***updated with pictures***

We’re still on the letter “r” and have said our verse about 3000 times, we’ve read about Noah’s ark & his rainbow. We made rainbow bread. But I wanted to do a real rainbow craft. Most of the ones I found online were so sunday-school-ish and none of them really did anything for me. I was actually thinking about finding some prisms and just playing with those!

But yesterday I needed to do the dishes. Not as in pack them in the dishwasher…but as in actually DO them. Because our dishwasher BROKE. I’m not happy about it. I can hardly keep up with a dishwasher, much less handwashing!

So, I needed something to entertain Lydia while I attempted washing the dishes. I drew a rainbow on a piece of paper. I labeled each bow with the correct color (Roy G. Biv, you know?) then pulled out construction paper for each color. I ripped up some of it into squares (a la EJ’s letter “a”) and pulled out a little glue (I put it in a muffin cup with a qtip for spreading).

I did one square of each color for Lydia. (As smart as she is, I didn’t think she’d be able to read it.) I told her to keep adding pieces of paper to the right color until the rainbow was all filled up. Then I stepped into the kitchen (merely feet from Lydia) to do the dishes.

She worked for a minute or two, tearing paper and gluing. Then she called for me and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I was surprised. What 2 year old doesn’t want to play with glue and tear paper? I walked into the room and saw her rainbow. It had 2 giant pieces of paper glued to the rainbow. Not a small little square. She couldn’t tear them as small as I could.

So, I sat down with her and tore enough paper for the whole rainbow. We took turns gluing squares onto our rainbow. She matched the colors perfectly and was enjoying every second.

Finally, I decided she was getting it. I walked back into the kitchen to do the dishes and in just a few minutes I heard, “Mommy! I don’t want to do my rainbow anymore!”

And that’s when I figured it out. It’s not about the craft. It’s not about the verse. Or the letter of the day. Or the “fun” I had planned for her. She certainly didn’t care about it.

Lydia doesn’t want more stuff to do. She wants interaction and love and attention and affirmation from her Mommy.

All these activities are just a vehicle impress my daughter. A way to show my daughter God’s love and His Word.

There are times, of course, when she does art by herself. There are times she needs to do things alone and explore for herself. To become independent.

But our rainbow craft reminded me of what I really want. To impress my daughter—not with my housekeeping skills or my ability to multi-task or juggle several blogs—but to impress her with God’s love. I want the few hours we spend on God’s Word to be times Lydia remembers (at least in her subconscious!) as filled with love.

And now I’ve got the perfect excuse to not to the dishes.

Today was all about rainbows! And not just any rainbows, God’s rainbow! We read four different Noah stories today. (Well, same story, just from different books. You know what I mean.) I told Lydia to make sure to let me know when she saw the rainbow as we were reading. When we got to the final page of each story, she almost jumped up and down, “Rainbow! Rainbow!”

The first book is my absolute favorite book in the whole world, The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones. If you haven’t read it, you MUST BUY IT NOW. It’s really one of the best kid’s books I’ve ever read. (Here’s a full review by moi.)

The best line in Noah’s story is,

“And there, in the clouds–just where the storm meets the sun–was a beautiful bow made of light…God’s strong anger against hate and sadness and death would come down once more–but not on his people, or his world. No, God’s war bow was not pointing down at his people. It was pointing up, into the heart of Heaven.”

Isn’t that awesome?! That’s how this whole book is—along with humor and fabulous illustrations.

Then we “read” the next two, Noah’s Ark by Peter Spier and See With Me Bible, illustrated by Dennis Jones. I say “read” because they are both picture books. But Lydia was enthralled nonetheless. Both of these books are humorous and real portrayals of what it must have been like in a crowded, stinky and loud ark for months and months.

We also read one of our old favorites, a book Lydia got for her first birthday, Elephant’s Big Ride, which I think is part of the Beginner’s Bible.

So, after getting the “real” rainbow into our heads, I pulled out the supplies for our activity…are you ready? Because I’m so proud of myself. Not because I made this up, because I certainly didn’t, but just that I pulled it off!

RAINBOW BREAD

Supplies:
several small containers
food coloring (prefereably red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
small paintbrushes (or q-tips)
sliced bread
milk

Directions:
1. Pour a tiny bit (a few tablespoons) of milk into each small container. Then add a few drops of food coloring so each container is a different color of the rainbow.

For some reason I only had neon food coloring. So, we didn’t have red. And our orange is a little nutmeg, but it got the point across.

2. Use paintbrushes to paint a rainbow (or random pictures) on bread).

2b. Wait! You might want an apron or an old shirt. This can get messy…

3. Show off your creation.

4. Toast.

5. Be amazed at how different exactly the same they look before and after toasting. (Well, mine did actually look a little darker than before…)

6. EAT. I made a PBJ for me. Lydia dipped hers in hummus. (Sorry, no pics. It wasn’t that exciting.)

Lydia looooooved making rainbow bread! She thought it was so fun. This would be fun for almost anything you were doing. Painting different shapes, animals or letters. What a great thing to let the kids do while you’re cooking. Then they can eat their creations during the meal.

I’m lovin’ me some “R”!!

ps…we also read Robert the Rose Horse by Joan Heilbroner before Lydia’s nap. Because really, how much better of an “r” book can you get?

***
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Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant, but I could not think of one verse that began with the letter “R” except “Rejoice in the Lord always” and honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was a verse or a song! So, I pulled out my handy dandy concordance and began to flip through the R’s. Wow. Concordances are…well, detailed.

Finally, I got to the word “remember” and I liked this idea. I want Lydia to REMEMBER the things of the Lord. While comparing the concordance to the NIRV on biblegateway.com, I found one of my favorite verses (and probably one of the first I ever memorized) Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways REMEMBER Him. Then He will make your path smooth and straight.”

(Now that I look at it and we’ve said it a few hundred times, I should have split this up and done the first sentence this week and the second sentence next week for “S”: smooth and straight. Live and learn.)

I know “remember” is kind of a hard concept, even though we do talk about remembering a lot. So, I taught Lydia the sign for remember to kind of help emphasize the word and the verse. (You can see the sign here.) I think this helped and she’s very intent to do the sign while we say the verse…or while I say the verse.

(We’ve done sign language with Lydia since she was months old. She knows well over a hundred signs. So, she’s used to this. But regardless, I think motions/signs help emphasize any learning. The more senses you can use, the more you’ll remember.)

There are so many great r words: roses, rainbow, round/rectangle, red…and ROBOT. Ever since Lydia saw Wall-E (or Waaaaalllleeee, as she says it), she’s been really into robots. We decided to make a red, rectangle robot with ribbon appendages. We pulled out the ever-present baby name book and decided on “Razi” as a first name. What can I say? She liked it.

By the way, Lydia did the whole thing by herself with the exception of the ribbon and the awesome button and light drawings I did on Razi’s chest. Did you see the great eyes and nose she did? That’s a big improvement—there are actually TWO separate eyes! Oh, and the “scribbling” on the top left? Lydia wrote “Razi the Robot”, of course.

I was going to go through our books for “R” but Lydia already thought of a book because it has a RAINBOW in it…our Little Golden Book of Noah’s Ark. It’s actually quite good–follows the story well and has cute pictures. We’ll do more with Noah and the rainbow this week because I think it’s a great tie in to “remember”—God put the rainbow in the sky so we could REMEMBER His promise to us.