Creation Unit (Day 4)

Day 4 actually took a LITTLE prep for me. Partly because I didn't have any good ideas for a project to do for the sun, moon and stars and when I figured out what I wanted to do, I didn't have everything I needed, so I had to wait until I went to the store. I quit doing what I Can Teach My Child was posting because I was impatient and she had only posted the first 2 days when I was ready to finish up the week. (Ironically, though our projects didn't all turn out the same, we chose the EXACT same activities for day 2-6.... I guess there are just logical things to do to teach toddlers these concepts. :) We started out the same as the other days by reading the section about Day 4 from the Bible and re-reading it from a children's Bible. Then we moved onto our craft. I decided to do a mobile with the three things God created. Here is Isaac starting on the sun. We used a paper plate and yellow and orange tissue paper. If you've received a gift from me lately, you know this is not something I usually have on hand. The last gift I gave, I was too embarrassed to not have tissue paper so I went down the street to my sister's to borrow some of hers. :) Needless to say, this is one of the things I had to go buy, but now I've got some for the next time I have a gift to give! I just cut a little of the paper into squares and helped Isaac put dots of glue on the paper. Then he chose a square and placed it on the plate. We did it to both sides of the plate. I got the idea from here. I adapted the Sunshine Art Project.

To make the moon, I took newspaper and cut out two crescent shapes and shredded up some paper as well. I got the idea here.

I stapled around the outside edge and made a pocket.

Isaac helped me crumple the paper and fill the moon with it.

After it was "stuffed" I stapled the open side closed and it looked like a sort of 3 dimensional moon.

Isaac painted it yellow.

The only thing I didn't like about this project was that Isaac used a lot of paint which meant it took FOREVER to dry and I got impatient and had him paint the other side while the first side was still tacky in spots and it ended up ripping the paint off and I had to touch it up later. The other thing was that where he really saturated the paper with paint it ended up tearing just a little. It didn't really mess it up, but it just didn't look as nice. A sturdier paper might be better to use for this project.

Next we made the starts using cardstock stars, glue and glitter. Glitter was another thing I had to go purchase. I don't know if it was a good deal or not, but Target had this multi-pack for $2. I got the star pattern here.

He painted on the glue...

and then sprinkled on the glitter.

His finished product! I just used some twine to tie the pieces to a hanger. I thought it turned out great and it's hanging on the fan in his bedroom.

We also did his Day 4 picture from Bible Story Printables.

The only reason I put this picture in here was because he rested his little hand on mine while he colored. It was the sweetest thing ever!

I also found some random space and weather stickers that had suns, moons and stars. He peeled them all off and then "colored" it when he got done.

Isaac singing Day 4 of Creation from I Can Teach My Child while holding his mobile. He was sort of distracted so I ended up singing most of it. Again, my son and cameras usually don't mix well. :)

Day 4, Day 4

God made sun, moon, stars galore!

Day 4, Day 4

God made sun, moon, stars galore!

Creation Unit (Day 3)

As we continued our Creation Unit, Day 3 was another spur of the moment day. I LOVE how easy it has been to make an ordinary day a little extra special by doing something fun to learn more about our Creator. I've done little to no prep for most of our learning moments and it's been just as much fun as the ones I've spent a lot of time getting ready for. We read in our kids' Bibles and Mommy's Bible about how God made land and then filled it with vegetation. I had gotten a little "plant kit" in the $1 section at Target at Valentine's Day and decided this was the perfect time to whip it out! (They have some out again in with the Spring/Easter $1 stuff). I actually had no idea what was in the little pot, but I assumed seeds and for $1, I wasn't expecting much else. I got the Mini Rose package and there was a package of seeds and a dirt pellet inside. It said to add 2 tbsp. of water to the pellet in a bowl. I assumed it would absorb it, but apparently it did it rather quickly because I turned my back and heard Isaac yelling, "Mommy! It's GROWING!" :) It looked disgusting, but we put it in the pot and it was time to add seeds.

