Magnet Painting at Let’s Explore {every single post on this blog is fun and creative!}

Lord Have Mercy from the Other Mama {the funniest craft gone wrong story ever!}

Somebody Wants What You Have by Amy at The Finer Things {beautiful and hard-hitting!}

How to Homeschool with a Baby or a Toddler (and Enjoy It!) at Simple Homeschool {useful for any of us with little ones}

Homeschool Calendar and Morning Board with Homeschool Creations {you can adapt this to teach anything you want!  I love the Bible verse section!}

Please go read about Kristen’s life changing journey to Kenya with Compassion International, and then see how you can change a life, too.

Sponsored Child Lapbook by 1+1+1=1 {after reading all the Kenya trip reports from the Compassion bloggers, I am SO doing this for our kids!}

:: :: ::

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the winner of the Alphabet Crafts ebook is…{drumroll please}

JOLLY JOEY!

If you are not Jolly Joey, head over to No Time For Flash Cards‘ and download your own ebook. It’s only $8 and full of fun stuff for your kids!

I’ve shared with you before about Alizeta and David, our children we sponsor through Compassion. It has been a significant experience having these children in our life. Their pictures are up in our play area. We write them letters, make them crafts and pray for them. I want my children to know and love others outside of their world. I want David and Alizeta to know and love Jesus –and to see them released from poverty and it’s mindset. My husband and I have promised Lydia that one day we will go to Burkina Faso where they live and visit them. One day it will happen.

Right now there are bloggers in Kenya with Compassion meeting their sponsored kids and seeing how Compassion works in the churches and communities there. I have been following their tweetstream and reading all their blog posts. And I am in tears. If you click on the links above you will be led to several blogs. If that’s too overwhelming start with these two posts:

A Father to the Fatherless by Brad Ruggles

Sight for the Blind by Shaun Groves

I promise you will not be the same. Please immerse yourself in their stories and consider how you can change the life of a girl or boy in Kenya, too.

photo by compassion bloggers

I’m lovin’ our LOVE and Compassion fruit this week…or rather, two weeks. I’m not sure what happened, but it’s taken us a while to get through this one! Here are a few more ideas we’ve done or are still up my sleeve:

CRAFTS

Cherry Tree Craft I think this is probably an idea for a George Washington theme in preschool, but I think it’s so cute! Kids love fingerpainting and this one is especially fun. This would also be a great gift to send to your Compassion kids!

GAMES

Hi Ho Cherry-OYou think I’m joking. I’m not. Lydia and I played this the other night and she kept squealing, “CHERRY! LOVE!” I couldn’t get a lesson out of the game but we still had fun and I love that her first thought at seeing a cherry was LOVE!

BOOKS

Who Do You Love?by Margaret Wang. This is one of our favorite books. It’s a touchy-feely book about different bears and the family members that love them!

Who Do You Love?by Mandy Stanley. Every page asks a different animal who it loves. It’s a fun book that ends with “Who do YOU love?” So, we get to talk about the different people we love.

ACTIVITY

Bowl Full of Cherries. You could do this in so many ways! Grab a big bowl of cherries (oh, I wish they were in season right now!) and every time your child shows love to someone (however big or small), let them eat a cherry! You could also do this same idea with cherry stickers on a picture of a bowl. Let your child put a cherry sticker on the picture every time they show love to someone. You could keep it up all week and see your bowl fill to the brim with cherries and love!

RECIPES

Cherry Recipes & Ideas from Wondertime Magazine! There are also some fun cherry facts and even a paint-with-cherries art idea!

COMPASSION

Letter Writing Ideas from the Compassion Blog There are over 600 comments on this post! There are so many great ideas on the type of mailable gifts to send to your sponsored child and great letter-writing tips. Please visit this post to read some for yourself. Here are a few of my favorite ideas:

• glow in the dark peel-&-stick stars
• a scripture in their language (try BibleGateway.com)
• bracelets (remember those friendship bracelts we made as kids? make a matching one for you and your sponsored child!)
• sticker books (my favorite are the Dover Little Activity Books because they have sticker paper dolls of kids from numerous countries!

