Raising Rock Stars: Creation Day 3

On day three of Creation, God created flowers, plants and trees. We had a lot of fun with this one.

I am a little behind in posting our Raising Rock stars lessons, which you will probably notice since Charger's hair is MUCH longer. I forgot just how badly he needed his hair cut before we finally cut it!

First we read the Creation story again in our 5-minute Bible Story book.



Then we worked on our day 3 earth for our lapbook. I got the graphics from Bible Kids Fun Zone.




We matched calendar flowers-a great idea I got from Chasing Cheerios. I took an old calendar and cut out the little display pictures from the back of the calendar and then Charger had to match them with the full size pictures from each month. See the hair? Wow it was long!

Then we made the CUTEST project we have done to date-no lie. I got the idea from Elise at Inspiration Surrounds Creativity Abounds who has some of THE most creative ideas ever. I highly recommend her blog!





We took a pom pom, pipe cleaner, and felt. I cut circles and petals out of different colors of felt. Charger and Mustang would first pick a pom pom and pipe cleaners and I would wrap the end of the pipe cleaner around the pom pom and then they would thread a circle and petal on the pipe cleaner to make a flower.



LOVE THEM! We gave them to grandmas and aunts for Easter. They seemed to enjoy them as well.

To check out what others are doing in their Bible lessons check out 1+1+1=1.

This is part 3 of a 7 part series.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4 {coming}
Part 5 {coming}
Part 6 {coming}
Part 7 {coming}

Book Review: If I Could Ask God Anything

My daughter is always asking questions. Generally, they are somewhat trivial questions: Why do I have to sleep at night? Why do I have to eat my green beans? Why do I need to wash my hands? But sometimes they are more important, much more important: Does Jesus sleep at night? Why do old people die? Can I take my baby doll to Heaven? I try my best to answer these simple {or not so simple} questions. But, soon, they will become even more important still: Who is God? and How do I get to Heaven? I need to be ready to answer her.

I was thrilled to receive 'If I Could Ask God Anything-Awesome Bible Answers for Curious Kids' by Kathryn Slattery as part of the Thomas Nelson Book Sneeze book club for review. In her book, Ms. Slattery helps parents, teachers, friends, and kids themselves answer the tough questions that kids ask about God, faith and the Bible. Taking questions from real children, she gives short, yet thorough, answers along with Bible references.

If I Could Ask God Anything has a great layout. The questions are broken down into 11 groups, covering such topics as The Bible, The Church, and Being a Christian Forever & Ever. It could be read straight through, or used as a reference book. I also think it would make a great kid's Bible study book, exploring a new question each week.

The author does not specify, but I would recommend this book for children age 8 and up. And though most of the questions and answers are universal to all Christian denominations, some are not-specifically the question of 'How Do I Get to Know Jesus?' Some of the questions may need a bit more explaining, but over all this is a great resource for parents, kids, and anyone wanting to learn more about the Bible. God Bless!!

Thank you to the Thomas Nelson Book Sneeze Club for providing me a copy of this book for review. I was not paid for my review and the opinions expressed are my own.

Raising Rock Stars: Creation Day 1

Awhile back, we learned about Creation in about 20 minutes on a Saturday. That post is here. Now, I know that kids have an interesting mix of being able to remember everything and nothing all at the same time, but I am not sure that anyone could remember Creation after only a 20 minute lesson.

I had thought that I would follow Carisa's plan on Raising Rock Stars to revisit Creation for a 2nd time. But, as I put together all the pieces I realized that this would be at least a 7 week lesson. Of course I was extra excited to realize that I had just planned out 7 weeks worth of Bible lessons!

So, we started with Day 1. Light and Dark. We sang 'He's Got the Whole World in His Hands', as suggested by Carisa. We read a Creation poem from 'Read Me a Bible Story.' Then we read about Day 1 in our 5-Minute Bible Stories book.



To help understand dark and light, we all went into our closet (yes we only have one, a family closet) because it doesnt have any windows. We closed the doors to it and stood in there a few minutes. Then, we open the door to the light.

We colored pictures of things used during the day and night and then glued them to the 'dark' or the 'night.' Charger did some of the coloring and helped me glue the pieces down. Mustang did all her coloring and some of the cutting. She got tired of cutting, though. She did glue all her pieces down.




