We made it! We got to the final Fruit of the Spirit! I can’t believe it. Next time I do a “unit”, I’m going to try to keep it under half a year! Sheesh.

As we’ve gone through this unit, I usually picked the fruit we’d focus on based on what was going on in our lives. That’s why self-control was first, we needed that most. Goodness seemed a little similar to the other fruits (kindness, love, etc.) so it became the last fruit I looked at. Therefore, it had no choice but to be lined up with a LIME, our very last scratch-and-sniff fruit! I could find no correlation for a lime=goodness. So, we’ll leave it at that.

SCRIPTURE

I picked a verse we already partially memorized around Halloween:

“In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16

I never want to focus on good deeds because I know it’s easy to get in the mindset that good deeds is what brings you to Jesus, or makes you worthy of His love. Jesus’ love is unconditional, He saved us because He loves us. Period.

Anyway, we’ve done lots of light crafts (including a Christian t-shirt!) so after we had read the verse I was kinda bummed that I chose it because I couldn’t think of anything cool to do with the verse. You can only draw so many sunshines and use glitter so many times.

We finally settled on a sun catcher. And suddenly this seemed brilliant to me. Here we are in the middle of winter, a normally drab and dark time. Hanging a sun catcher up in the window wouldn’t BRING us any light–only make us appreciate it and add some color to our day. What a great picture of what our GOODNESS can do for others—we are NOT The Light nor do our good deeds actually make anything happen BUT they do make others aware of  The Light. Our good deeds bring attention and color to a normally dark and drab world of sin!

I’m pretty sure Lydia didn’t get the nuances of our sun catcher craft, but it has been especially significant to me. I want Lydia and Asa to see my good deeds (cooking, cleaning, loving my husband, being patient with them) and when they do that it would make them aware of Jesus and His Light—that it would lead them to praise and follow their Father in Heaven.

CRAFT

It honestly is not as pretty as the original version that I found online (as usual), so I’ll just leave you with a few pictures and links to sun catchers.

This is actually the one we made. All you need is tissue paper and a clear plastic top (which we didn’t have, so I used a disposable plastic container). We made ours in the shape of heart and a candle. You know, obvious reference to Matthew 5:16. Oh, and we used lime green tissue paper, of course. (see complete instructions at Making Friends.)

I love this one with the pressed flowers. I guess it would be kind of hard to do in the middle of winter, but even some pinestraw and a few dried leaves might be pretty! Plus, you could do any shape as the frame! (Complete instructions at Great Ideas For Mom.)

This suncatcher from Family Fun is really the one I wanted to make. Isn’t it lovely? We just didn’t have any translucent beads in the house. Copper wire we had, but beads? Nope.

And how could we forget about my icy sun catcher? Always a crowd pleaser!

Wouldn’t it be fun to make all of these and line your winter-y windows with them?!

lime photo by darwin bell

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Remember the Fruit of the Spirit series Lydia and I did? Well, you may have forgotten it because Christmas kinda took over and now I’m just turning back to it. Don’t hold it against me, ok?!

With all the discipline and behavior issues we’ve had lately, this Fruit of the Spirit really stuck out to me this week: GENTLENESS. I need it. She needs it. Our household needs it.

SCRIPTURE

The first verse that comes to mind (and was our “A” verse) is Proverbs 15: 1, “A gentle answer turns anger away.” Today would have been a perfect time for Lydia to test this verse out as I was pretty angry with her behavior most of the day. Alas, it’s me who had to practice this verse so I could set the gentle example. (Not sure if I did it…)

As I looked through the verses about gentleness, it was encouraging because most of them were referring to Jesus. Or encouraging us to be gentle like Him. Isn’t it lovely to think about Jesus as gentle? Sometimes its easy to fall into that Zeus-like god image where Jesus/God is sitting there impatient, disappointed and ready to knock our heads together. I love thinking about Jesus as the gentle Good Shepherd instead. What a model to emulate!

The verse I ended up choosing is found in 1 Peter 3:3-4. It is the perfect verse for my girly girl:

Braiding your hair doesn’t make you beautiful. Wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes doesn’t make you beautiful. Instead, your beauty comes from inside you. It is the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Beauty like that doesn’t fade away. God places great value on it.

