On the day before Thanksgiving, I’m trying to cram in one more blogpost.  It’s going to be hard, since there are a million homeschool/holiday/parenting things on my mind right now!  Where do I begin?

Let’s start with our next fruit of the Spirit: faithfulness.  For faithfulness, we used a lemon.  I didn’t schedule any official school this week so we were able to focus on faithfulness and our Thanksgiving preparations (kind of–we also had doctor’s appointments and Monday was completely consumed by OCC drop-off.  We delivered 1660 boxes!!!).  I found “faithfulness” to be a kind of tricky concept to teach the kids.  I started with the story of Noah.  We read it and I talked about how Noah was faithful to God in that he stuck with building the ark even though it took him a long time, and he obeyed every command God gave him.  Then, God was faithful to Noah by doing what He said He was going to do. We listed some things that are faithful in our lives; things we can count on, like Daddy coming home from work every night (therefore he is faithful to us) and Mommy making breakfast, lunch, and dinner (therefore I am faithful by providing meals). We talked about how God wants us to be faithful to Him by obeying Him, and to others by doing what we say we’re going to do.  That night I made my chicken piccata, which is a lemony dish and the kids helped!

The verse I used as our key verse is Psalm 51:10.  It talks about having a faithful spirit and a pure heart, so at first I wanted to do a heart project, but we already did one with “love.”  So I decided to incorporate the “lemon” part of our theme and make paper lemonade glasses.  On each lemon in the glass, we wrote an example of how we can be faithful to God and others.  We made sponge-paint ice cubes, then glued straws to the glasses.

Today was definitely “cute craft” day because we also made these adorable turkey cookies for Thanksgiving, tomorrow!  Don’t you just want to gobble one up?! 😉

So I’ve been thinking about what our December will look like this year.  It’s a pretty common thing for homeschooling families to take the whole month of December off from school (and usually not take a February or April vacation) in order to make time for all the baking, events, craft projects, and Christmas units.  It’s one of the many benefits to homeschooling–to actually get to enjoy the Christmas season at a slower pace than usual!    This year I had a small part in putting together our church’s advent devotional readings.  The theme is 25 Names of Jesus and I wrote 5 of them and included a family connection and activity for families with children.  So, obviously we’ll be doing that, and I’m looking forward to it!  That’s only 5 family devotionals/activities, however, so I was feeling a little guilty (because I’m a mom, so of course) about taking a whole month off from school and not doing something a little more in-depth for Christmas.  Then I contemplated doing The Truth in the Tinsel from ohamanda.com but that seemed a little too in-depth.  So I think we might do an abbreviated version of it, which includes a piece on the different names of Jesus, so it will tie in nicely with the series we’re doing with church.  I have to admit that although I like the December plan, I don’t love it.  😉  But it’s the plan for now and I’ll keep you posted!  If you want to do the 25 Names of Jesus this advent season with us, you can find the readings (for free) here: http://www.hopechapelsterling.org/advent-readings-2016/  (Advent starts Sunday, November 27 and you don’t have to have kids to do it, the 25 main devotions are for adults!)  If you’re interested in doing the Truth in the Tinsel, you can find it on ohamanda.com.  You do have to pay for the ebook.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and if you’re in the same homeschool boat as me, have a wonderfully relaxing December and let me know what your plan is!  (I might want to steal it!) 😉

Our fruit this past week was goodness and we used a lime for representation.  Don’t ask me why.

It seems pretty obvious, I’m sure, but I just had to use the parable of the Good Samaritan for our Bible story.  I had to explain to the kids that Jesus was saying that EVERYONE is our neighbor and we are to love and “be good/do good deeds” for our neighbors, i.e. everyone.  They didn’t quite get the geography or culture of it all in context, but they definitely understood that the Samaritan was the one who did the right thing and the other two men did the wrong thing by passing by and not helping the wounded man.

My kids love seltzer water.  So during lunch, we drank seltzer and I had them try it plain first.  Then I said, “You know what will make this seltzer really GOOD?  Let’s squeeze a lime into it!”  So cheesy, I know.  But the craft we were supposed to do was a sun-catcher which would go with our verse for the week and a lime slice could make a cute little sun-catcher which is maybe why the two correlate.  I knew we wouldn’t get a chance to do the craft, so I had to just make it work.  (Emmalyn tried some lime, too.  You can see how that went over…)

Emmalyn wasn’t a huge fan of the lime. Who can blame her?