The package doesn't lie when it says "Mini-Roses." The seeds were minuscule and I was a little bummed because there was NO WAY that Isaac could plant them. You were supposed to put no more than 6 of those little suckers down in the dirt. I have no idea how you are supposed to even pick them up, let alone count them, so I just dropped a few in (definitely more than 6) and hoped for the best! If I had it to do over, I would have chosen a different kind of plant at the store in hopes that the seeds would be a little bigger.

I LOVE this picture of Isaac. He's finally starting to occasionally comply when I ask him to smile for the camera. As you can see, it's a very genuine smile. Hehehe! :) He was excited about the plant though and checked it quite a few times throughout the day to see if it had started growing yet.

I decided it would be a good time to go through some of my old preschool stuff and see if I had anything on plants. (Ahem) It took me a while to find something in this mess, but eventually I came up with something. (I have since organized this tub a little. I have a lot of great stuff that's not getting used simply because I don't even know what I have!)

This is what I found. So I got to cutting and Isaac got to coloring.

Here's his finished product. We talked about all that plants need to grow and he can still tell me if I ask him. He liked doing this a lot.

I got him some dot markers for Christmas and he's finally starting to have the patience to actually place the marker on the circles and not just slam it down randomly all over the page. I was so proud of his work here! (I get a lot of dot marker patterns from the DLTK website.)

I also had some number dot marker pages in with my random preschool stuff, so we started doing a number for each day of Creation. I haven't really tackled the tracing part at the bottom much yet, unless he really insists, but he LOVES doing the top part and has done several sets of each number. One trick they taught us in preschool with these sheets is to fill the first dot (where they should start to correctly write a number or letter) and then instruct them to continue by following the dots consecutively in the correct pattern. This way they're not filling the dots randomly and are actually learning the proper motion for making the number or letter when the time comes to use a pencil to write it. He's doing great with it, though occasionally he still goes crazy with it and daubs all over. :)

It took about a week for the mini-rose seeds to finally start growing. Guess what mini seeds make? Mini plants. :/ Can you see that small speck of green on the upper right side? I promise it's there. Yeah. So... hopefully we can try this one again with a little bit bigger of seeds next time. :) All in all, he still enjoyed it and he does like checking on it from time to time. He's long since lost interest in watering it, but I'm hoping that when the tiny roses appear he'll change his mind. (By the way, I Can Teach My Child had some great ideas for planting as well and suggested using a medicine dropper or syringe to help your little one water the plant... it worked great!)

Here's Isaac singing the Day 3 song. I did change one word from the I Can Teach My Child version. (Mostly because I got antsy and guessed what she was going to say and had already taught it to Isaac this way when she posted her ideas and decided not to change it. They're really not that different... I changed "flowers" to "land.")

Day 3, Day 3

God made land and plants and trees.

Day 3, Day 3

God made land and plants and trees.

Creation Unit (Day 2)

Day 2 of our Creation Unit was very simple and took no planning on my part. I had everything I needed to do the project and Isaac appreciated having something fun and extra to do for the morning. We have been reading what God created from several children's Bible's that I have before we do our activities. I got the idea to also read it straight from God's Word over at I Can Teach My Child. Each day is only several verses of material and he loves getting to pretend he's reading from Mommy's Bible. I love that he's beginning to understand that my Bible and his Bible's share the same wonderful message.

The activity also came from I Can Teach My Child. We used two different colors of blue paper (mine were pretty close in color, but it's all I had on hand) and some cotton balls to make the sky. I had a new "revelation" as I taught Isaac this part of Creation. I always thought that God created "water and sky" on day 2, but he really only "separated the waters" by putting in the sky. The water was already there! Before he began creating! Hmm... I guess you learn something new everyday!

He glued down the water and the cotton balls and then we labeled it together.

I wasn't sure that labeling everything was necessary, but I was surprised by how much more he talked about what everything was once I had written it on the paper. He noticed that the word "water " was written in the sky and the water and we talked about rain and clouds a lot. I really think he understood. (I doubt he could tell you much about our science lesson now, but I think he was getting it at the time. :)

I printed another coloring sheet from Bible Story Printables and he colored it.