Lydia was amazed that braids are in the Bible. And gold jewelry! She had it 90% memorized after reading it three times. I kid you not. Every time she learns a new verse I feel bad for not teaching her more—she’s a sponge!

ACTIVITY

I chose grapes to represent gentleness. Basically because a lime and grapes is all that’s left from our scratch-n-sniff fruit basket. So, we made the coolest grape craft after dinner tonight. I found it at Danielle’s Place (a great site–especially if you teach kids at church!)

All you need is a funnel, flour, one balloon and a little scrap of green craft foam. Use the funnel to fill the balloon. Then tie. Add a little leaf to the top (cut or punch a hole and pull the knot through). Now you’ve got your own fruity stressball! Isn’t it cute?

We talked about how soft and nice it was to squeeze her new “Gentle Grape”. She loves it and decided she is going to carry it “EVERYWHERE WE GO TOMORROW!” I hope she carries some gentleness, too. My heart AND hers are in need of some gentleness.

photo by lanier67

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!

Whenever we send a letter to one of our Compassion kids, I try to get Lydia involved. She usually draws or colors a picture but lately I’ve been feeling kind of bad about that. Imagine being a 7 year old girl in Burkina Faso. And getting so excited to receive a letter (and hopefully gift) from your sponsor, only to discover some scribble scrabble from a 3 year old! Lately I’ve tried to do more crafts that are actually cute–even if a 3 year old did make it.

Since we’re focusing on LOVE and using CHERRIES to help us remember this Fruit of the Spirit, we decided to make CHERRY CARDS. I found a cute cherry coloring sheet online (and I…uh, totally forgot where I found it) and decided that fingerprint stamping would be so fun with this because we can make FINGERPRINT HEARTS!

I busted out the stamp pads (Lydia’s fave!) and showed her how to do it, “Point your finger towards one corner of the paper and press down. Now point to the other top corner and press down. See? You have a heart.”

it looks like a heart, right?

Apparently, she did NOT see because this is how our cherries ended up:

And yet, even without the hearts, they turned out super cute. Especially after I cut them out and attached them to the front of a folded piece of construction paper. We wrote JESUS LOVES ALIZETA and JESUS LOVES DAVID on the inside and Lydia decorated it with stickers.

They were so cute I stuck them right in the envelope and didn’t even take a picture of them. I think Alizeta and David will like them a lot better than the Princess coloring page Lydia was working on a few days ago. Plus, I like the idea of her fingerprints being in their house. It’s a close connection!

More fingerprint art:

Fingerprint Fun (a huge list of animals and objects you can make with your fingerprints!)

I Can Finger Paint an Usborne Playtime Book (I have this one and it has ADORABLE finger painting ideas!)

More flat crafts even your youngest kids can make AND older kids will like:

Sparkly Craft Foam Frame (this was our Christmas gift last year!)

First Name Initials (I just thought of this–how cute to make a fun initial for your kids? We’d have to do D for David and A for Alizeta!)

Felt Finger Puppets (these are African animals, which would be awesome for our kids. This version is a little too hard for Lydia, but we could glue instead of sew and it would be super fun!)

Want to sponsor a child of your own? Visit Compassion right now!

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

The Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness has been…well, kind to us. We’ve had a lot of fun with this one and been able to talk about it a lot. Kindness is one of the easiest ones to measure and act on –especially for a 3 year old with a 1 year old brother! Here’s a few more activities we’ve done this past week and few more we haven’t done—but I think would be super fun!

Bible Story

Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). I just realized this story may have been even better for GOODNESS! Oh well, the point here is the same—a man is kind to someone different than him.  Lydia has just now started noticing differences in people’s skin and styles, so she didn’t quite get the full depth of this story. We read it in about 3 different Bible story books. Her favorite was from the See With Me Bible. It’s the Bible told in pictures. And the pictures are brilliant. Lydia will look at all 350 pages in one sitting. Speaking of which…

Books

I was looking up ORANGE books on Amazon and found this cute book about a bear, Orange Pear Apple Bear. The whole book only has five words in it. They are just rearranged depending on what Bear is doing with his fruit. This would actually be a great one for any time during the Fruit of the Spirit. I’m going to try to check it out at the library.

