So I really wanted to go to the MFA today to do their morning homeschool art class.  It’s only $9 per child, both Noah and Abby are eligible and would be in the same class, and it’s a whole hour and a half and includes a tour of the museum!  And the accompanying adult is FREE!  Talk about a great deal.  Did I mention they do this almost every Friday, TWICE a day???  I wish we lived closer to Boston.  I’d totally be there every Friday.  But since this wasn’t something I had planned on, but rather stumbled upon this week and even though today they happened to be focusing on our particular art focus right now, we didn’t go.  One thing I’m really trying to stick to during this homeschool journey is staying home at least one day every week.  That means, not even going to the grocery store.  It’s for all of our sanity.  To have one day each week that we just. stay. in.  Even going to the library with all three kids is more complicated than it sounds.  So we all need just one day (if not more, depending on the week) where we just stay home and be.  We play with play dough, play outside or go for a walk if the weather is nice and just hang out together.  Today was that day.  And yes, though I am a little disappointed that we didn’t go to the museum, I’m very grateful to be sitting on the couch in my yoga pants right now and feeling relaxed because we didn’t rush through anything today.  We played some reading games, played with play dough, had snack and lunch when we wanted and talked about patience (which I’m sure I wouldn’t have had much of had we ventured into Boston).

Which brings me to the point of this post, PEACE and PATIENCE.  I figured I’d lump them both in the same post since they both begin with “p” and I wanted to catch up. 😉  Last week we talked about peace and our corresponding fruit was peaches.  (Not exactly in season, but it worked.)  We read the story about Jesus calming the storm with the disciples in the boat a couple times and even acted it out.  It’s fun to role play every now and then.  Meaningful activities don’t always HAVE to be crafty and involve crayons, scissors, and glue. Yes, we do other things, too! 😉  What I really wanted the kids to pull away from the story and our week was that peace comes from God (Jesus).  Once we talked about the source of peace and what it is, we read and memorized the second part of 1 Peter 3:11 which says, “Look for peace, and go after it.”  To accompany this sentiment, we played “find the peach” and I hid all 5 peaches we had in the living room and the kids had to find them.  I kept telling them to “look for peace and go after it.”  We also had peach smoothies with lunch one day and them painted the peach pits the next day to look like jewels for necklaces.  Daddy says he will drill holes in them so we can peace peach necklaces. 🙂

This week our fruit was PATIENCE.  I usually introduce the fruit in the beginning of the week, maybe read a verse or two, and then we do more of our focus activities on Thursday or Friday of that week.  This week our verse was from Proverbs: “Anyone who is patient has great understanding. But anyone who gets angry quickly shows how foolish he is.” Proverbs 14:29.  I made a poster of the verse and put all of our names in it so it would become more personal.  (Another idea from the blog I follow.  She’s really awesome, so if you haven’t yet, check her out!)  Our Bible story was the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and how long he had to wait to have the son God promised him!  The fruit was kiwi–rough on the outside, but sweet on the inside.  Kind of represents the contrast we find in our verse–the difference between being patient or getting angry quickly.

To practice patience, I had the kids try to remove as many of the little black kiwi seeds they could from a slice of kiwi.  Can’t take credit for that idea, though, it comes directly from my good friend, Lindsey, who gave it to me when I told her I was lacking in the activity department for this week.  Abby had the patience to remove 27 seeds with tweezers.  Noah removed 14.  Then they were done.  haha!  Not a whole lot of patience runs in this family.  Daddy probably has the majority of it.  Noah was quick to point out that Emmalyn is NOT patient at all, so I explained to him that since she’s a baby, she HAS to cry for things in order to get her needs met.  I don’t know if he understood that, though.  haha!

To come back around to our art lessons for the week, I had Abby work on a couple self-portraits so we would write about how patient and wise she is.  This was a fun focus!  Now I must go tend to my (apparently very impatient) 10-month-old who always seems to test MY patience right around dinnertime. 😉 Tonight we’re carving a pumpkin so I bet we’ll need a bit of patience for that activity, too!  Peace and patience, peace and patience I bid to you, everyone!