Pumpkin Fun Family Night

Tonight was the night to carve our pumpkin and make some yummy cookies. Here are the pictures of our time together.

Emma played a mean game of Carcassonne

Taste test after helping mix cookies

Ready for the oven

PUMPKIN GUTS!!!!!!

Intently drawing the eyes

Lydia adding the rest of the facial features

Scary Harry in all his pumpkin glow

Two beautiful girls!

Valentine's Fun

Actually, a fever is getting in the way of the fun today but we had lots of fun leading up to today.

We began the month with a family night (yes, we still do those even if I don't post them) about emotions/feelings.  I downloaded this preschool lapbook from Carrissa at 1+1+1=1.  I just put all the emotions on a regular piece of poster board and we had fun discussing all the emotions/feelings.  I encouraged the girls to understand that none of these emotions are wrong in and of themselves but that what we do with them matters.  We practiced what we should do when we feel angry or frustrated and chose some constructive ways to deal with our emotions. 

I also reused the "love bug" from last year.  Throughout the month as I see the girls handling their emotions well they get to add a dot to the ladybug.  They have been doing well and just having this chart to look at helps them identify what they are feeling and put words to it.  I think we will keep it up longer than just this month.

We have also been counting down to Valentine's day with a countdown calendar that I made.  Same concept as my Advent calendar but with a different Valentine idea for each day.  I also printed out these cute love Bible verses from the Happy Home Fairy and we have been reading one each night at dinner.

My parents,  my sister and brother in law and their kids came over on Saturday.  We made a care package to send to my sister in Nevada.  We also played eskimo bingo with the kids.  They had so much fun just being together.  We ate lunch and decorated our own cupcakes for dessert.  Something as simple as that was a huge highlight for all the kids.  They thought it was great to spread, sprinkle and eat. 

The only picture I took all day.  "The Cousins" as we call them in our house.

We will end the today with a scavenger hunt for a very small present for each of the girls.  Fun for all!

December Fun

Here is the final list I put on the pull out cards in my homemade Advent calendar.  So far, the girls are having fun and I am pleased with the way they are listening when we do our Jesse Tree devotions.  Really feeling the peace and calm this year for the Christmas season.

December
1 - Tree Decorating
2 - Family Movie Night (FMN) - Rudolph (with special Rudolph chapstick from Target dollar spot)
3 - Serve meal at the Union Mission
4 - Decorate Christmas Canvas Bags
5 - Christmas Shape Tracers
6 - Window Clings (2 from Target dollar spot and Nativity set from Christmas Walmart Clearance last year)
7 - Color Bookmarks
8 - Jesus - paint over his name with q-tips
9 - FMN - the library has several good Christmas picks
10 - Paint Ornaments
11 - Dress Fancy for dinner tonight (even mommy and daddy)
12 - Hot Chocolate Treat
13 - Coloring book fun
14 - Nativity Puzzle
15 - Happy Birthday Jesus activity book
16 - FMN - library again
17 - Bake something yummy for neighbors and deliver
18 - Christmas bookies in PJ's
19 - Legend of the candy cane with craft
20 - Legend of the Christmas Tree - decorate ice cream cone Christmas tree
21 - Legend of Saint Nicholas with Santa craft
22 - Nativity craft
23 - FMN - Small One (my favorite from childhood) and The Very First Noel
24 - Make Birthday Cake for Jesus - Christmas Eve church service
25 - Christmas Celebration!


I found so many great ideas this year when searching the web that I have a folder full of ideas for next year already! I really am grateful to so many online communities that provide such great resources for free. Someone else's hard work is making it easier to focus on what is most important and do it in a creative way. Blessings!

Advent Celebration

We began our Advent Celebration last night with a family worship time.  We sang together and Lydia read the Bible reading for the first Jesse Tree ornament.  It was a wonderful time and it is my prayer that this time together will really focus our hearts on the reason we celebrate.  Jesus! Blessings to all of you during this season.

Jennifer Wilson - You are the advent calendar winner. Thanks for reading.

Christmas Advent

Now that you have taken a look into how our family is celebrating a Thanksgiving Advent of sorts I wanted to give you a sneak peak into our Christmas Advent. Each day in December leading up to Christmas we have a special activity planned.  Some are simple crafts, others are baking adventures and we also have some service projects in the mix too.  I made another simple calendar like I did for Thanksgiving and have the slips of paper with each activity written on it as a count down to Christmas.

I love spending time together as a family and I know that by planning out different activities for us to do together not everything will go according to my plan.  That's O.K.  (or at least I am learning to be ok with it.) I want my husband and my kids to want to be at home more than anywhere else in the world and for me that means taking time to think through how we can spend time as a family and planning fun activities.

Thanks to the internet I have no lack of ideas to fill 24 days with great Christmas ideas.  I have some friends that have a few really great ideas.  Check out how Lorrie and her family celebrate Advent.  Also, check out this great idea that Ashley and her family did last year.  In addition to all the fun activities I have planned we will be using Jesse Tree devotionals each night as a way to bring our attention to Christ's birth as the reason for the season.