We also started our Creation lapbook. I Mustang and Charger each color an earth to represent Day 1. Each week, will be coloring an earth to add to our book.



This lesson took about 30 minutes all by itself! Imagine if I had decided to do all 7 days in one lesson-we would have taken all day! I do think that this set up is going to best for our family. Since we will be teaching all our Science lessons from a Creation perspective, I want Mustang and Charger to have the best understanding of Creation that they can at their young ages. I am excited to teach them the rest of the story!

Resources used this week:

Raising Rock Stars Site
Day 1 Poster {Part of the Felt Set}
And I literally just spent an hour trying to figure out where I printed the clip art for our light/dark collage and cant find it! I want to give credit, so if you know where I got it, please let me know! Otherwise, I will update when I find it.

You may also be interested in this week's Raising Rock Stars post from 1+1+1=1. They are learning about the 10 Commandments. God Bless!

This is part 1 of a 7 part series

Part 2
Part 3 {coming}
Part 4 {coming}
Part 5 {coming}
Part 6 {coming}
Part 7 {coming}

Raising Rock Stars: Noah's Ark

Our letter this week is R, so I thought it would be the perfect time to learn about Noah's Ark and Rainbows.

We started by reading about Noah from The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes by Kenneth N Taylor. This book was given to me for my 2nd birthday (I know thanks to the inscription). I really enjoy this particular 'Bible.' I like it because the pictures are sketches of people rather then cartoon characters and there are great questions at the end of each page. It does not sugar coat the story of the flood, like some, and specifically asks where the other people of the earth are. I told Mustang where the other people where, but brushed over it quickly. She has been very worried about death and dying lately and I didnt want to scare her.



After we read the story, we reviewed it by looking at large pictures of Noah, animals and his ark in this giant coloring book I found at the Dollar Tree.



We printed off some fantastic resources to use with our story!



We read 'On the Ark' from the Noah's Ark Tot book on 1+1+1=1. Then we counted using the counting cards also from the Tot book.

I had Mustang put numbers 1-20 in order using the rainbow cards from Christian Preschool Printables.



We colored rainbows from Confessions of a Homeschooler.



And I gave them our Fisher Price Noah's Ark to play with. At first they didnt want to have their picture taken :).




Even Mini got in on the action.



Then we headed to the kitchen!

We recycled our broken crayons-which we have tons of-and made rainbow crayons.



To do this, we put foil muffin wrappers in our tin and then filled each hole with broken crayons. Heat the oven to 250 and cook from 7-12 minutes. Keep a good eye on them. Pull them out, let them cool, and then remove them from the foil.




Charger thought they were cookies. I warned him, but he still tried them. They werent cookies after all :).



We also made rainbow rice. Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple. We dont have purple food coloring. We added red and blue until we had something that resembled purple. Then, we mixed it all together for the base of our rainbow sensory tub.




This was a FUN lesson with so many extention possibilities. I hope you enjoyed our wrap up. For more great ideas for your family devotions, check out the weekly post at 1+1+1=1. God Bless!

Raising Rock Stars: Jesus Loves Me

I have to say this may have been my favorite week so far. After a week off of to regroup and refocus, we were ready to get back to school. We start each Monday with our Raising Rock Stars. Since this week is Valentines, I thought it was the perfect time to focus on God's love for us, since without Him we would not know Love at all.

We started by reading the story of Jesus and the little children out of our Beginners Bible. The story is found in Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17.



Then we read the book God Loves Me from Spirit Press. It has been sitting on our shelf since Mustang was born and I dont remember if we have ever read it as a family. It was such a great book! I love that on the last page it says that because God loves us he gave us Mommies and Daddies that teach us that Jesus loves children. Since I had JUST read them the story about how Jesus loves the little children it was very touching to me.



We sang Jesus Loves Me and Jesus Loves the Little Children. It was fun to teach Mustang and Charger the motions and see them try hard to do them. They did a good job.

I made this little card that says Jesus Loves and then made a card with each of their names on it. They were able to match up the cards and 'read' Jesus loves Mustang, Jesus loves Charger. They LOVED this. Charger was so excited to get a paper with his name on it. I got the original idea from Carisa, but didnt add the bottle caps that she does. My kids' names are too long!




