Our church is very intentional about empowering parents to raise their kids for the Lord. I’ve told you about Asa’s baby dedication and monthly themes like Taming the Inner Monster. Each month, they also host KidStuf a big dramatic-interactive-church-service. The best part is the kids and parents are sitting together. Listening together. Worshiping together. Praying together.

My kids talk about KidStuf all month long. And when they aren’t talking about what we saw last month, they are asking when we can go the next month. It’s that good.

The big idea this month in KidStuf (and in my daughter’s weekly Sunday class) is Prayer: Having a Conversation With God. During the skit, while the characters were learning to pray–we learned to pray, too. And not just by watching. They handed out a small box to each family.

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Inside each box were several items. These items were prompts to help us know how to pray together.

First is the kalediscope. When you look through the kalediscope, you see so many amazing shapes, colors and pictures. This is the time to stop and praise God for how amazing and powerful He is!

Second is a cute little turkey. My kids already love and know the Don’t Be a Turkey, Just Say Thanks song from Yancy’s new preschool album. So, they really get this idea–the turkey reminds us to stop and say thank you to God for all He’s done and is doing for us.

Third is a compass. This helps us remember that God knows the plans He has for us. When we are confused or unsure what to do, we need to ask Him!

Fourth was a blank piece of paper. We were instructed to write a prayer request on it. Then trade it with a family around us! This reminds us to pray for them and for anyone else we think of. (And knowing that someone is praying for us, too!)

Last is a transformer pencil sharpener. OK, this might be a stretch but the idea is we need to ask God to change us. And every day this might be a different prayer, “Change me to be a more attentive wife.” OR “Change me so I will obey Mommy.” OR “Change my heart so I will reach out to friends who hurt me.” The idea is that we are offering up our sinful broken ways and asking God to make us new!

How great is this?! You could easily make this yourself with the same items or with whatever you can find around your house. We have our prayer box on the kitchen table so we can take the objects out at dinner to pray together. And half the time, the kids just take the objects out in the middle of the day to play with them.

How does your family pray together?

PS–This prayer box totally reminded me of our God Can!

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***

This morning (like before breakfast!) I put a bowl in front of the kids. I told them it was them–their heart and their mind. We began to talk about what “purity” is–about being clean of body and mind–without any yucky stuff inside. Then we thought up impure thoughts and actions–saying mean things, listening to someone say a bad joke about someone else, watching something on TV that’s bad, etc. We drew sad and mean faces on some ping pong balls as we talked about them. We dropped each ping pong ball into the bowl. Soon our bowl was full!

I asked the kids how we could get these bad things out of our hearts and minds. They wanted to just scoop them out with their hands. I told them this is why impure thoughts and ideas are so bad–you can’t just get rid of them! They will not leave on their own!

So, how do we get this impurity out? Psalm 119:9 tells us, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.” (NIV) It’s God’s Word that makes our minds clean and pure.

We poured clean water into our little bowl to represent God’s Word cleaning our minds and hearts. The more water we added, the more the impure thoughts and actions rose to the top and fell off!

The kids thought this was hilarious because the ping pong balls were falling all over the kitchen! I love this picture–it’s not the picture of salvation (Jesus’ washing our sins away) but of how God’s Word can keep our physical minds clean and pure! I want my kids living by, keeping, holding onto and filling their minds with God’s Word so the impure things won’t have a place to stick!

This would also be a perfect activity to do if your children had been watching, doing or saying something impure. You could learn some specific scriptures that would help “wash” the impure thoughts out and say them as you do this activity.

If you do this activity, I’d love to know about it! Share in the comments or leave a picture on our Facebook page!

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***

First of all, THANK YOU for the amazing response on Truth in the Tinsel! I am absolutely overwhelmed! I literally had butterflies in my stomach all day yesterday because of your comments, shares and facebook likes. There are almost 500 likes on the Truth in the Tinsel page! Unbelievable. I saw the almost-finished-final-copy of the book today and it looks SO good! Cannot wait for Black Friday for y’all to see it!

Since the 31 Days to Impress Your Kids, my whirlwind Relevant Conference and my jet-setting adventure to New York City, I feel like I haven’t done any “normal” Impress Your Kids kinda posts. In fact, I don’t feel like I’ve done a lot of normal stuff around our house! We’re chugging away with home school but it really takes some time to insert the specific Bible activities into our day.

My main avenue of teaching God’s Word the last few months has been by copying what our church is doing. Remember our Super Sunny Day this summer? Well, now that Lydia is in the elementary department (*sniff*) she has monthly themes in her class. A few months ago was a MONSTER theme. Sound kinda weird for church? It was, in fact, one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

The big idea was self-control. The theme verse was one I’ve been wanting to teach Lydia for a long time:

Like a city whose walls are broken down is a person who lacks self-control. Proverbs 25:28

And the monster connection is that when you lose self-control you are letting a monster run wild. Wild enough to break down a city’s walls. So, the whole month was about “taming the inner monster”. I just love that visual!

The first week they sent home a talking-point card (including that cute giant paper clip). We kept it on our kitchen table and read it when we eat dinner. So, we talked about different kinds of self-control: talking too much, letting our anger run wild, eating too much, playing and not working, etc.

Then, the next week we came home with a blue cricket cage. Yeah, like you use to keep crickets in! But instead of crickets we had these little suction-cup-pop-up monsters. And each person in our family got their own monster! We were instructed to put the monsters in the cage at the beginning of the day and if anyone “let their monster out” by losing self-control, they would literally have to take the toy monster out of the cage!

Well, my kids LOVED this. If one of them would cry, whine, refuse to obey or throw a fit, at the end of it, they’d say (in contrite little sniffling voices), “I need to take my monster out of the cage, huh?” And they’d take it out so everyone could see. Usually at dinner we’d all discuss if the monsters were out of the cage. The best part of this is that my husband was on a diet then. So, he wasn’t drinking any soft drinks (which is super hard for him). If he had bought a drink that day he’d come home and say, “I have to take my monster out of the cage. I didn’t use self-control.” And it was such a beautiful picture for our kids to see how even adults have to work on self-control! (And that kids should get that “monster” under control now, so they aren’t struggling with it for 30 years!)

We had so many great conversations during this month because of those little monsters! When Lydia went to Camp Primo, she even took her monster with her to remind herself to have self-control. I was so impressed!

I wanted to do some monster-themed activities at home during that month, I even started a Monster Pinterest Board. But for whatever reason (maybe because they started a new theme the next month?) we never got around to the monster crafts. I think I might save them and then pull out some monster crafts next time we need to work on self-control! You could totally take this same idea and do it at home—find a little cage, make some funny little monsters and make an active step toward paying attention to controlling that “inner monster”. I really feel like Lydia will remember that picture the rest of her life–I know I will!

additional photos by Upstreet

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***