We also learned a new song to go along with Day 2 (from I Can Teach My Child). I had to let him hold his cloud picture in order to get him to allow me to tape it. Here are the words:

Day 2, Day 2

God made clouds and skies so blue!

Day 2, Day 2

God made clouds and skies so blue!

Creation Unit (Day 1)

So, I decided a few weeks back to do a Creation unit with Isaac. I have been a little overwhelmed by trying to do the Theme Days because I feel rushed to get everything in around nap times and lunch and nursing and all of that. I'm leaning toward doing weeks and/or months from now on to take a little pressure off and make it more enjoyable for everyone. Creation has proven to be a perfect one to do this with since it's broken up into 7 nice easy sections. Here's a peek into what we've been up to: With Isaac's language developing quickly now and after he successfully memorized Psalm 36:5a last month using this clothespin method, I decided that I may try to do one new verse each month this way. Genesis 1:1 seemed like the most obvious choice so I made these cards using clip art and Publisher.

I've found that Isaac will happily learn just about anything put to a song, so I found this video on YouTube and thought the tune would work perfectly. (I didn't really like the video much when they started talking about the specific days, but the tune for the verse was simple and repetitive and Isaac caught on quickly.)

By the end of the first day, if I prompted him by saying "in" he would finish the verse saying, "da beginning, God a-makin' da heavens and da earf. Genesis 1 by 1 by 1." Haha! I love him so much! He has corrected it now, but I kinda like his old version too. (I'm not sure where the 1 by 1 by 1 thing came from. The only thing I can think of is the animals going on the ark 2 by 2 by 2...)

I discovered a new website that I'm really liking. It's called BibleStoryPrintables.com. It's got a lot of great coloring pages, file folder games, timelines, crafts, even handwriting sheets and calendar numbers. They had a coloring page for each day of Creation, so I printed them all and am having him color each one while we read the verses and talk about what God made. (If you're wondering how I got a two year old to color only yellow on one side and black on the other, it's because I used my hand to cover up the side I didn't want him coloring on. :)) I'm not a HUGE fan of worksheets and things, but this is great for his fine motor skills (which he's not particularly strong at), he really enjoys it and it provides a great visual for review because we hang it on the corkboard in his room.

After I decided to focus on Creation for the next few weeks, a blog I follow posted that she was going to do that with her toddler son as well. I was SO excited! Her site is called icanteachmychild.com. She had this great idea for conveying the concept of dark and light. I had everything on hand that I needed so we got to painting the inside of the shoe box black. When after a couple minutes it looked like the above, I was afraid he'd lose interest before it was covered, but to my surprise, he pretty much covered every square inch of the thing, even the lid. :)

There was already one round hole in our box, so I only had to make one for the flashlight. When he looked in and I asked him what he saw, he said, "Nufeen." Then I had him keep looking and turned on the flashlight. Voila! I asked him what he saw now and he said, "Wight!" :) I thought it was a good idea for an abstract concept and he had fun, so it turned out to be a great project for us.

The I Can Teach My Child site also had a great idea for doing a short song each day to help them remember what God created. You use the same tune each day and just change the words to fit what God made that day. Yes, Isaac's still wearing his pajamas. He does his best work right after he wakes up and since he is NOT a fan of me taking video of him, I'll take what I can get. I had to let him hold his Day 1 picture and do like 3 retakes to get a video of him where he isn't flipping out because I'm recording it. Here we are singing Day One:

Day One, Day One,

God made light when there was none.

Day One, Day One,

God made light when there was none.

I was also kind of able to get him to do his verse. I pushed my luck and asked him to do it again after he did it the first time and as you'll see, he did not oblige. Oh well. :)

I'll post Day 2 soon!

Turning 28

Last week I turned 28. Not really a monumental birthday, but it kind of has been for me. I've been reflecting the last couple of weeks about my life. Am I living it the way I want to? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Maybe a kind of 1/3 Life Crisis, I don't know. It's sobering to me in many ways to realize that it's no longer, "When I grow up, I'm gonna..." I AM grown up now. I'm doing this thing called life, whether I'm ready for it or not. I don't get do-overs. I need to be doing it NOW; living it out fully NOW! Not living for the weekends or when Matt gets home or when the kids are a certain age and on and on. This may sound morbid, but our pastor has said, "You begin dying the second you're born." Sobering and true. I was reflecting on that recently while giving the boys a bath. Something about their exposed bodies always takes me back to the hospital room when they were born and it strikes me how quickly they've grown. Why do I wish my precious days with them away? As I reflected on all this... this "am I living the way I want to/ should?" I decided two things.

