Oct. 27, 2009 - Family Fun Night.....Pumpkin Carving Time

 For Family Fun Night we carved our pumpkins tonight.  We didn't make it to a pumpkin patch this year so we bought our pumpkins at WalMart.  We went out to the garden center and I said "look honey it's a pumpkin patch we could take pictures here!"

Anyways the pumpkins were in the living room and I sent the kids up to play for awhile they didn't know I was going to hide the pumpkins so when I called them to come down and get their pumpkins they were missing and there was this note instead...

Where Oh Where did the pumpkins go?? Go ask the witch, she might know.

Alexa found the next clue on the witch's hat.

Leave me alone to fly my broom...why don't you go look on the door in the craft room.

Savannah found that next clue.  I didn't get a picture.

No pumpkins here as you can see.  Now go look on top of a low tv.

The pumpkins could be anywhere so why don't you go look behind the rocking chair.

I didn't get a picture of that one either but the clue left there said:

To find your last clue you must go downstairs and look on the table covered by things that say "Boo".

Alexa found the last clue here and it said:

The time is getting late so don't delay go look inside the place where Natasha plays....

They were hiding in the pack in play!

As Jay started carving the pumpkins I read a short story to them....

Being a Christian is just like a pumpkin!

First, God picks you from the world and brings you in  "...but I have chosen you out of the world."  John 15:16

He then washes all the "dirt" off the outside that we received from being around all the other pumpkins.  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17

Then, He carefully removes all the "yucky stuff" out from the inside, all those seeds of sin, doubt, hate, greed, and fear from inside us.  "For we know our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with...."Romans 6:6

Then He carves a new smiling face.  "My lips will shout for joy when I sing praiss to You- I whom You have redeemed." Psalm 71:23

Now He fills us with His light.  "...let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds..." Matthew 5:16

So you see, we Christians are really like this pumpkin!  We will never be the same with Jesus inside of us.  We can say like this pumpkin,  "Thy presence, my light!"

The kids had to weigh and measure their pumpkins before we started for an activity in school tomorrow. 

We didn't get to do the mummy wrapping game as everyone was getting tired.  Jay wondered why did each kid have to have their own pumpkin as he was still carving while they all went off upstairs to play!!!!   I should have gotten a picture of that but didn't.  I think I was too busy trying to clean up.

Oct. 9, 2009 - Family Fun Night

We finally got a family fun night in.  It has been crazy around here with Jay getting ready for Battle of the Bands at our church.  This week we focused on making a prayer cube.  This came about because a few weeks ago Jay had been talking to the kids about how to pray and The Lord's Prayer.  We are trying to get them to expand their prayers and "talk" to God more.  This lesson focused in on this and was great.

This activity also came from Family Time Activities this book is "Running the Race".  We went through the scripture Matthew 6:9-13 and Ephesians 6:18.  Then they each got a copy of the prayer cube that I copied onto cardstock.  We went through each part of the prayer and labled our cubes: "Praise God", "God's Will", "Daily Needs", "Forgiveness", "Wisdom", and "Anything".  We put the cubes together then each of us had a chance to roll it and pray for the topic it landed on.  I think it is a great visual for the kids.

 After this we ended our evening with a fun stacking game (this idea came from my friend Kymberly, Thanks!).

Each person got a stack of oreo cookies to see how high they could stack them.  Then we got to eat some!!!  This was a lot of fun.

Sep. 1, 2009 - Super Science Experiments

 Our Family time this week was spent on Monday morning doing some fun science experiments.

The first one we did involved mentos and diet coke.  I had never done it before but yesterday our Pastor used it as part of his illustration for his sermon.  It is way cool!!!  Drop the mentos in and back up!

The rest of our experiment all focused on water and oceans (We did the coke and mentos just because the kids were begging to do it at home after seeing it at church. So I told them if they work together to clean up all the dog poop in the back yard we could do it.  )

So our first experiment was all about floating and sinking.  I made up a worksheet with pictures of different objects such as pencil, screw, key, shell, string, etc and they first had to guess if it would float or sink and then we actually tested each item.  Then with Anastasia we got into the discussion of density and how salt water affects things and such.

We used an egg and measured how much salt we needed to add to the water to get it to float.

Our other lesson was showing a visual of how much ocean water, drinking water and land there is on earth.  We used a two liter coke bottle and filled it just to the curve of the bottle with water and added blue food coloring.  The bottle represents the earth, the water represents ocean water.  Then we measured and added corn oil.  The kids got to see how water and oil don't mix and that led to a bunch of discussions.  The oil represents drinking water then the left over space at the top of the bottle represents land.  They got the concept and understood but their favorite thing to do was to shake the bottle as hard as they could and then watch the oil and water seperate again.

This was school for the day.  Anastasia had to write a paragraph about what she learned and Joshua dictated 3 sentences and then recopied them on his own.