I went to the Family Bookstore yesterday to scope out their Holiday books (found nothing interesting!) but while I was browsing through the kids’ section, a title caught my eye: Lyle the Kindly Viking! I had forgotten there’s a Veggie Tales DVD of the same title! We even have it at home. This was the Little Golden Book edition. The book is really more about sharing, but I think that is a valid aspect of being kind. And a very tangible one!

Snacks

Jello Jigglers. Here’s another great anytime snack for the Fruit of the Spirit. In fact, you know what I would love to do? Find some cookie cutters in the shape of fruit (uhm, like these!). Then make several different flavors of jello jigglers, cut them out and have some jiggly Fruit of the Spirit!

We made orange jigglers this week–and I don’t think my daughter has ever had jello! She thought it was the best thing ever. We used some Christmas cookie cutters—so we made presents and gingerbread men to remind us to be kind by giving gifts to people. How’s that for creative?!

Movies

After I got the book, we of course, had to watch Veggie Tales’ Lyle the Kindly Viking. Lydia watched it after church with her Daddy. I tried to quiz her about it afterwards…she didn’t quite get it. I said, “Was Lyle kind? Did he share?” She said, “No. He just talked kind.”

*sigh*

Stay tuned this week for our next Fruit of the Spirit: LOVE!

Lydia is spending the night with her cousin from Mexico. No, Lydia’s not in Mexico. This cousin is. Well, not right now. The cousin is visiting so they are both spending the night at my mother-in-law’s. Is that confusing? Yeah, me, too. Anyway, while she was gone, I made this fun craft for her to play with when she returns.

I saw something like this at Danielle’s Place and again at a Pumpkin Patch this week. But this is my own personal little version of decorate-your-food-to-look-like-people craft or as I lovingly refer to them, “Kindness Kids”. *snort* Anywhoo, I just thought it would be fun to dress up an orange with clothes. So, here we go…

SUPPLIES:

• orange
• toothpick
• tape/glue
• construction paper
• miscellaneous craft foam pieces

DIRECTIONS:

I cut out some hat & clothing shapes from construction paper. Yes, I did these free hand. No, they are not that spectacular. Then, I taped them to some toothpicks.

I was trying to think of clothes I could make instead of body parts a la Mr. Potato Head. So, the first one I thought of was a Princess. A triangle hat with a little gold craft foam on top, some bell sleeves with more gold glitter craft foam, throw on  a heart shaped mouth and she is beautiful! I tried to do a skirt but couldn’t figure out how to keep it on.

Then I decided to go a boy-route. I made some shoes, a baseball hat, glove and even a baseball. And I have to admit…he looks super cute…especially after I got my Sharpie on it.

Asa really liked it. In fact, I had to confiscate it before he took a chunk out of our little baseball player’s rump!

I can’t wait for Lydia to come home and play with these little Kindness Kids! We’re going to have fun dressing them. And I’m pretty sure she’ll have some more wardrobe ideas for me to cut out, too!

TIP: The toothpicks soak up the orange juice inside and will make your construction paper wet. Craft foam may be a better alternative if you want it to last all day. If you wanted to make a more permanent version, you could stick the clothes into a foam ball or playdough ball–no juice!

Sometimes you need a craft that is also a stay-at-the-table-and-don’t-run-around-the-house activity. This is one of those…

Basically, I wrote the word KIND on a giant piece of newsprint. (I pride myself on writing fonts by hand but this is not one of my best examples.) Then I gave Lydia a STACK of old magazines, a pair of scissors and a glue stick. I had her look through the magazines until she found a picture of clothes.

Then she could cut out the clothes and glue it on the word KIND. Remember our verse says we should put on KINDNESS as if it were our CLOTHES. So, here we are putting CLOTHES on the word KIND. A little backwards but I think it reiterated the point!

My tips & thoughts:
1. This thing actually took us 2 different days! It’s very time consuming because she really looked through the magazines for the clothes she liked best! (Maybe it’s a girl thing?!)

2. She cannot see how to cut out a small picture when it is in the middle of a giant picture. For example, if she wanted to cut out a kid’s shirt and that kid was on a swing in the middle of a playground, I had to draw a box around the shirt and make sure the lines extended to the end of the paper. Then she could see where her scissors needed to begin & go.

3. We got to talk about how all the clothes got “put on”. The gloves go on the hand, the buttoning of the pants, the hat on the head, the dress versus the shirt. It was a good conversation starter for “putting on” kindness.