Our verse for the week was Matthew 5:16 “In the same way, let your light shine in front of others.  Then they will see the good things you do.  And they will praise your Father who is in Heaven.”  (See how the sun-catcher craft would’ve been perfect?  Oh well, you can’t do everything.) 😉  When I introduced this verse, I asked the kids what the Good Samaritan did as his “good deeds.”  Then we made a list of what good things we can do for others, which led to a conversation about the difference between “good” things and “kind” things.  My kids seem to think that coloring a picture for someone cures all and is really the only thing they need to do for anyone. After some gentle prompting, our list grew and went in the right direction. 😉  Oh yeah, here’s some proof that I do actually teach my kids… (I’m not one to be in front of the camera much!)

Speaking of good deeds, did you pack an Operation Christmas Child (OCC) shoebox this year???  We were able to pack two: one by Abby and one by Noah.  We included letters and pictures in them and are hoping we might get to hear back from the child who receives the boxes, but who knows.  Either way, it was a fun process!  I was able to be a volunteer with Samaritan’s Purse this year as a relay center coordinator which was fun and a lot of work!  We’ve been counting boxes, packing boxes, and praying hard over the boxes!  If you’ve never heard of OCC or Samaritan’s Purse, check out their program! www.samaritanspurse.org/occ

I wanted to share one more GOOD thing with you!  We had another Saturday brunch this weekend (it’s seriously one of our favorite things to do with friends) and I made sheet-pan sausage that was amazing!  I got the recipe from my Food Network magazine and you can find it here.  It’s really not labor-intensive, though it might look it by first glance.  And the sage that’s in it made the house smell just like Thanksgiving!  I’ll definitely be making it again sometime soon! 🙂  It also makes several portions–hello, leftovers! 🙂

This sausage, drizzled with a little maple syrup… seriously, the best!

Maple Pecan Scones. Very good, just not ready to share the recipe yet. 😉

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!

I’m really trying to not get so behind on these Fruit of the Spirit posts.  And I feel we’re entering a crazy season of busy weeks and weekends; lots of get togethers and “holiday” parties are on the horizon.  I’m doing my best to stay current and not forget anything, so bear with me!

Last week we talked about JOY, our second fruit.  Amanda used bananas for joy, and I’m using the same fruit she picked.  The bananas make cute smiley faces!

Our LOVE week was jam-packed with activities, check out the post to see them, they’re great!  But joy was a little more low-key.  I like that because I don’t think I could handle having back-to-back activity-intense weeks in addition to our regular school curriculum, which is picking up intensity by itself.  So to introduce the unit, I read Nehemiah 8:10 “The joy of the Lord is my strength.”  We talked about what joy IS and where it comes from.  We read John 15:1-11 and discussed again how Jesus is the vine (or tree) and we are the branches that are to bear fruit, which is why we’re talking about the fruit of the spirit in the first place!  But it also emphasizes that if we remain in Jesus, our JOY will be complete. We sang and danced (and Daddy joined in) to the Veggie Tales singing “Down in my Heart.”  How joyful!

I have to remind myself sometimes that what I’m doing with my kids now is planting seeds.  I shouldn’t expect them to walk away from a mini-lesson or discussion completely changed.  But I hope and pray that I’ve planted a little seed that will grow with them as they grow and learn.  This means I can tell my kids that their joy should come from the Lord but that doesn’t mean that they’ll never get upset when a toy is taken or they don’t get their way (just as we adults don’t learn that quickly, either).  Hopefully they’ll remember these lessons and discussions and I can build on them more easily as they get older.  So we did make a list of the things that make us joyful and then talked about things that make us upset and how we can try to remember to find our joy in God and not in things.

And finally, of course, we made banana crunch muffins! (Another Ina Garten recipe.) No pictures of those, though, because I made them “jumbo” and they fell apart.  haha!  But we had a picnic in the living room while we read our Bible verses and Abby colored the JOY on our poster with a banana scented marker (for Noah) and she got her chapstick.  It was a good week!  PEACE is next!

Mash those bananas, Noah!