We made heart people, an idea I got from Chasing Cheerios. They are so very cute and easy to make! You need a heart, 4 pipe cleaners, a hole punch, and we added googly eyes to ours.








At the end, I gave Mustang and Charger each a book about them. I found out about this book from School in Our Home. It comes from DLTK-Bible. Scroll down to custom stories and choose God Made Me mini books. You make a custom book that tells your child that they are special because God made them. It has a bunch of options. Mustang thought this was awesome! Charger liked it too. When Grandma and Grandpa stopped by in the evening, Grandma helped Mustang finish coloring hers.




Carisa from 1plus1plus1equalsone has put together some great resources to use with your family devotions. To see her material and other ideas for your family devotions, check out this weeks Raising Rockstars post. Have a great week! God Bless :)

Raising Rock Stars: Oh Be Careful Little Hands

This last week we had a major incident in our house. While I was cleaning up on Saturday, I discovered a cute pink and purple princess cell phone. It was the same little phone that I clearly remembered taking away from Mustang while we waited in the Walmart check-out lane. I also knew that I did not buy the phone!

I called Mustang over and asked her where it had come from. "I dont know," was her answer. After a discipline session, the little phone is currently sitting on top of my fridge awaiting its return to the store on our next trip.

Which leads me to the theme for this week's Raising Rock Stars-stealing!

Key verse: 'You shall not steal.' Exodus 20:15, Bible passage: Psalms 139:3-12. I chose to read out of the Children's Living Bible.

We read a devotional called 'Who Sees.' I found it on the Calvary Kids Pages. Scroll down to the bottom and choose stealing from the topic list. You can read the story from a printable or have it read to you.

Next, we sang the song 'Oh Be Careful Little Ears.' I found a printable with the words here. I printed and laminated a copy for us to sing with, and 2 additional copies for the kids to color.

After we were done with our reading and singing, I gave Charger a Mr. Potato head to play with.



I gave Mustang a felt face to put together. It came out a bit scary!



So, after she put it together, she and Charger played with Mr. Potato head for a long time. Giving him eyes, feet, ears, and hands.



For lots of great inspiration for your family devotions, check out the Raising Rockstars post on 1plus1plus1equals1. God Bless!

Raising Rock Stars: God Gave Us You

This week we read an adorable book, 'God Gave Us You,' by Lisa Tawn Bergren. I found it at the church bookstore and about cried reading it. It's a simple story of a momma polar bear telling her cub that she was a gift from God. Mustang liked the story and Charger liked the pictures.



Then we read Hannah's story from our Beginner's Bible. I thought they went well together since it is also about a baby, Samuel, who is a gift from God.

For our craft, Mustang drew a picture of a family and Charger colored a picture of a baby.

Our verse was "Trust in the Lord" Proverbs 3:5

No pictures this week, the baby was fussy and I couldnt hold her, the book and the camera at the same time.

For more great ideas for your family devotions check out 1+1+1=1.

Raising Rock Stars: Creation

We had a special session of Raising Rock Stars with Daddy this week! We normally attend church on Saturday evenings, but this last Saturday it didnt even reach 10 degrees outside. Just a bit too cold to venture out for any reason, so we decided to have a session of 'home church.'

Our verse this week is "...God Created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1

Daddy read the creation story out of The Beginner's Bible-one of my favorite for children. Daddy wasnt exactly thrilled about being in this picture. But he did it for the blog :)



On her blog, 1+1+1=1 (creater of Raising Rockstars), Carisa suggested a number of different resources including this mini book. I decided to turn it into pieces for our flannel graph. As we read about each day, I would add another piece to the graph. We did discover one flaw in the mini book. Day 6 shows a graphic of Adam and Eve, but Eve wasnt created until after Day 7. I didnt even notice that she was there until Mustang pointed out that her Bible book showed a picture of just Adam.



When we were done reading the Bible story, I took down the flannel graph pieces and had Mustang put them back up in order.



Then, I had Charger match numbers from his puzzle with the numbers on the flannel graph.



We were going to sing the song 'My God so Big" but we forgot-oops! We love that song and sang it later instead.

After we were done reading and working on numbers, Mustang and Charger headed to the kitchen to play with Playdough and create things themselves.




For more great ideas for your family devotions check out 1+1+1=1. You may also be interested in what we did last week. Thanks for checking us out!