Sunday School on Friday – The Tower of Babel

Last summer we were doing Bible story activities somewhat sporadically and in no particular order.  However, now we’ve started with creation and we are going through our children’s Bible chronologically.  This means we are reviewing some of the same stories we talked about last year (which is important to do!).  We recently read about Noah and the ark again, and it is such a good story that I was tempted to make this the focus of our next set of activities.  However, M was really interested in the tower of Babel story, so that won out.  You can see what we did last year for Noah’s Ark here.

We began by talking about how the people were building a tower intended to reach all the way to heaven and why this displeased God.  God does not want us to attempt to gain heaven by our own efforts, but wants us to have a relationship with him, and trust in his care for us.

First, we discussed how we are able to work together because we can talk to each other and understand each other.  We discussed foreign languages and M really took interest in this.  It’s not the first time he’s been exposed to the idea of a language other than English (really, living near a large city, that would be pretty impossible), but it was the first time he really showed an interest.

M learned to say “hello” and “goodbye” in Spanish, German, and French.  We listened to some part-English / part-German children’s songs on Youtube and he was able to tell me when they were singing in German.
I found a tower picture here, and printed it in a few different sizes.   M size sequenced them out and we talked about small and large, and smallest and largest.  He already knows this, but it’s always fun to review.

I gave him a coloring page of the tower and had printed some numbers on it, hoping to introduce him to the idea of coloring by number.  He only colored the numbers. :)I told him he did a great job and he said, “but it was pretty hard to do, Mommy, because the numbers are so small!”  Hee hee. 

We also played a tower-building game with his mega-blocks and a number cube.  We took turns rolling the die, and then adding that many blocks to our towers.Whoever’s tower fell first lost.  It was fun to see M learn after a couple of times that he needed a “turdy” (lol, that means “sturdy”) foundation to keep his tower from falling.

All in all it was fun and we both learned a little bit.   M is still in a no-photos phase, so that makes for some pretty boring posts.  I’m thinking about having him take the pics while I pose; that should liven things up a bit! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Creation

We’ve been reading Bible stories every morning since a little before New Year’s Day. As you can imagine, we are way past the creation of the world by now. However, it’s always good to review and M really enjoyed *creation* activities.
God made all the animals and we sorted them. :) I used a green piece of paper for land animals, a blue piece with waves drawn on it for water animals, and a blue piece with clouds drawn on for animals in the sky. We took M’s Fisher Price Zoo animals and sorted them all onto the squares of paper. After they were all sorted we talked about how it was Adam’s job to name all the animals. We thought that was probably a pretty fun job. ;)
M was also interested in the fact that ostriches have wings but can’t fly. He liked that they are fast runners though! We also talked about the hump that camels’ have and how they store water in them. This led to a discussion of the desert and jungle for the land animals. M decided I should’ve made a desert paper and a jungle paper instead of just one paper for all the land animals. That way we could’ve sorted them a little better. What can I say? He’s right; I need to start running my ideas by him while I’m still in the planning stages, hee hee. This idea was from here.
Then we made a fun sticker collage with foam stickers. First I traced M’s hand on green paper, we cut the hands out and glued them to blue paper to make grass. We added a little pond at the bottom. We added cotton balls for clouds in the sky. M put the sun in the sky and drew a little face on it all by himself. :) He thought it looked a little silly, but I think it looks great. ;) Then we got busy with the other stickers. We made flowers and added animals in the grass, fish in the pond, even a couple of birds in the sky! There’s even Adam and Eve, and if you look closely you’ll even see an apple tree with a cat in it (sorry, no snake!). :) M was so proud of his creation and he showed this to Daddy as soon as he came home. He said, “It’s the world that God made!!” So sweet!
And we read this lovely little book:
Our Nest, by Reeve Lindbergh. I am in love with this sweet book. It’s a perfect bedtime story, making everyone feel safe and secure, as it talks about all the “nests” we have – our homes, our towns, our world, our universe… all of creation is our “nest”, a place to be cared for and loved. The book mentions creation, but does not mention God. However, I do feel that God’s loving hand is implied in the wording. It’s a beautifully illustrated book and a wonderful way to talk about God’s creation with a child!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Jonah and the Whale

