Heavenly and earthly Fathers (Sunday school lesson for preschoolers)

This Sunday is Fathers Day - perfect for talking about God, our heavenly Father.

This time no story. I wanted to get the kids talking.
Today we're going to talk about God, our heavenly Father. Who here has a father? (encourage response)
Who know his father's name? (encourage response)
They are your earthly fathers. Your father here on earth. Did you know that you ALSO have a heavenly father? Who knows who that is? (encourage response)

Do your daddys know a lot? Are they smart? Can you think of something your daddy knows? For example, my daddy always knows where he's going. He can always find his way. He never gets lost. He has a good sense of direction and can always find his way home. What about your daddy's?

Wow, your daddy's are smart! We can learn a lot from our daddy's. And did you know.. God, our heavenly Father is also really smart. He knows even more than every daddy on earth. God knows everything. He even knows how many hairs you have on top of your head! And he knows all your names! He knows where you live and whether you have brothers and sisters. He knows when you're happy or sad or angry. He knows all this because He's God. God knows everything.
We can also learn a lot from our heavenly Father. For example, I am learning how to love people the way He loved us, how I can show someone I love them by being friendly to them.

Who can tell me something their daddy does really well? For example, my daddy is good at fixing bikes. What can your daddy do really well? (encourage response)

Wow, your daddy's sound amazing. We can learn so much from our fathers.
Our heavenly Father is also really amazing. He made the earth, the seas, the clouds, the sun, moon and all the stars! He made all the trees and flowers, animals, birds and fishes. He even made us! God can say to the wind 'Be still' and the wind will stop blowing. He can say to a storm 'Be quiet' and the storm will calm down. God can say to the sun 'Don't move' and it will stop moving. Wow huh! God can do anything!

Let's play a game.

Daddy says
Run around the room. You are the wind in the storm. Be wild. Be fast. But listen closely because when I say 'Still' all of you must freeze. Can you do that? Then we'll do another storm and you start running again. But when I say 'Lie down' you must all lie down as quickly as possible.
Let's play.

Prayer
Let's thank God for our fathers here on earth and that He is our Father in heaven.

Fathers Day Craft
Cut pieces of cardboard out of boxes. Punch 2 holes in the top with a hole punch. Paint it. Glue a text on top saying 'I love you Daddy' (the lego heart I used is from the brickartist). Glue a small note book on the card board as well.

Coloring Page
Illustrating today's lesson: Our father here on earth and our Father in Heaven.(Feel free to use it)

The road to wisdom

Do you ever have times when you know something but somehow keep forgetting it anyway? The first part of the quote below comes from Love and Logic - a practical philosophy to raising children (at home and in the classroom). Being sleep deprived because our littlest one is teething I need to remember this for when I'm dealing with the elder boys. I made 3 different versions (because it gets boring to look at the same thing all the time) to hang in 3 different places. I hope it will help me take a step back when the kids do misbehave and remember that I'm happy they're making these mistakes now because that means they won't be making them when they're older and the price tags are so much higher. 

Birthday party theme Ghosts

I don't know how it happened, but one day my son (just turned 6) came home from his (very conservative christian) school and announced he really wanted his birthday party theme to be 'ghosts'. He would not be persuaded or tempted towards another (more kid-friendly?) theme, so I agreed to go with ghosts (and later regretted it, but hey, once I say 'yes' I need very good reasons to justify changing my mind).

So... ghosts. You must understand that in the Netherlands Halloween is a controversial holiday that is celebrated only by a few (mostly expats) and things like 'ghosts', 'witches' and other things are sometimes really frowned upon by other christians. So that put me in a bit of a sticky with regards to other moms and families... how to keep my word to my son but keep it fun and light hearted at the same time.

Here's what we came up with.

We did lots of decorations.
(Doing those together is really the reason I do themed birthday parties - I just love getting crafty with my kids and since they aren't very motivated towards crafty things except when they're working towards a big fun party.... you get the picture :) ).

PS Click on the photo's for a larger view...

Quite a few of these decorations can be found on my pinterest boards (Kids Crafts and Kids Crafts from Krokotak).
The house I just cut with a hobby knife free handed (crooked lines add to the weird haunted house look); The little ghost garland I cut from folded crepe paper so I could cut 10 in one go. We then stuck black crepe circles on for eyes.
The window pictures show (it's hard to see) spider webs that I drew on the windows with black paint in a clean glue tube (that worked amazingly well!). And you probably can't see the really scarey spider made from black paper (circle body, 8 strips for legs, bent in 2 places each) and red pom pom eyes with small black pupils glued on that'sitting in the window web.

We planned games.

Check out the costumes and masks! I kept it really really simple: half a bed sheet, hole cut out for the head, elastic sewn around that hole. Voila. Hang around nek. I skipped on all the hemming since (except 2 for my boys) these costumes were for one time only. (I plan to re-use the sheets for some craft ideas I have...)
The mask can be found on my pinterest board Kids Crafts.

Marshmellow ghost
We gave the kids a bowl of marshmellows, m&m's, toothpicks and chocolate icing (to use as glue) and 3 minutes to make their own little edible ghost. The most creative results earned a kid 2 points. The rest earned 1 point for trying. We did this for all the games.

