Sharing the Love

We decided to show our neighbors we love them by making cookies today.  They are chocolate chip, and once they cooled we delivered to 2 families.  This was the first time I let each girl get out and give the cookies by themselves.  It was great to let them see the joy of giving and to have them get the "thank you" instead of me.

Memorizing Monday

Last week went well, and now we are back to Monday again.  This week's verse is Matthew 22:39 "Love your neighbor as yourself."  We learned that loving God is most important, and now the lesson is to love each other.  We talked about how God says that loving others is a way to show God we love Him.  Every chance I get this week I will remind them that their sister is their neighbor!

Makin' a Rainbow

With girls who have heard the story of Noah many times and love rainbows, today seemed like a perfect day to SHOW them!  We headed out to the very sunny driveway and I turned the hose on them.  After a few minutes I started to see a rainbow had formed.  After I showed them that one, they ran around pointing to the ones they saw.  We talked about when the first rainbow appeared, and the story seemed more alive.  Plus it took me back to the days I used to run around in the sprinkler.  Good times, good times.

Encouraging

1 Thessalonians 5:11 says to encourage one another and build each other up.  I explained to the girls that this means to be a good friend and help make someone feel better.  Two years ago this weekend my cousin Lee was killed in a car accident, and my aunt and Lee's wife are having rough weeks.  I put Lauren's coloring skills to use and had some pictures made.  Aunt Vivi loves to get new creations to hang on her fridge!

Memorizing Monday

Today is the first of hopefully many Memorizing Mondays!  Growing up we were memorizing for Church and school, so I thought I would start this at home while my girls are still sponges.  I got sets of laminated cards last year and plan on using them now.  (www.comfortfood4thesoul.com)  We are starting with Mark 12:30 "Love the Lord your God with all your heart."  Every day this week we are going to recite it multiple times and talk about how to apply it.  How can we show God we love Him with all our hearts?
Maybe next week we will do a verse about being nice to your sister.....

The Golden Rule

My other grandmother loved talking about the Golden Rule when I was young.  Today we talked about the verse Matthew 7:12 "do to others what you would have them do to you."  We talked about examples the girls might get into (especially Lauren in school.)  We talked about people in the Bible and whether they were good or bad or both.  Adam and Eve-bad.  Noah-good.  Jonah-bad then good.  David-good and bad.  Jesus-always good.  Then we made a list of our own rules.  And by "our" I mean "Lauren's!"

Don’t drive on people.

Be nice to Mommy and Daddy.

Don’t pick other people’s flowers.

Don’t take anyone’s trees.

Don’t hurt anyone.

Use nice words and inside voices.

If someone is mean, don’t be mean back.

The girls have been more ready for this than I thought they would be and we have had fun this week!

Fruit Anyone?

Today's lesson involved my grandmother, Mimi's, favorite verse.  Galatians 5:22 says "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  Lauren and I talked about what each of these words mean and that this is how Jesus wants us to be.  Some words she understood better than others, and some I had a harder time explaining in 5 year old terms.  I got out paper and crayons and let her draw fruit, to give her a visual.  I started to make it more complicated by thinking about what fruit should represent each trait.  Peace is definitely a banana to me.  They are bland and not exciting and peace is calm.  Joy is orange, because of its color.  Love is a strawberry, since everyone loves strawberries.  In the end she drew fruit she wanted and they are both happily playing with Play-Doh again.  Hopefully the words will stick when they are playing together.  I just want some gentleness and kindness!

Let's Start at the Beginning

So what do we do the first day?  Why, Creation of course!  If it was good enough for the Bible to begin with, it is good enough for us!  My girls have heard about God creating the earth, so today we focused on things they can see that were made by God.  I started by cutting 2 roses from our bush and smelling them.  We have them as reminders for the next few days.

Then the 3 of us went out to the front yard and found things God created.  They didn’t get much past the basics of grass, leaves, trees, bugs, etc.  But the fun began when we went inside and created with Play-Doh.  Kaitlyn made a snake, a rainbow, and a blue apple.  Lauren also started with a snake and ended up with a picture of Mommy and Daddy and a heart.