We finally got around to doing another Bible story with actual activities to go with it.  We’ve been reading the stories and talking about them, but I’ve just been completely out of creative ideas to go with any of them.
And, just an FYI, with Advent beginning soon I’ll be preparing for a daily (quick) Bible story with M up to Christmas.  After that we’ll try to get back in the swing of things with a weekly story… my current plan is to start with creation and go from there.  This is what we’ll be doing in Advent too, but after Christmas (or possibly New Year’s) we’ll take more time to do some crafty things on a weekly basis for each story.  Gosh, I hope that makes sense.  My mommy-brain needs some serious sleep. :)
So, last week we talked about Jonah.  Good old Jonah, who is a lot like M in many ways… mainly in the saying “No” way and running the other direction when asked to do something. ;) 
We read two books about whales throughout the week, and the first time we read them I casually mentioned Jonah and his *adventure*.  M was fascinated.  He hadn’t really learned about whales yet, and loved hearing how big some of them can be and that they don’t chew up their food, they just swallow it whole.  Gulp!  For whatever reason, he found this fact astounding.  And Jonah getting spit out?!  Well, you can imagine how cool he thought that was. :) 
The first book was Whales by Gail Gibbons – an excellent book for learning facts about these creatures.
The second book was Baby Beluga, by Raffi.  You have probably heard this song… the book is basically the song with illustrations.  This one was also well-liked. 
Then we read the story of Jonah from our favorite toddler Bible:
And I just (today) found this flannel board set:If you are interested, click on the picture and it will take you to the site.  The pictures are about halfway down the page.  I’m going to make this for M so he can “do” the story on his flannel board.   Of course I searched high and low for something to make at the time we were actually talking about this story and couldn’t find anything… this would have been (and will be) perfect!
Our craft was so much fun for M.  He LOVED it.  I can’t stress that enough.  I thought it was so simple that I would be lucky to get his cooperation for the whole thing, but he really, really loved it! (I like it when that happens!) 
First, he did some color mixing – periwinkle blue and a tiny amount of yellow to make a sea-green (pretend it’s sea-green, ok?) background.  He painted this onto a piece of white cardstock with a square piece of sponge:
I found a coloring page here, printed it on cardstock and cut the whale out.  M colored Jonah with a crayon.  Then he mixed white and purple paint and painted the whale and an oval piece of cardstock that I had cut out.
We let everything dry overnight.  The next day he glued the whale to the sea background, and we attached the oval to the center of the whale with a paper fastener.  This is the whale’s flipper.  I know most whales don’t have flippers right there but this one does. Matthew asks everyone who enters our house, “Do you wanna see Jonah in the big whale?!?” and he flips up the flipper and there sits Jonah, on his knees praying, just waiting to be spit out. :) 
Jonah did the right thing in the end and did what God asked him to do, but I’m not entirely sure that lesson made it’s way into M’s brain exactly the way I hoped it would.  However, I would say this story definitely made an impression on him, and he really does like it – a lot.  And hopefully, eventually he’ll understand the moral of the story too. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Daniel in the Lion’s Den

We were in a hurry this past Friday – trying to get out of town for the big Labor Day weekend (hope you all had a wonderful weekend!), so we only had a short amount of time to spend on our Bible story.
We read Daniel in the Lion’s Den in both of our Children’s Bibles (see them here and here), one in the morning and the other at nap time.
We learned this song with motions (from Hubbard’s Cupboard, click the picture to go to the site):
And we made a paper plate lion. I drew inspiration for this idea from both DLTK and Making Learning Fun.
You will need a paper plate, paint, paintbrush,glue, a triangle cut from construction paper or foam, googley eyes, and 6 strips of black yarn.
First, paint a paper plate orange. We are running low on paint, so we mixed red and yellow together. You could do different color combinations too – maybe yellow for the face and orange or brown for the outer edge of the plate (lion’s mane), but we made it simple and did orange all over.
Glue on googley eyes, and a triangle nose (we used brown construction paper).
Next, glue on whiskers. For the whiskers I put the glue lines on the plate so M could see where to stick the yarn pieces.
For a little scissor practice, I drew black lines for M to cut on the back of the plate, around the mane at about 2 inch intervals.


