the hatchling place

making plates.

about a month ago we were doing a history project & on it's own it turned into a gospel teaching moment as well.   

we had been studying the first writings of the egyptians.  the activity was to take clay, roll it out into rectangles and carve a message into it using a hieroglyph chart.  i found one for you here. :)

as we did the activity we started talking about the scriptures & how our prophets had to carve them onto plates.  by doing the activity it gave us an appreciation for the time and care it took to do this.  it truly was a labor of love.  

general conference prep.

i don't feel that i've ever done a good job preparing my girls for general conference, so this week i wanted to focus on the general authorities.  

each morning we'll study members of the first presidency & quorum of the twelve.  the first day i focused solely on president monson.  we talked about the importance of prophets & looked over all the modern day prophets in the gospel art book.  they really loved counting how many of them wore glasses :)

after that i told them a little about president monson's life & showed them pictures i had found on the web of him. (mostly photos of him as a child & they really liked seeing the home he grew up in.)  all these i found on google images.)  there is also a nice little video on the friend's web page to the song "when i hear the prophet's voice."  (and right underneath that there is a general conference notebook you can print for kids.)   

on the second day we studied president eyring & president uchtdorf, the same way we did president monson.

on the rest of the days we're going to divide the members of the quorum of the twelve up & study a little about each of them.  

i hope that by doing this they will connect more with the faces they'll see on the screen.  

(for all the bios i just searched the friend magazine for past articles on each general authorities.)  

(don't you just love this photo of president monson?  i found it on a christian site, but couldn't figure out who took it.  i love it though.)

the brother of jared.

well it's been a long time & i kind of figured that after moving to a new town & starting homeschooling, i'd just give up this little blog.  but this morning's scripture study felt a little special and i thought, well, maybe i should get back to keeping track of these activities.  maybe one day it'll be a way for me to share with my girls some of the things we did.  

so onto this morning...

this week we've been studying the brother of jared and today we basically acted out the story with some blocks, little people, rocks & bowls.  so simple...but the spirit of it felt beautiful.  

i basically walked them through the story, occasionally reading verses from the scriptures & asking them questions along the way, as they acted it out with their toys.

first we built our tower of babel...

then acted out jared & the brother of jared and the many prayers he said for help...

 then built a boat (out of two bowls on top of each other to make then "tight like a dish")

i had the girls run in the backyard to find "16 stones" that the brother of jared asked the Lord to touch with his hand.  (the girls touched each stone with their hands)

they then put the stones in the boat with the people & took turns swimming it around the ocean.  (they walked all over the house) until  wynn decided where the promised land was & swam the boat into their bedroom.  

once they made it there we looked on the globe (because my oldest is currently fascinated with maps) and i showed them the approximate place that jared & his people left from, showed them across the ocean & the areas they may have lived in.

great good-feeling fun :)

(i think that part of why this activity felt so special was because of the time we spent all week learning about this story.  we study a chapter a week in the children's scripture readers, an idea i learned from our old bishop's family.  i'll share about that another day, it's been such a great way for us.)

scripture timeline.

 

we're starting with the old testament.  for every major story we make something to represent it & hang it on the wall in order. 

i've been trying to make them a little different each time.  for the creation my little girl just drew it.  for adam & eve my other daughter cut pictures of them out of the friend, glued them to a paper & colored in flowers, etc.  for noah's ark we cut it out of construction paper & i had several little stickers of lots of animals for them to stick onto the ark.  the tower of babel goes up really high on the wall. 

i'm hoping to do this for the book of mormon & the new testmant as well.  i love seeing it there on our wall. 

love one another chain.

 

i read the book 52 weeks of fun family service by merrilee boyack and was inspired by her opening chapters.  i wanted to focus more on being a good example of service in a "bigger" way.  while reading her book i loved how she taught her children to really serve, not just drop off cans at a place.  that's good too, but it seems that her family really takes the time to serve outside of what is convenient.  and that can be really hard. 

to start this idea off we huddled around the provident living web site and watched a little video they had on there about a recent service project.  then we searched the lists they have of ways to help serve others.  we then voted on the way we wanted to give and ways we could accomplish it.  the chain isn't just for this service project, but it was a starting point.

our chain goes in the opposite direction of my usual "count down" chains.  this chain we are adding too.  when we serve someone outside of our family we write it on a paper & add it to the chain.  our goal is to get the chain to reach the floor, hopefully before we move this summer. 

since i already had the "caughtcha" wall going on for sometime, our chain is reserved for extra special service things that we do.  but you could use the chain for anything. 

lds.org's friend page.

did you know this yet? i didn't...

when you go to lds.org and click into the page for the friend magazine it has lots of on-line children's activities.  such as: watch slide shows, listen to stories, play games, color on-line, print coloring activites, and more!

i am so excited about this!  and grateful that the church has made a wonderful place for our little one's to visit on-line.

you can find it here. 

now go and favorite it :)

a family recipe.