4. Use a good pair of scissors. I have these random plastic things that I discovered in my craft stuff. I am officially throwing them away and buying a real pair of scissors. They could not cut magazine paper without chewing the edges!

5. We hung her KIND SIGN on the front of her closet door. She thought this was so smart. Now every day she stands next to it to admire it. And she usually says, “I like my sign!” or something equally profound. Unfortunately, it kinda reminded me of the day when she’s 14 and pulling pictures out of magazines and taping them to her walls…

I have been so out of touch with my normal life the past few days! I was in California for a vacation/bloggy event/family renunion. My kids are wonked (is that a word?) by the time zones, our house is a mess and still the first thing Lydia says to me when we get home is, “I want to make a craft!”.

So, we jumped right back into our Fruit of the Spirit activities yesterday. I randomly picked an orange to remind us of KINDNESS.* It seemed like a fruit you might share, so orange it is!

I was googling Fruit of the Spirit a few weeks ago and ran across some little books called The Bird With The Word Talks About…by Harvest House Publishers. There are 9 books each covering one of the fruits of the Spirit. The website I found it on showed no pictures whatsoever but the books were only $1, so I bought them all!

I was surprised when the books arrived because they are almost like little pamplets. They are mini-sized with no color pictures. But Lydia thinks they are so fun. The books aren’t amazing or have some unbelievable insight but they do a good job of introducing and giving a solid definition of each Fruit. The Kindness book was about a clown that invited the animals (the main characters of the book) to a Be Kind To Animals Day at the circus. The animals are excited except for the snail. He feels left out because no one will like him. The other animals get ticked that he is ruining their fun. Then the Bird reminds everyone to be kind and nice to snail and to each other. (Really, it was a little more clever than THAT!) Lydia enjoyed it.

Then we picked out Galatians 3:12 as our scripture verse:

You are God’s chosen people. You are holy and dearly loved. So put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes.

I love this one because it lends itself to so many great activities (I’m thinkin’ collages of clothes, dress up time, dress up an orange day and more!). As we read the verse, Lydia was already confused. She said, “What are they wearing? What are they wearing?”

So, I asked her to get a costume out of her costume box. She of course, brought me a tiara. I asked her what we do when we get out our crowns.

Lydia: I don’t know.

Me: We look at it and say, “Oh! How pretty! A beautiful fairy princess crown!” Then what do we do?

Lydia: I don’t know.

Me: Then we put it on and say, “Oh, Lydia! You are a beautiful fairy princess!” (I put the crown on her.) Then what do we do?

Lydia: (stands up straighter, smiles and pretends to be a fairy princess)

Me: We pretend to be a fairy princess! We talk to all our fairy friends! We say hello to all the princesses!

Then I took the crown off her head and said, “Now, let’s pretend this is our KINDNESS CROWN.” Then we went through the entire conversation again…

Me: What do we do when we see our KINDNESS CROWN?

Lydia: (in awe) I don’t know!

Me: We look at it and say, “Oh! This reminds us to be kind! And nice to everyone we meet.” What do we do next?

Lydia: (shyly) Put it on?

Me: That’s right! Put it on and say, “Oh, look! Lydia is wearing a KINDNESS CROWN. She is so kind!” Then what?

Lydia: (still in awe and puts her arms out again like a fairy princess)

Me: That’s right! We use kindness! We are nice to everyone we meet. Lydia helps people and gives to others.

Then I handed her a few of her stuffed animals. We pretended the animals were having a bad day (they were mean, or someone was mean to them) and I asked Lydia what to do for them since she was wearing the KINDNESS CROWN. She usually came up with an idea like, “Let’s play a game with him!” or “I’ll give you a hug!”

But she was getting it! She was being kind with the same excitement as when she pretends she’s Snow White! Later on when she started playing Doctor or some other game, she ran up to me and said, “Mommy! Mommy! I need my KINDNESS CROWN!” because one of her animals needed some kindness.

I honestly could not have planned this better. She was totally acting out the verse and getting the idea behind PUTTING ON KINDNESS. It was awesome. I can’t wait to do more with this Fruit of the Spirit!

*a word about the Fruit of the Spirit. Some translations give the following nine fruits: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. I’m using the NIRV with Lydia, so we are doing: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, good, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

orange photo by fr antunes

crown photo by swamibu