One, I must be getting old. I've never given much thought to this kind of thing before. I'm pretty sure only old people do. :)

And two, YES!

I feel I'm exactly where I want and need to be. That was so refreshing to me! Usually when I go into "over-analyze mode" I come up with some huge shortcoming that I begin to feel guilty about and work on. This is not to say I've arrived by any means. I have SO much room for improvement, but since Silas' birth, I have felt like a new person. Like I'm becoming me. I'm not perfect, but my heart is tender (at least more than it was) to the Lord. I desire Him in a way that I haven't in a long time. I'm embracing my role as a mother whole-heartedly. I'm letting go of the regrets of not being on the mission field or in ministry or doing any number of other things. I am in love with where God is taking my life.

I am truly, deeply happy.

It's been a while.

Motherhood has changed me, but not in the way I thought it would. I grew up always feeling like I had a "spotlight." You know, a place where I could look good. With church, I was usually considered a pretty good kid. My dad was a pastor for a while when I was young and my mom led the Children's Ministry at our church while I was in middle school and high school. With academics, I was usually one of the best in the class. I graduated as valedictorian in a class of about 450 (nevermind that there were 11 of us who claimed that title). Bottom line: people usually liked being my partner for group projects. :) My bosses always liked me. I did choir, track and was given numerous opportunities to earn a little praise in those areas. I've always had many avenues where I could put on a "show" and get a pat on the back. Motherhood isn't like that. I think it depressed me. No more pats on the back when I accomplished amazing feats like changing a diaper while talking on the phone and checking dinner. No one sees. Honestly, no one really cares. No one has come to me for advice on parenting, 'cause guess what? My toddler acts like all the rest of them! I realized I've been living my life for the praise of man rather than God. This has been a hard pill to swallow. But when I live for God... my audience of One... He's all the audience I need! Who better to get a "pat on the back from" so to speak. Oh to hear those words, "Well done, good and faithful servant" someday. I have purpose back. I have happiness back. I have my life back.

Wednesday was my actual birthday. It snowed... again... and church was canceled and I was inside all day and cleaned all day for our playdate on Thursday and ate grilled cheese for dinner... and it was one of the best birthdays I remember having in a long time. I don't feel like I have some sort of giddy happy, but this deep-seeded happiness that I've really rarely, if ever, felt before. I guess I just took one more baby step toward getting over myself. I have a feeling this is going to take a long time, but I'm so glad I've begun the journey!

Valentine Playdate Party!

Yesterday I had some friends over for a little Valentine Party and it was SO MUCH FUN! My friends Clarissa and Michelle came from church and Jen (our husbands work together) and Mandie (I met her through Jen and as it turns out she only lives two streets away from us!). I am so blessed to call these wonderful Christian women my friends and love having other girls around who are at similar stages in life. I love watching them parent and hearing their ideas and just having fun with them. They are all totally into their kids like me and don't think I'm completely nuts for my crazy, scheduled party I planned for them and their kiddos. (Okay, they might think I'm a little nuts. :))

I've loved doing some organized days for Isaac over the past few months, but have been hesitant to include others. One, because I'm embarrassed of how I get when I'm in "teacher mode" with Isaac. And two, because I wasn't sure that it would go the way I wanted it to if I threw more toddlers in the mix. Sometimes Isaac and I take a leisurely pace with our activity days and work it around naps, feeding schedules, meltdowns and poopy diapers. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun it was with a group and how much longer Isaac slept afterward! :)

This doesn't always happen, but for some reason I was super organized and this all came together with little stress and lots of fun! Isaac and I did a little decorating to spruce the place up a bit. He painted the hearts below and I strung them together to make garland over the kitchen entryway.

