/words

Monkey can match animals to pictures with no trouble

Movement - Creation dance (In truth, I was going to make a dance with the days of creation and do this with my boys every day.. but I did not get this done, bummer).

What a fun week!

Beginning Bible

If you have read my blog for very long, you know that I have been frustrated because my kids are not learning the Bible in the church nursery, and also we are doing a poor job teaching it at home.  If you know me personally, you may know that I would like to homeschool my boys when they are ready to start a school program.

I've decided that this is the week we will start both, school and Bible learning.  Both of my boys are attending and participating as we go through the Bible story book with fun activities and memory verses.  We have a theme for each week (we are just going chronologically through the story Bible for now).  Our lessons are done through play and broken down into Math, Science, Art, Free play, Language, Movement, and Memory.  Some of the activities overlap into multiple categories, but I only listed them once as I thought through our plans.  I would like to begin sharing our Bible lesson plans with my readers who are interested in helping their preschoolers learn the Bible at home.

Post Party Pleasure

We love parties, birthday parties are extra fun.  We had a fantastic time celebrating Crackers' first birthday yesterday.  Friends and family came and shared snacks and cakes, laughs and presents.  It was great.  We really missed our friends that were snowed in, and our family members that were sick and could not make it.  The boys stayed up HOURS past their bedtime and one of them had a hard time going to sleep. 

Even though we had an amazing time at Crackers' party, I think the best time of night was after everyone had left.  I took Crackers up to his room and read the first story out of his new Bible storybook, then snuggled.  Randy brought Monkey up a few minutes later and the little guy insisted on sitting on the arm of the recliner.  Randy and I sang with them, then Randy read the first story out of the book to Monkey.  And followed it with Monkey's favorite bedtime book.

Randy and I had spent some time previewing story Bibles and settled on this one.  The Adventure Bible Storybook is wonderfully written, with beautiful artistry.  The boys loved looking at the pictures while we read the stories.  I really look forward to using this every day with them.