I love spending time all year gathering supplies for the activities we do in December and hope that you feel inspired to  spend some time connecting as a family and sharing in the joy of the Christmas season.  If you would like to win a handmade (by me) advent calendar please leave a comment and I will enter you in the drawing.  The contest will end on Friday, November 25th, 2011. Please leave a way for me to get in contact with you so I can send it to you.  Thanks and many blessings to you!

Here is a picture of the advent calendar you could win if you leave a comment.

Pennies for change

Whining.  A word connects all parents to one another.  Some possibly understand it more than others but I don't believe anyone escapes it entirely.  All it takes to see that whining has always existed is to look at the Israelite nation and all the trouble their whining, mumbling and complaining got them.  Last month I wanted to take a time out in our family to see the effects of whining and having a grumbling spirit. So I set up a pennies for change area in our house.  Anytime we found ourselves grumbling, whining, or just having a negative attitude we placed one of our pennies in a jar.  At the end of the month we would be able to spend the leftover pennies in the "Mommy and Daddy Store".  Both girls, mommy and daddy participated and then at the end of the month the girls spend their rewards in our "store". 

We spent time talking as a family about the various consequences and benefits of living a life free of grumbling and complaining.  The store experience is a great teaching moment to allow the girls a concrete understanding about how there are rewards when we follow God's ways.  Even when we don't always see the rewards He gives us here on earth He does reward us. As the girls get older it is our intention to phase out the reward based system and operate more on an intrinsic motivation but it works for us in this phase of life right now.

This activity definitely had a good impact on all of us.  It is helpful for me to see how much my attitude needs to be surrendered and submitted to God. I may not always verbally complain but my sighs and my inward spirit are not always in the right place.  This activity drew that out big time!

Our pennies and jar. 

Lydia's rewards. She had a great month and learned to internalize her own self monitoring.

Emma's rewards.  She is still learning not everything is about her.

Mommy and Daddy store open for business.  (Better stocked than usual as we just got a scholastic book order back.) Most of the store is filled with dollar store, yard sale and thrift store finds.

I believe that when it comes to correction and discipline it is not only important to stop certain behaviors but to replace them with correct and God honoring lifestyle habits.  Stay tuned tomorrow for what we are working on as a family this month!

Family Night - Abundance

We have been hit or miss with our family nights more recently and I am ok with it because I have individual spiritual time with each of the girls to instruct and love on them.

With Thanksgiving next week I wanted to reinforce just how much we have to be grateful for and what an abundance of blessings God has given us.

We started the night by asking the girls to walk around the house and choose 5 of their favorite things, whatever they may be. The girls put their favorite things on the couch and we talked about whether or not that was all they had or if they had more. They obviously understood they have many more favorite things. I asked them to recall 5 things they had eaten that day and they each had more than 5 things to say. We talked about abundance and blessings and just how much we have to be thankful for.



We talked about Psalm 100:4 - Give thanks to Him, and praise His name! (memory verse) and how we can thank and praise God. We then used the idea of abundance to fill a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. God has given us so much and out of our abundance we want to give to others who don't have as much. The girls really enjoyed it and we had a good time.



We ended the evening coloring a cornucopia (horn of plenty) and we will write things we are thankful for everyday on this paper. God bless you and your families!


To find out how other families are teaching and instructing the next generation to know and love God check out Raising Rock Stars. Thanks for reading!

Family Night - Joseph part 2

Well, we continued part two of the story of Joseph last night. We didn't have family night last week because the girls were both sick and it just didn't happen, such is life sometimes.

As I said last time, I love the story of Joseph and as a family we were focusing on what we can learn about attitudes from the story. Though there are so many core values I think you can learn from this story we focused on attitude. We reviewed the story and read it again from the girls bible. We underlined words that described the different attitudes of the characters in the story and also talked about ones that were implied in the story. For instances the brothers were jealous, angry and lied to their father. Joeseph was patient, loving, respectful, obedient and forgiving.




I came up with an idea to use an Attitude Stoplight as the prop to learn from this week. We started family night with a rousing game of Red light Green light. The girls loved it as it is one of their favorite games. We correlated the red light to those attitudes and behaviors that we need to stop. (anger, jealousy, lying, complaining, WHINING, rudeness, etc.) Then we correlated the green light with attitudes that are good to continue in. (loving, patience, forgiving, respect, listening, obeying, etc.) The yellow light symbolized this, Slow down, think and choose green. I wrote the girls suggested red and green attitudes on the traffic light prop and will hang it in the house. My desire is to recommend they visit the stop light when their attitude needs adjusted. I call it the Red Zone. When directed to this Red Zone they will have time to think about how they can change their attitude from "red" to "green".

I am hoping this post at least makes some sense. Let me know if you adapt the idea for your house and how it works. Thanks for reading!

Check out here how other families are Raising Rock Stars!