Last week the kids and I spent a few days talking about our first “fruit” of the Spirit: love.  This was a relatively easy one to cover, I think.  Kids LOVE to talk about what they love!  On the first day, I had them repeat the whole verse after me.  This is the version we’re using: “But the fruit the Holy Spirit produces is LOVE, JOY, & PEACE. It is being PATIENT, KIND, & GOOD. It is being FAITHFUL & GENTLE & having SELF-CONTROL.  There is no law against such things.”  I’ll confess, it’s kind of a mish-mash of a couple different official Biblical versions.  I wanted to use it exactly how it’s written in Abby’s Bible (NIrV) but as I was writing it on the poster board, I started to run out of room, and I wanted to use the phrase “self-control” rather than “control of oneself.”  So, you may condemn me for not using an official version, but oh well. 😉

After we read the verse a few times, I handed Abby and Noah each a red heart I had cut out of construction paper and told them to draw things they love on the heart.  Noah drew Randy and I.  Abby drew her bunk beds, Noah, Emmalyn, her friend, and a few other things.  Then we talked about why we love these things which led to the questions “what is love” and “how do we show love.”

It was time to see what God has to say about love in the Bible.  We read John 3:16, 1 John 4:16-19, Matthew 22: 37-39, and finally 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  When we read those last verses in 1 Corinthians, I almost had a hard time getting through them when I thought about whether or not my kids see those things in me, even though I claim to love them.  “Love is patient.”  Do they think I’m patient with them?  “Love does not easily become angry.”  Hmm…  This was a good time for me to talk about how NOT-perfect I am and how much I need Jesus because sometimes I have trouble with patience and other things that God wants me to be.  (Of course, neither my kids had ANYTHING that they thought was hard for them to do or be from the 1 Corinthians list. But  I had to repeat to myself all week, “love is patient, love is patient”; not a bad mantra.) 😉  We made a list of ways to show people love and then prayed that we’d be able to be loving to everyone.

Later that week, I made cherry cards for the kids since cherries are what we used to represent love.  (Straight from Amanda’s blog, the one I get so many fabulous ideas from!) Noah and Abby each painted their cherries by using fingerprints kind of in the shape of hearts.  The first few looked great, but then as the kids kept painting the cherries, the shape of the hearts disappeared as they overlapped.  We then wrote “Jesus loves ____” their own name on one card, and the name of a friend on another.  Of course they chose their “best friends” Lily & Landon to give their cards.  Since my “love language” is giving, I also decided to give a little something to both kids, something I’ll continue to do throughout our unit.  Abby got a cherry flavored chapstick (what else?) and to Noah I gave a cherry scented marker.  Risky, I know.  He already tried licking it.  But he’s starting to like coloring more and thought it was a really cool gift.  And I want to give them stuff that reminds them of the fruit from the week. 🙂

We read the book, “The Apple Pie Tree” and made our own craft apple pies!

A sprinkle of cinnamon to get the scent of real pie in there!

On Friday of that week, I told the kids that one way I show people love is by cooking or baking for them.  And since I love Daddy, we made him an apple pie, one of his favorite desserts!  We cut hearts out of the top crust, too, to emphasize the LOVE. haha!  This apple pie recipe is the best, guys!  The. Best.  I started using Alton Brown’s recipe years ago, and have since adapted it.  And after years of making several apple pies every fall, I 100% stand by this recipe.  Here’s the printable if you want it! apple-pie

Rolling out the dough.

It’s fun to play with leftover dough!

She’s a beauty, ain’t she?

Speaking of things to love, Ina Garten has a new apple pie bar recipe which is to die for!  When I saw it on her Facebook page, I knew it would be a winner with Randy–it incorporates apple pie and his other favorite: short bread.  It is seriously amazing.  You can find the recipe here, I’ll probably make more today!  My mouth is drooling just thinking about it.

Other things I love (besides my family, friends, church–you know, the obvious answers)…

Let’s see, my food processor–which I use all the time!

Randy and I have an app called “Good Budget” which allows us to keep better track of our money each month and it syncs to both of our phones which is super convenient.

I love my homemade laundry detergent and the fact that I save so much by not buying detergent all the time (hello, 3 kids=lots of laundry).

I LOVE my cast iron pans (a gift from my MIL)–cooking with them makes me feel like I’m living at a farmhouse or something.  Do you know what I mean? haha

A good bowl of ooey, gooey homemade mac & cheese!  (Which I happened to make during our “love” week for lunch since I knew my kids would drool over it and since we made Daddy a pie, it’s only fair that they got a special lunch, too!

Chocolate. Duh! (Who doesn’t!?) And coffee. 😉

And I also love Real Simple, my one and only magazine subscription.  I’m months behind, but that just means I’ll have to have a few bubble bath nights soon so I can catch up (I also happen to love bubble baths)!