I got the idea for this "heart chain" online. Isaac couldn't really help me with it and it wasn't quite as adorable as the pictures had made it look, but oh well. I doubt I'll be doing it again.

After a few minutes of introductions and mingling, we read a Bible story. I wanted this to be a fun playdate that was Christ-centered. My Grandma got this Bible for Silas for Christmas. It has 5 or 6 stories in it and each one is about 20 pages long with only a couple of sentences on each page. Translation: SUPER toddler friendly. We read the story about Jesus letting the children come to him and talked about how much he loved them.

Then we talked for a minute about how BIG God's love for us is. So big that it reaches all the way up to the heavens! What an amazing truth for all of us! We did this little verse activity where each child brought me a heart with the next word in the verse and we used the clothespin to attach it to the line. I had a little kit prepared for each child to make one of their own when they got home. Ours is hanging in Isaac's bedroom and he likes clipping in the hearts and trying to say the verse. This morning we sang the beginning of the Third Day song with these words and he kept saying, "Again, again." By the end of the morning he said the verse several times with a little help on the first word, LORD, and the reference.

Next it was time to prepare lunch. I used Silas' plastic baby food containers and filled them with cheese and a layer of turkey heart pepperoni at the bottom. Yes, this is where I went a little crazy. I had a super tiny heart fondant cutter and I cut the pepperoni out with it. I kind of had fun. Matt thinks I'm weird.

Everyone did such a good job of prepping their pizza!

Hard at work!

Major concentration by my adorable little man. I got a little side-tracked during all of this and by the time Isaac's made it to the oven he had eaten half of one of his pizzas cold and uncooked. :)

While our pizza cooked, the kids came back to the living room and played file folder games and with random toys that I had set our earlier. I got all the games from http://www.filefolderfun.com/. It's free and I just used card stock to get a sturdy set of pieces. I also laminated the playing pieces with my new laminator Matt got me for Christmas. Yes, I asked for it and yes, I'm a nerd. :)

I gathered up some items to give to the Mommies as my Valentine gift. These were things that I had received as gifts and had never used. There was nothing wrong with any of them, just generic gifts that I thought others might put to better use than my closet. (Don't worry girls, it won't hurt my feelings if you re-gift too! :)) My goal was to catch each child showing love toward someone and let them choose a gift for their Mommy. This proved to be more difficult than I thought, not because the kids weren't loving but because while trying to multi-task as host and a Mommy myself I had a hard time catching them in the act. But, everyone left with a gift (well, except Jen, who left hers... but she's 7 months pregnant so it doesn't count. :))

Lauren helping Jen open her gift. She got to open one because she used kind words. Her words: "Me wuv Isaac." Awww! Definitely gift-worthy. :)

Time to eat! I LOVE Henry's sweet face here!

Isaac and Kyler having a deep conversation about apple slices.

After lunch the kids went on a scavenger hunt around the house to find their dessert while I quickly cleaned up the lunch mess and put out their cookie stuff. Unfortunately, I got no pictures of the decorating process, but here's Isaac's finished product... and his sweet face. Man, I love that kid.

Next, we decorated tin mailboxes that I found at Target in the $1 section. They stuck Valentine stickers to them and then collected their Valentine's in them. It was slightly crazy and this is the only picture I got of it... thirty minutes after everyone left. Oh well. Picture taking is not my forte. The candy train at the top of the post is the Valentine that Isaac handed out to everyone. If you know Isaac then you know that to call his love affair with trains an obsession is an understatement. I didn't intend for it to be the first picture, but I forgot to add it with the rest and my mom wanted to see it and apparently, Blogger is not my forte either because I couldn't figure out how to move it down. :)

We ended the playdate with balloons. Mandie and Jen have both hosted playdates recently and both ended it with balloons. It proved to be the perfect way to end the morning, so I followed suit. They had lots of fun and most reports I got from Mommies afterward said that naps were extra long that afternoon! :)

Silas loves balloons! As usual, he was a perfect baby. He took a nap for a little bit of the party and ate green beans and watched all the commotion with great interest. He makes my life so easy and I love him so much!