Family Night - Joseph

I have to admit, Joseph is one of my absolute favorite characters in the Bible. I love his story and just how God uses him. Our family is working on and talking about the attitude of respect and our over all attitude and I thought studying Joseph is a good case study on the subject.

We started the evening with craft so it could dry. We just glued squares of different color tissue paper to a plain white sheet of paper. Simple yet easy. This represented the cloak Joseph's father gave him.

Then we danced as this is always a family night tradition.

After we danced we read the first part of Joseph's life from the girls Bible. We talked about how to have a good attitude. We looked at each character's attitude in the story and talked about whether or not they were pleasing to God or not then we did some role play with our words and intonations. Overall, very simple but still a good night.


I am looking forward to adding to the story in this weeks family time. Thanks for reading!



Posted to Raising Rock Stars.

Family Night - necessity

Some family nights are planned well in advance as there are certain stories and values I know I want to instill in my children. There are however some family nights that I plan out of complete necessity. This week we had one of those.

My children are sometimes one of the greatest mirrors I have into my own spiritual life and journey. I see own attitudes, behaviors and reactions reflected in what they do and say. That being said, one of the spiritual lessons that comes up regularly in our house is the impact our words have. Words are a BIG deal in our lives and as one of my friends says, "My mouth doesn't get me in trouble it keeps me there!" Oh how my words have such power in my life and the lives of those around me.

This week we focused on our attitude and our words being respectful. The virtue of the month at church is respect and we are continuing that here at home for the greatest application. Family night was pretty simple this week. We talked about our words and how often our words can hurt people and show either respect or disrespect. The girls have already memorized three verses on words/attitudes. They are as follows,

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. - Prov. 12:18

Kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. - Prov. 16:24

Do everything without grumbling and complaining. - Phil. 2:14

Throughout the summer we focused on some Proverbs and had done this activity with toothpaste talking about the fact that once words are out they can't be put back in. (Squeeze out toothpaste and try to have them put it back in.)

This week in conjunction with our bug week (Letter B preschool focus) we talked about the grumble bees. We read and watched Hermie and friends Grumble Bees and we started to use a chart to keep track of our "honey" words. Right now I just catch them in the act of kind words and give them a sticker to put on the chart but may change it because they are still having too many unkind words for my liking.


That's it, simple and timely. My own life is always in need of a refresher course in how I can use my words for good or harm.

Family Night - Zaccheus

Background on Family Nights

A couple years ago my mother gave me a book from Focus on the Family that was about how to regularly include a family night into your schedule. I really liked the concept so we adopted it and started having family night on most weeks. Many people have asked what makes family night different than other nights and the answer is that there is a spiritual focus and purpose. Both my husband and I are heavily involved at our church and would have it no other way. We pray with the girls regularly, talk about God and Christ daily and generally discipline (we call it correction) from a Biblical point of view but we wanted to have a focused time as a family where we could learn about God's Word together and learn from each other. As an educator and an advocate for children's ministry in churches I wanted family nights to be memorable, fun and easily applicable to our lives. Sometimes we focus on one theme (virtue) per month, sometimes it is a holiday theme, sometimes it is just a hodgepodge of various aspects of the Christian life I think we need to know but whatever it is we have fun and try to talk about it throughout the week/month. Often I come up with some sort of system or chart to document how we are practically working on applying what we are learning but not always.

I want to use this blog to just give you a peek into our family nights and give you some tools to use if you feel inspired to add them to your family dynamics. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have a question. I have taken the ideas I use from many other resources and not just my own brain but I am compiling them for however you see fit to use them. I will mostly be showing links and pictures and descriptions about our family nights and will add pictures when I have them but don't always have them. Hope you enjoy!

With the first day of school being last week I wanted to focus family night last week on just how much God knows us no matter where we are or what we are doing.

Main focus: God knows you and loves you!

Dancing/music: This is a personal addition that our family enjoys. We always dance and act silly together. It loosens us up and allows us to laugh and have fun together before our "lesson" begins. You in no way have to do this.

Opening activity: Game- Biggest and Smallest
Play a game that includes finding the biggest and the smallest of a certain object. Example: find the biggest book in the room, now the smallest. Biggest blanket, smallest blanket. Etc.

Story time: After the game we transitioned to the story of Zacchaeus. We read the story from their Bible. After we were done we acted it out and sang the very old, very dated Zacchaeus was a wee little man. (I never said family nights didn't include some cheese!)

Craft: I printed out this coloring page and the girls retold the story as they colored the page. Lydia worked on this word search, as she recently discovered word searches and liked them.

Closing: Reminded the girls that just like Jesus knew Zacchaeus, He knows us and loves us.

Prayer: There are a few different ways that we include prayer in our family nights. I will share more of them another time but for this night we used the prayer ball. The girls love using it and I think that is the best.

Reinforcement: We used this print out for reading before bed and the girls liked looking for Zacchaeus even though it was a bit too young for Lydia. Through out the week we have been talking about how God loves us and knows where we are, what we are doing, etc. and of course have sung the Zacchaeus song a couple time for good measure. All in all I enjoyed the lesson and the main point immensely.