A Bad Case of Stripes {Biblical Extension Activities}

It's Wednesday, so it's time to share another installment of "What We're Reading Wednesday!"  Today I have an old favorite.  Little Man went through a phase when he asked for this story every single night.  It's a good one though, with a great message, so I'm glad he enjoyed it!

Camilla Cream loves lima beans, but she knows her friends don't.  She tries to hide the fact that she likes them because she doesn't want them to laugh at her.  :(  What happens when we worry too much about what other people think of us?  Camilla had to find out the hard way!

After the story, we had a short discussion about why we are special.  Little Man went straight the answer I wanted to hear.  "Because God make us special, Mommy!"  Exactly.  I asked him how Camilla was special.  She likes lima beans.  She has curly hair.  She's an only child.  All of it works.  Then, I asked him (if Camilla was a real person), would God have given her all these special qualities.  Of course.  So what special qualities did God give us?  Prepare yourself to hear some super cute responses from your little one!  :)

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  

Psalm 139:14

For our extension activity, we gave ourselves stripes!  Instead of painting our faces (which could have been lots of fun), we made our stripes on paper.  I asked Little Man to help me come up with ways that God made everyone in our family special.  I loved his responses!  Considering one for his brother, Baby Boy, is "spit-up machine" (something he genuinely says almost nightly during prayers now), I wonder if I should have asked him about the dogs.  I can only begin to imagine the things he would have said!  I ended up hanging the boys' stripes on the bathroom mirror next to the memory verse (dry erase marker).  As we get ready each morning, I hope to have a quick chat about other things that make us special.  

We also tried making 3D hand tracings, but it was a little too difficult for Little Man.  He ended up losing interest pretty quickly, so I didn't force it.  If you have a patient one, I do encourage trying it.  Some great conversations about uniqueness could come from it!  

I also had an idea after we finished our activity that I might try in the future.  If I do, I'll add it to this page!  We could have easily made acrostic poems using our names and special words to describe ourselves.  If you want a literacy tie-in, there you go!  :)  

Tell me, have you read this book?  What extension activities have you tried?

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10 Days in the Fruits of the Spirit {An Overview}

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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Brown Bear, Brown Bear {Storytime with Biblical Extension Activities}

Hello, hello!  Thank you so much for all of your email responses!  Please Keep them coming!  I'd love to know where you struggle in being intentional about sharing the Word with your littles.  One of the most popular questions I received this week was about sharing it with the littlest of the littles, specifically with our toddlers.  Well, I happen to have one of those, and I have a great activity to share!  :)  Today I'm going to share how we take a storytime and turn it into an intentional teaching moment.  Today's story... Brown Bear, Brown Bear!     Each day, we start our morning with Breakfast with the Bible.  Each boy has his own routine, but we do it all together around the table.  Baby Boy hears Little Man's devotional and verse of the day, while Little Man hears the story from Baby Boy's storybook Bible.  At lunch, I read another passage to both of them as we eat. To make it meaningful to them, I love to use storytimes.  As an elementary teacher, I always created full units around individual books.  We're getting there with Baby Boy, but on a much smaller scale.  Right now, we have a book of the week, and we read it every single day.  Each day, we do an activity with it that extends the information in some way. This week, his story was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See.  We're working on colors and animal names, so most of our activities revolved around building that vocabulary.  We also have a set of flannels for this book.  We LOVE to extend our storytime with flannels!  He has a board that is set up all the time, and his circle time basket includes a different set each week (along with his vocabulary flash cards and jumbo crayons). After one of our readings, we used our flannels in a slightly different way.  Instead of retelling the story, I let Baby Boy add them to the board and we said the name of the animal.  Then, we'd use in in a sentence.  "God made the brown bear.  God made the yellow duck.  God made the white dog.  God made the children."  We went through this a few times, then he would point to the animals already on the board and we'd do it again. This is a super simple, no-prep activity, but it reinforces one of our basic truths.  God is the Creator of all things.  If you are following along with our Scripture posters, we used the poster for Genesis 1:24 this week. God said, "Let the land produce all kinds of living creatures.  Let there be livestock and creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals.  Let there be all kinds of them." And that's exactly what happened.  ~ Genesis 1:24 NIRV  

Early Learning Concepts

Brown Bear, Brown Bear is such a great story, and it lends itself so well to several early learning concepts.  Try one of these the next time you read the story!

• To extend vocabulary, pause before saying the color and let your little one fill it in before saying the animal (or the other way around).
• Go on a color hunt throughout the room as you come across the color in the book.
• Add a brief conversation about where each of the animals might live (habitats), or discuss their defining characteristics (classification).
• Count the number of legs on each page, or the number of colored stripes on the inside covers.
• Using construction paper, make a matching game with beginning sounds.
• Pat the rhythm of the words as you read aloud.
• As your little one begins to pick up patterns, let them "read" the words from memory as you point to them on the page.

Is intentional storytime an activity that would help you reinforce the Word? If so, what story would you like me to create next? If not, how can I serve you better? Quick reminder... the Relaxed Mom Homeschool Planner is on sale for only $19 through August 19!  After that, it goes up to $25.  Go grab yours today, and get this great price on both the planner and ecourse with two videos and 8 free bonus printables!

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