Ta da – our finished lion:
We also read a library book that sort of tied in to this story. It is titled How Loud is a Lion? by Clare Beaton.

This is a fun book that goes through characteristics of several animals, always asking at the end of each page, “But how loud is a lion?”. Finally, at the end you see the lion and he ROARS (very loudly at our home, but only as loudly as you wish at yours :) ). We discussed how lions are loud and have sharp teeth and claws that could hurt people, and how wonderful it was that God sent an angel to keep Daniel safe – the lions didn’t even touch him!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Rainbows Galore - #2

Because the Gluey-Jello rainbow turned out like it did, we did another rainbow craft.
I gave M a piece of white cardstock and this rainbow painter we found at a discount store ages ago and have never used:

He didn’t really paint in a rainbow shape, but I didn’t necessarily intend for him to. I just wanted the whole paper covered with rainbow colors.

I also had him put his hands together like this (to make a dove) and drew around them on a light beige piece of cardstock:

(Oh, how I love those chubby little hands!)

Then we mixed white glue and very fine silver glitter together on a saucer:

He painted the birdie:

I wish you could see how sparkly it turned out. I have had great results mixing glitter with paint (or even just plain white glue) to achieve a sparkly effect. The key, though, is to use the finest glitter you can find. It’s way less messy than letting them sprinkle the glitter on.

Once the rainbow paper was dry, I drew a rainbow shape on the back and cut it out:
Glue the dove onto the top and you’ve got a pretty little reminder of the story about Noah’s Ark.
Nope, I didn’t make him hold it front of his face, that’s just what he did.
Here’s a close up of the sparkly dove:
It turned out very pretty – the pictures don’t do it justice.
Have a beautiful, sparkly day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Noah’s Ark

I have found that M seems to gain more from our Bible story times when we do activities and talk about the story a little bit before actually reading the story from one his children’s Bibles.

So, on Thursday I let him watch a short (3 minutes) video about Noah’s Ark on his Read And Share Toddler Bible DVD. He really enjoyed this.

There are so many inspiring ideas online for a Noah’s Ark theme. We almost weren’t able to fit everything in!

Friday morning when he woke up, this was waiting for him:

The printout is from Making Learning Fun (a fantastic site, by the way).

M got right to work:

Later we talked about all the colors of the rainbow as we did a little color mixing:

Next we had fun playing “Sink or Float?” in our kitchen sink:

M came up with some pretty interesting things to drop in. :) We made a little boat with a sponge, straw, and foam sail, and tried to see what we could carry on it and what would make it sink.

We talked about the ark and how God kept Noah, his family, and the animals safe on it.

I found these story cards on Sparklebox (another fantastic site!). M has never done sequencing with story cards before, and I wasn’t sure he was ready for that challenge, so I simply told him the story with the cards, and then we did it a second time while he told the story (with me giving some prompts).

I made up some game mats by printing this template out on colored construction paper, and we played an animal matching game. The game we used is one we’ve had for a while, but as we found matches, we got to put our animal couples on our arks. Whoever had the most animals on his/her ark won. :) Very simple, I know, and it was really unnecessary to print out ark game mats, but simple things can make a difference. M felt like it was a brand new game. And he won. ;)

We didn’t end up actually reading the story about Noah and the Ark from M’s Bible until bedtime that evening!

I had a craft planned, but we just didn’t get to it. However, I do still plan to do it with M, and I’ll create a separate post for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – Read and Share Toddler Bible by Gwen Ellis, Illustrated by Steve Smallman

Let me say right away, I highly recommend this Bible if you have small children who are young toddlers to pre-school age.
The illustrations are colorful and very well done; I especially like the facial expressions, which could easily tell the stories by themselves!
The stories are kept short and are written in very toddler-friendly language. While they are simple, they are still biblically accurate. This book holds my son’s attention, and helps carry the messages of the Bible stories home to him. We will definitely be using this book for some of our Sunday School on Fridays posts!
For a closer look, check out this great little flip book!
A one hour DVD comes with this Bible and it is perfect for a toddler. The pace is just right, the narration is spoken clearly (so important for a young child), and the animation is fun to watch. M was captivated by the story about Noah’s Ark, and would have happily watched the entire DVD!
I love several things about this Bible, and at the top of the list are the activity suggestions written at the end of each story. As you know, I love finding ways to help M internalize Bible stories and remember them. This book is full of inspiring ideas to help me do just that!
All in all, we greatly enjoy reading this Bible together; it is a wonderful addition to our bookshelves!