I hope you’ve had some fun ideas about LOVE but also about showing LOVE to those around you. This Thanksgiving and Christmas season, I encourage you and your kids to take some time out and begin a new relationship with a child from another country. Sponsor a child through Compassion and show them Jesus’ love today!

The leaves are changing and it is really and truly fall! I told you how excited Lydia is about all the leaves falling and I thought it would be cool to share this with our Compassion kids. I’m not sure of the foliage in Burkina Faso, but I know my family in California misses the trees in Georgia, so I thought our Compassion kids would enjoy having an autumn leaf from Georgia!

I was going to do the old wax paper and leaf thing…but honestly, a hot iron with my 3 year old? It just didn’t sound fun. And I didn’t know how long they would last. So, instead we grabbed our favorite leaves and took them to Office Max. They laminated them, we cut them out and tied them with a ribbon. I think it was only $1 per laminating sheet and he got all of them onto two sheets. So $2 is pretty good for a gift!

How pretty are they?! I like them so much I want to decorate our house with them! I can’t wait to send them to our kids and I’m pretty sure we’ll be laminating flowers in the spring!

Please consider sponsoring a child through Compassion! You’ll be introducing God’s LOVE to a special boy or girl this holiday season!

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our LOVE & Compassion activities!

It’s time for our new Fruit of the Spirit: LOVE! I chose cherries to symbolize love because they…uhm, are red, they kinda sorta look like hearts and they are usually seen in pairs. That and my only other options from the fruit basket were lemons and limes. Not very love-ly.

The reason we chose LOVE this week is because of something that happened in our family. We sponsor two kids through Compassion. We give $38 a month to basically take care of this child’s entire life. This 38 measly dollars gives the kids schooling, health benefits, food and most importantly the opportunity to know Jesus.

We picked a little girl named Alizeta from Burkina Faso when Lydia was about 2 years old. Lydia was so excited she tried to stick dollar bills into my laptop for Alizeta! She talks about Alizeta all the time. When Asa was born, we decided to support a little boy. His name is Rasmane. Rasmane is also from Burkina Faso–in fact, he is in the same Compassion center (Compassion works with pre-existing schools/churches) as Alizeta. We did this on purpose. Compassion gives sponsors the opportunity to meet their sponsored kid. We are committed to bringing Lydia and Asa to Burkina Faso to meet Alizeta and Rasmane one day. How cool would it be to meet them after supporting them for 10 years?! I cannot wait.

We try to write to Alizeta and Rasmane regularly. And we always send little gifts with our letters. Lydia loves to draw pictures and pick out stickers to mail to them. Here’s a picture of Rasmane and Alizeta with their families. Rasmane is clutching the jeans (isn’t he hilarious?!) and Alizeta is holding the doll (she IS the doll!).

Well, this week we found out Rasmane’s parents pulled him out of the program because of religious issues. I was so sad when I found out the news. I literally had tears in my eyes. But it also kinda encouraged me, too. Compassion—the church and/or school that Rasmane was a part of (and maybe even our letters) were pointing Rasmane to Jesus. If Compassion was only giving food and clothes, Rasmane’s parents wouldn’t have cared. I’ll miss Rasmane but it makes me feel good that we are really helping lead kids to Jesus—halfway across the world! We love Rasmane and will continue to pray for him—that this time involved with Compassion will make an eternal difference.

Lydia and I read several verses about LOVE (1 John 4:7-8, 12; Proverbs 17:17 or John 3:16) but ended up with this one as THE verse (I think it pretty much covers ALL the love verses out there…)

Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22:37-39

This week all of our LOVE activities will be about showing LOVE to our Compassion kids. We’ve written letters, colored pictures and I’ve got a few more fun things prepared, too. I hope Lydia will understand that LOVE is about doing and giving having compassion for others.

My next few FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: LOVE posts will focus on great tips on writing letters, gifts you can send to your kids and how to make your sponsored child “real” to your own child.

What? You don’t sponsor a child? Well, please! DO SO NOW!

photo: amandabhslater