Aug. 22, 2009 - Family Fun

We missed a formal family fun night last week due to illness.  The kids started feeling better and then Jay got sick.  We kept up with our nightly reading and are currently reading "The Adventures of Chatter The Red Squirrel" This week our family night was pretty low key since Jay was still recovering.  Friday night we made our homemade pizza and had the 3 minute cobbler for desert.  We also made a special dessert.  Since we are studying the oceans we made an "ocean in a glass".  It didn't turn out exactly how I was hoping but the kids loved it none the less.

Okay so the directions call for clear plastic glasses and blue jello.  I couldn't find blue jellow anywhere.  There was every other flavor/color so I thought we could try cherry jello and use blue colored cups.  It worked fine but you couldn't see the fishes in the cups it was all to dark.

I didn't get any more pictures the rest of the night as the camera batteries died and had to be recharged.  After our dessert Jay and Anastasia led us in a song of "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" then Jay read the days of creation from Genesis to tie in with our Ocean study.  Then we played a bunch of different games on Wii together.

Aug. 8, 2009 - Family Fun Night

This week's family fun night actually took place on Saturday afternoon.  Our schedule has to be flexible right now with Jay's band practice and when he can get them all together.

This week's lesson was on Daniel and the Lion's Den.  The goal to focus on was that Daniel obeyed and trusted God and God protected him.

The little one's memorized: "When I'm afraid I'm going to pray" 

Then Anastasia andJoshua memorized: "When the hungry lions growled and roared, Daniel put his faith and trust in the Lord."

We read Daniel 6 up to the point where they throw Daniel in the lion's den.  Then we stopped for our activity.  I pre-cut out 15 lion heads and put clear sticky tape (sticky side up, like hanging a poster) over each lion's mouth.  The kids all had to wear socks.  We set up a "lions den" in the family room by placing the lion heads on the floor in a two foot wide path.

Not a great picture and we spread them out more and created a border with our couch and pack n play.

They took turns being blindfolded and walking thru the lions den.  The rest of us roared as the person walked.  (you want to make sure each person gets "gobbled up" by a lion at least once)  Gobbled up means the lion stuck to their sock.

When everyone was done we told them they have one more chance to try and make it through the den without getting gobbled up and they would get a treat. So we sent all the kids into the other room and placed the "hands of God" over the mouths of the lion.  (pre-traced hand cut outs).  This time they could only come in the room one at a time and before they started they had to pray this prayer: "Dear God, No matter what is ahead of me, I know you can protect me.  Amen"

As they each made it all the way through with out getting gobbled up they received their treat for putting their faith and trust in God.    Then when they were all done we finished reading chapter 6 of Daniel.  We talked about how the hands of God protected Daniel and can protect them too.

Aug. 1, 2009 - Friday night, Family Fun Night

We have been searching for some more meaningful activities to do during our family time.  Don't get me wrong we all love playing Wii and other games together and there is nothing wrong with that but we were wanting to include some worship time as well.  Kirk Weaver's Family Time Activity Books seem to be the answer. 

Visit http://www.biblicalparenting.org/familytime.asp for more info.  These are great books and the website has some wonderful resources.  We currently have Bubbles, Balloons and Chocolate and Playing for Keeps.  Our goal with family worship is to obviously do it ourselves on a regular basis but then also come alongside and equip other families in our church to do the same.  We currently do not have a youth group and Jay is in charge in this area and we don't want a regular segregated youth group.  We want to create families that do stuff together.  We have seen many models and are trying to flesh out what it will look like.

Okay I digressed....back to our family night.  We made home made pizza and then when we were finished we sang a couple of songs together.  We are trying to teach the kids some of the songs we sing regulary in church together so they know the words and can get excited to sing along.

Natasha enjoying her pizza!

Anastasia is coming right along on her playing!

Then our activity was based on Good and Bad words.  There were several scripture verese we talked about:  Proverbs 12:18, Proverbs 25:18, Proverbs 15:4, and 1 Thessalonians 5:11.  The kids need to memorize part of 1 Thess.  is is : Encourage one another; build each other up.

Before we started reading I had the kids pick numbers and who ever got the closest was the one who I would trace for this activity.  (Everyone got to participate but we didn't need four outlines haging on the wall)  Joshua won so I traced his body and hung it on the wall:

After going over the verses we told the kids we were going to see how words can build people up and how they can tear people down.  I had slips of paper and the kids called out words to me that build people up such as:  I like you, Thank you, I will be your friend, let's play etc.  Then we listed words that tear down such as: ugly, stupid, your mean, I don't want to play with you, idiot etc.

I put the seperated slips of paper in a bowl.  (Use the tearing down words first)  They took turns picking one out and said what type of word it was.  Each time they said a tearing down word they tore a piece of the paper body off. 

Then they picked building up words from the other bowl and as they said nice words we taped the guy back together. 

Of course you can still see the scars (what a great object lesson).  We really need to be careful what we say because we can build someone up but the bad words can still leave scars.  When we were done taping him back together we all went around and had to say something nice about each person in our family.  We are going to do that all week at dinner.  We are also pointing out good and bad words more specifically this week and working on just using building up words.

What a great first activity of this type.  Stay tuned this week to see what is next.  We will have our family night on Thursday this week.