Water bottle bowling
We set up 6 water bottles and used a soft baby ball (since we were indoors). The only rule was that they needed to stay behind the doormat (for distance).

Ghost hunt
I made these really cute little ghosts from a scrunched up piece of paper (for the head), wrapping a tissue wipe around the 'head' and securing with some thread. Then I drew 2 eyes and a mouth on the head with a marker. They were adorable (see decoration picture).
We hid them around the house, peeking out from behind paintings, books, toy boxes etc. And set a limit (10mins) for the search (to avoid boredom... these kids really needed to be kept busy to ensure that the peace was kept).

Ghosting daddy
We had to skip this idea because of the time, but it would have been such fun! We were planning to hand each kid a toilet roll. Daddy was willing to suffer their efforts to make him the loveliest of ghosts with toilet paper and scotch tape. Too bad we missed out on that one!

Scavenger hunt/ Quest
My wonderful husband set out this 'quest' for the kids to follow outside. We were counting on an overkill of energy to run off so he made it pretty long. He pinned little ghosts on trees for them to find and follow. They were really competitive in being the first to find and collect the ghost markers. We even had some pushing and fighting to resolve. I was absolutely amazed (and b.t.w. 'who has the most ghosts' was NOT even an objective - they made that 'game' up themselves).

The trail led through 2 small playgrounds were we had some activities for them to do (we also allowed some 'free playing' until tempers started to flare).

Bean Bag Balance Race
Put a bean bag on your head and race someone to the other side.

Hopping Ghost Race
Basically hopping to the other side on one leg.

Backtrack Race
Basically doing a small track (around play things and posts) backwards as fast as you can.

Ghost Tag
One kid is 'it'. He tries to tag someone else. When he does, he and the other kid must hold hands and together they must try to tag someone else. The more kids that are tagged, the longer the 'ghost chain' is until only one kid is left - the winner.

We made - this truly was the highlight of the day - a totally fabulous creepy tunnel out of 15 cardboard boxes varying from huge to just big enough for a 7 year old to crawl through.

They had to climb into a standing box using a ladder (a little help was needed for this manoever). Then they had to crawl through a hole into another box, through another hole into a huge box. In that box there were lots of cut up plastic garbage bag strips hanging from the ceiling to make it harder to find their way (plus it feels creepy in the dark). They crawled over bubblewrap and packing plastic foam blocks, and even had one box that went downhill (where we had steps - we put planks underneath to support the box). We'd also made holes in the sides of the boxes and taped plastic bags in these - tickle and scare holes for others to surprise the one crawling through. That was great fun!
The kids were all in agreement - this was the best part of the party!


Themed party favor bags are expensive so I generally make my own using sandwich bags and glueing a picture on them. The kids generally don't care about the packaging anyway - almost unable to wait until they're home to rip it apart to get to the contents. But still, I take some pride in the presentation :).

As you can imagine... they weren't ready to go home yet at the end of the party (mission accomplished). My son had a ball (although what he loved even more, of course, were the presents he got... o, the materialistic spirit!). Still... next year he'll have long forgotten what he got but he'll definitely still remember this party!

It was definitely worth the total exhaustion afterwards.

Reading the bible with kids

For some time now I've been looking for ways to deepen our bible reading times. For several years now I've been reading to them during breakfast - different children's bibles have crossed our table, stories getting more detailed as the kids grow older. It's been good but now I want more. I am finding that my children know the stories all too well. What they are lacking is how these stories pertain to their lives. Why did God include these stories in the bible? What can we learn from them? About God? About the human race? About ourselves?

I started looking around on the internet for ideas. What do other parents do? And I came across a book called: Together. Growing Appetites for God by Carrie Ward, an everyday mama. Carrie felt God calling her to read the entire bible with her children (3 at the time, all under the age of 4). And she did. Not a children's bible. She actually read the real bible. And her kids were younger than mine are now. So I wondered - would my kids understand the sometimes really hard-to-understand language of the bible? Would their attention drift as mine frequently does when someone else reads out loud from the bible to me? Or would they become rivited as Carrie's children had been?

I decided to do a test drive. In order to have more time I started postphoning my own breakfast so that I could spend that time reading to the kids instead. First I read a story from the children's bible. And then I read that same story from the real bible. I leave the children's bible open so they can look at the amazing artwork while they listen to the same story again. And it's interesting!
The eldest (who is 7yrs) can't wait to hear more. At lunch he will ask if we can continue where we left off in the mornings! The second (6yrs) doesn't seem to be paying much attention but sometimes he'll suddenly say something profound or touch back on something we read later in the afternoons when he's back from school.
Reading from the real bible is sparking discussion. About what certain words mean. About cultural differences: bible times vs. this day and age and middel-eastern ways vs. our ways here. The stories are coming alive!

I'm not sure I'm ready to read the entire bible through from Genesis to Revelation but I am delighted at the positive way the children are responding to being read to from God's Word, just as it is, tough words and all. Since I am half way through a new children's bible at the moment I've decided to finish reading that bible, with parallel readings from God's Word. And I pray that God will reach out and touch their hearts and lives. After all, God promises: "so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:11) And that's my prayer: that it may reach our hearts and do God's great work in us.