 

this is not a new idea, but i thought i'd share it anyway. in next month's friend issue (page #27)there is a cute poem called "a simple recipe."  it is about ingredients that make up a happy family. 

i took a recipe (we made home-made pretzles) and laid out all the ingredients.  then i labled the ingredients with things from the poem.  i put laughter on the flour jar, kindness on the yeast, etc. 

we talked about how a recipe takes lots of ingredients that you mix up and then bake into something yummy.  what if you put bad things into your recipe?  then you'd get something yucky, but when you put good things in you get something yummy and wonderful. 

then we talked about how that's just like our family.  we read the poem and whenever it added an ingredient we mixed up our real recipe.  (it was a little busy for me making sure we followed the real recipe while calling them other things :) but the girls LOVED it.

so simple & so wonderful.

here's the poem...i couldn't find it on lds.org yet

A Simple Recipe by Jane Lamb

I know a simple recipe that anyone can make.

It isn't for an apple pie; it isn't for a cake.

You need not stir in sugar. Don't add a pintch of salt.

It isn't for a cookie.  It isn't for a malt.

It comes from Heavenly Father, who watches from above.

You start with just your family; add kindness, faith and love.

Throw in some joy and laughter, and of course a cup of care.

Don't forget to add the sharing and a generous dose of prayer.

Make sure you stir it well, so everyone can see

You've made a happy, loving home from a simple recipe.

the "caughtcha" wall.

 

so the holidays are over & my children are on the mend...it's time for me to do some "hatchling" catch up.  i have lots of ideas to up-date and a few are still brewing in my head.

but first up, i thought i'd pick up where i left off...with the post-its. our thankful wall was such a big hit that i wanted to use it again.  

it is now, "the i caughtcha doing something wonderful wall."  the post-its remain on the table with markers and everyday one or two of us has something to add.  we can put anything nice up that we saw someone doing..."so & so gave me resees." "so & so cuddled with me in bed when i was sick." "so & so cleaned up nana's playroom after being asked just one time."

it has been wonderful noticing all the sweet little acts that go on.  and i know it makes them feel special when we notice.

thankful post-its

 

thanksgiving week is here, so i thought i'd share our thankful wall that's been going on by our kitchen table. 

all we did was draw a poster that says "we are thankful" and in the middle of the table i always leave markers & a stack of post-it notes for people to write their gratitude items on.  then we stick them on up there.

super easy & super wonderful to see what my girls put.  my 6 year old is especially into it, she adds a few every day. 

i've always thought it'd be neat to make a big tree & add huge leaves on it with their thank-yous on that, but that takes prep-time & it seems that prep-time & me don't mix so well :)  this one is my easy, no prep-time alternative.

ceiling plan of salvation- part 4

 

part 4 focuses on death and how our bodies stay on earth while our spirits return back to heaven.  to review this part i did the good old hand & glove demonstration.  i grabbed a mitten for everyone so that they could do it with me. 

if you've never heard of it it goes something like this.....your hand represents your spirit and your glove represents your body.  you can demonstrate how your spirit (hand) was in heaven & when it came to earth it received a body (put the glove on).   when we die we take our body (glove) off and it remains on earth, while our spirit (hand) goes back up to heaven.  i think i was taught this as a kid, but to me it is so perfect and children can understand it.

while talking about this it was wonderful to ask them questions about why our bodies are so important and the things we can do that we can not if were just spirits.  to me, this is laying a foundation for them to respect their bodies in the future.

for the ceiling.....have each child draw a big picture of themselves on card stock.   i also had one of them draw a picture of the earth.  i then took thick transparent paper & traced the pictures they had drawn of themselves.  cut everything out. 

tape the pictures of themselves onto the earth (to represent how their body stays on the earth after death) and hang the earth up with string.  then hangthe transparent body cut-outs up above the earth, i also took one of our stars from heaven & hung it up above the earth. (to represent how our spirits go back up to heaven.)

*as a side note.....i love my 3 year old's drawing and it's super long hair, oh how she wants her hair to grow out long!