Hannah with her adorable pigtails and sweet, little face.

My vain attempt at a group shot... hehe... toddlers don't do well with sitting still.

All in all, we had a great time and I was reminded anew what a blessing friendship is. All of these girls invest whole-heartedly in their children and it shows! I will definitely be trying to do stuff like this more often.

Taking 1 step back so I can take 2 steps forward

I think so far this year I've taken one more step toward getting over myself. My ultra-spiritual self, that is. Somehow over the years, I put myself in a spiritual category to which I never live up. An intellectual Christian, or something like that. I like to read the works of these amazing men and women of the faith and imagine that by reading their stuff, somehow we're on the same level. These people set the standard high and I look up to their example. They are super-heroes in my book. They don't memorize Scripture by the verse or by the chapter... they memorize entire books at a time. They don't sit down to do their quiet time out of the NIV, they read it in the original language. They don't do touchy, feely, emotional studies, they parce Greek verbs, read scholarly commentaries and find the true meaning in the Text. Deep down THIS is who I WISH I was. And for a VERY brief time during my college years, it's who I was on the path to becoming. God put some amazing and very intellectual girls in my life whom I love dearly to this day. They challenged and encouraged me in these endeavors and it was a great time for me. Then something terrible happened. I graduated. I left my little bubble of security and had to wake up to a job serving coffee or decorating cakes everyday. I didn't sit in class and get spiritually fed and challenged all day anymore. I wanted to continue what I had begun, but felt paralyzed by the thought of it. I couldn't sit down to do a quiet time with the Lord without my Greek Bible, a good commentary and 2 different translations of Scripture. Then I'd sit there and journal as I read and feel numb. What if I were misinterpreting something? I didn't have my Greek partners to bounce questions off of anymore. I didn't have professors to correct my erroneous thinking. I wasn't ready to be out on my own. I felt I had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I couldn't "go back" to the way I'd done Bible study before because now I "knew better;" yet the thought of continuing down the path I had begun paralyzed me. Fast-forward to today and not much has changed. Sure, I've had some times of growth, but the overarching theme of my last half decade has been a sense of dissatisfaction and guilt. Guilt that I'm not doing more. Not doing it the "right" way. But God is working. At the beginning of this year, my pride reared it's ugly head, only this time I recognized it for what it was. Hideous sin. My dear friend, Jen, asked me to join her and some of her friends in a commitment to memorize 24 verses this year. We would be joining Beth Moore's Siesta Scripture Memory Team. The first awful thought that raced through my mind, "Ha! Only ONE verse every TWO weeks! That's for amateurs!" Seriously people, I've got issues. To top it off, I got an e-mail shortly after encouraging me to start a plan to memorize the book of Ephesians over the course of the next year. Ooooh... very spiritual sounding and very tempting! In all seriousness, I do think that memorizing entire books at a time is an incredible goal, but the last time I memorized a verse was either through one of Isaac's kiddy cd's or one of the verses that our Awana kids have repeated to me about a millions times. I can't quite say which. The last time I actually made an EFFORT to memorize? Hmmm.... I'm gonna need a while to answer that one. So, I heartily agreed to join Jen and I'm so glad I did! I'm on my second verse and am already seeing the fruits of my labor. I'm trying to choose verses to challenge me where I'm at right now and let me say, the Holy Spirit has been (sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently) reminding me of what I've hidden in my heart. I took a "step back," but now I'm definitely moving forward. Another area I'm working on is taking time to be in the Word again. I'm pretty hit and miss to say the least. Another one of those things where since I can't do it "right" I just don't do it at all. Today I got up when Matt's alarm when off and read Philippians. No journaling. No commentary. I just read and savored the words. It was good... I plan to continue getting up and beginning my day with Him. I don't know what all that will always entail. I can guarantee I won't be whipping out the Greek Bible at 5am (though I am taking small steps to freshen up on that rusty area a bit), but I will strive to start my day with my Savior. Not super intellectual of me and I've taken a step at "step back," but am definitely moving forward. So, I guess the sum of it is: I'm simplifying my "growth methods" so that actual growth begins taking place again. Sigh. That feels much better!