It's here! It's here! It's here!!! If you have known me for any amount of time, you know that I've been talking about this Fruits of the Spirit study for a loooong time. Well, we have finally finished it and I'm ready to share it with all of you lovelies!
So, this endeavor turned out to be a 10-day unit stretched out over, what... 2 months? We had some great fun and we had some really great Breakfast with the Bible conversations, but this particular study took some time.
We started the study by reading Pups of the Spirit! It's a super cute story about nine adorable little puppies that each represent one of the fruits. I loved that the wording in the descriptions were really kid-friendly. Even our youngest little ones would be able to understand what these fruits really mean! Go get this book... now. Read it often with your littles. After we read it, I bought some little colorful fuzzy balls (fruits) and a tiny burlap basket. Whenever I saw Little Man displaying one of the fruits, I would let him put a fruit in his basket. Each day, we would discuss the day's particular fruit and give examples of what it would look like in our daily lives. Little ones come up with the most clever things!
I'm getting ahead of myself. On the first day, after we read the story, I gave Little Man a bunch of construction paper circles with "fruits" on them. There were obviously the nine fruits. Galatians 5:21 lists some negative fruits. I used some of those, but I also added some that I specifically have to talk about regularly. Customize this to your little one! By giving him some specific behaviors that we've seen in him, it gave him the chance to talk about them and have to decide whether it was good or bad.
At this point, we read the memory verse for the unit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23
Each day, we would revisit this verse. Several times throughout the unit, I would have him play a game to practice. I also wrote it on his mirror with a dry erase marker. We go over it every morning as he brushes his teeth and hair. (Side note: I tried using a Vis-a-Vis marker. This didn't work. The steam from the shower made it smear.)
Each day, at the end of our Bible time, Little Man would create one of these torn-paper creations. I just printed off an outline of the fruit and attached it to a piece of clear contact paper. The stickiness acted as a glue. He would tear the construction paper and fill it in. Then, I topped it with another sheet to seal it. We displayed them on the fireplace mantle so they were visible each day. After the fact, I thought they would also be really neat with tissue paper hung in a window... stained glass style.
As he was tearing his paper, I took a second copy of the fruit and colored it with markers. I used the contact paper to "laminate" it, and then I punched holes around the edge. I tossed them all in a bag with some round shoelaces and there was a busy bag! See the heading picture for an example. I got a little mixed up as I was taking pictures and editing them. I forgot to take a separate one, but I'm pretty sure you get the idea!
So there you go! Day 1 of Fruits of the Spirit! Be sure to follow us to get in-depth descriptions of each of the days in the unit! This was so much fun and I can't wait to start the next one!
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