Sunday School on Friday – The Shepherd and the Lost Sheep

This week’s Bible story is from a parable that Jesus told, found in Luke, chapter 15.
We read this story from a couple of different children’s Bibles this week – one in the morning, and then the other one for bedtime. I just recently received the second one and I’m hoping to post a review of it within the next few days.
M was feeling a little emotional about this story; the idea of anyone being lost and alone makes him sad. We actually had tears at one point! Toddlers can be rambunctious and drive us nuts, but they also have very tender hearts!
I told him that the shepherd loved the sheep and kept looking for him until he found him, and that Jesus loves us that much too. For some reason this story really seemed to sink in with him.
For a craft we used this idea and made a paper plate sheep. M tore some cotton balls in half (makes it fluffier) and glued them to the back of a paper plate, then added some googley eyes.

At that point, it was looking cute. My artistic skills apparently need some work, because I cut out ears, a nose, and a small mouth and M glued them onto his sheep, and this is what it looks like:

I know! It looks like it has a moustache, doesn’t it?! I can hardly look at the thing. And those ears… well, I’m not sure what sheep ears look like, but I don’t think they look like that! :) Anyway, the fact that it looks funny is totally my fault, and I don’t want it to discourage you from making one with your child. M loves this sheep and was very proud of it.
We also played a very simple “count the sheep” game I made. There are links to the materials I made for this game at the bottom of this post if you are interested in doing this too.
Each person has a game card – basically a blank grid of 20 empty squares. Take turns rolling the die and then put that many lambs on your grid. Going left to right and top to bottom as you place the lambs on helps develop the habit they’ll need later on when they learn to read left to right and top to bottom. Whoever fills their card up first is the winner.
I’ve been really bad lately about getting pictures of M doing these things, but he really enjoyed it and we’ve played it several times since! After we are done playing he likes to sort the lambs into piles by color.
Next week is Noah’s Ark!
Have a beautiful day! :)
Link to make your own dice
Link to game cards
Link to lamb game pieces

Sunday School on Friday - Jesus and the Children

This week we read the story about Jesus receiving the children from our little Bible.

I love this story, and it's a great way to remind children of how much they are loved - by Jesus, and us too!

We sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children". And I made some quick little flannelboard figures to tell the story:

M loved this! We left them out for a few days and I found him a couple of times doing the story on his own or telling it to Daddy. So great! It probably helped that I made it sound like Jesus was really angry about the children being kept from him. "Hey you better stop that! I LOVE children, I'm NEVER too busy to tell them I love them!!" said in a gruff voice. ;)

Unfortunately when Daddy came home, M said "Leave me alone so I can think!". Oops. I think he may have gotten that from me. This story was a good reminder to me to be more patient and to always take time to let M know I love him.

He also did this little puzzle I made for him:

The tutorial for making these quick little puzzles is here.

That was all we had time for on Friday (it was my 10 year wedding anniversary!), but we did a couple more things throughout the week.

One day, I put these little clips on the flannelboard figures:

And we played with them like this:

We just basically retold the same story, but this little difference made it a big deal to M again and he had a lot of fun moving them around on the table instead of on the flannelboard.

Then we painted a cute coloring page I printed off from somewhere (sorry, I can't remember, but there are a lot of good free coloring page websites out there). The idea was to paint it, then rub the back with oil to make it transparent and then make it into a suncatcher. Well, it didn't turn out like I hoped, so I will spare you a picture of the end product. However, here M is painting it, and that was a lot of fun!

I hope this gives you some ideas of your own for bringing the love of Jesus to your little ones too!

Happy Friday! Have a beautiful day! :)