Continuing on our theme of respect, we are learning to respect God’s word!  I have a couple verses we will be sharing about God’s word, and we started with a new memory verse… Do not merely listen to the word.  Do what it says.  James 1:22

I really want to impress on Elias that God’s word is truth, and we need to not only listen to the word (stories, rules, promises, etc), we need to actually do what it says.  I want this to help lay the foundation for respect and obedience to God.

So in the spirit of doing, we did a memory verse activity game – something to get Elias moving and doing…

To prepare, write and cut out 2 sets of the individual words in the Bible verse… we’re doing another matching game, so the different colors for the words help a lot.

Then we placed one set of words at the far end of our living room, and I sat at the other end and handed Elias the words of the Bible verse in order, having him run to the other end of the room to match up the words and bring them back.  I have a video to illustrate (and some words to say about the video: see note at bottom of post):

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Elias had a lot of fun doing this – and despite Donovan’s fussing in the background, he had fun, too – once I made sure he had 2 pieces of paper in his hands, just like Elias.  If you have a chance, double check yourself with the words – I was missing a couple words on the coffee table, so the nice little edit you see in the middle of the video was actually me running to the other end of the room to figure out what I did wrong, tripping over both boys in the process, and generally creating mayhem.  Ehem…

After the activity, we strung the words together to hang our verse up – this is so easy!  I’ll be making banners like this for everything in the future!

All I did was punch a hole in each top corner of the word and string them on some yarn – WAY too easy!  Not as pretty as some of the bunting that is out there right now, but a quick and fun alternative!

I really like that this is out in the main rooms of our house for everyone to see – I already have it memorized, and it is a constant reminder for me to set a good example for the boys, and really work on obeying God’s word in all I do.

**Note on video – a quick apology for the state of my living room – you get a far away view of my sewing corner… and the coffee table is pushed over to the side like that to prevent the boys from playing with my sewing stuff.  It’s just how our home functions on a daily basis, and it’s not the showcase I’d like it to be… and now I know why Josh thinks I talk too loud.  Man – I am loud!  OK – enough apologizing about the video – I’m just nervous because it’s my first time to post one… and now I’m over it!

Ok, everyone… I really need your help on this one.  I have no idea what to do…

Frequently, when I tell Elias something, he does not believe me.  In fact, he will argue the opposite point with me.  And I sit dumbfounded that I am arguing with a 3 year old about something that he knows nothing about.

Examples? He is convinced that the trunk of the car is in the front and the hood is in the back.  Nothing I or anyone else says will change his mind.  And it’s not a “woodpecker.”  It’s a “woodPACKER.”  It’s not “instructions” – it’s “constructions.”  And many, many more.

Seriously… I argue these points with him.  And it hasn’t just been the past little bit – these arguments have been going on for about a year or so – since Elias has been able to string together his thoughts into coherent sentences.

And I argue these points with him because I think it is important – not that the trunk is in the back of the car and the hood is in the front, but that he believes what I say and take my word as an authority in his life.

In a parenting class Josh and I are taking, we read the following in our workbook:

All children are born with an inherent sense of trust in Mom and Dad.  In the primary years, they believe everything Mommy and Daddy tell them, whether it is true or not.  By our correct words and deeds, we help them interpret life. (Along the Virtuous Way, footnote pg 59.)

I know that this is a blanket statement, and the point of the thought is not even that kids believe everything their parents say, but that we, as parents, should use correct words and deeds to help train our children by our example.

But as I think over that statement, I begin to wonder where I went wrong.  I have always tried (with varying degrees of success) to live as God would have me live – and especially with children, I have always wanted to model “correct words and deeds” for them. I cannot think of anything that I (or my husband) have done to destroy the trust Elias should have in our words.

Because if he, a 3 year old who cannot read and is an authority on nothing, does not believe the little things that we say (“No, really buddy, it is not a woodPACKER.  They do not PACK wood.  They PECK it.  Therefore, it’s a woodPECKER.”) how can I know that he will believe the big things I say?  I want him to take my word as an authority until he is able to read and fully comprehend what he has read for himself – and mostly, I want to start impressing God’s word on his heart before he can read. But if he doesn’t believe me when I say that God is love, that God loves him, that God is always with him, and all the good news and promises that the Bible contains… what is going to happen?

On top of all of that, how am I going to teach him other things through life?  I am planning on homeschooling – what if he rejects everything I teach him as fact?

I will say, Elias comes by this arguing quite naturally.  I mean, I can think of a couple people on each side of the family tree that are quite proficient in arguing. ehem…

OK – so here’s where I need your help: am I over-reacting?  (yes, yes, I know I am to some extent.  I cannot forecast what will happen coming down the road… and I cannot worry about the condition of his heart – that is up to the Lord.)  But should I be making a big deal about this now?  I said it happens frequently – I would say this happens 50% of the time.  What part of this is normal pre-schooler independence, and what part is not normal? IS THIS NORMAL? argh! I really do not know if anyone else is going/has gone through this before.

I would love to hear from you about this… thank you as always for your encouragement and helpful comments!!!

**This “issue/concern” is shaping my next lessons for Elias on Respect.  Stay tuned this week for some new things on Respecting God’s Word.

Where two or three people meet together in my name, I am there with them. Matthew 18:20 (NIrV)

I’ve continued to talk to Elias about the times that God is there with us, and we are focusing right now on showing respect during those times – specifically at church.  I wanted to do something together that represented a church… and I’ve been wanting to do something cool like these leaves, which got me thinking about waxed paper stained glass windows like these…

While our church building does not have stained glass windows, Elias does sing in a children’s choir at a church in downtown Richmond that has beautiful stained glass windows.  So it was easy to make the connection with him about God’s presence being with us in a church, and that some churches have stained glass windows.

…so while I was thinking about making some cool stained glass windows with crayon shavings, I started thinking about a bag of brightly colored marshmallows sitting in my pantry (I popped the bag in my grocery cart a while ago, not knowing what to do with it, but I figured the boys would love whatever we did…).

What do marshmallows and crayons have in common?  They melt! And could possibly make some beautiful wax paper stained glass windows.  Depending on how you do it….

Let’s gather some supplies:

A bag of neon marshmallows, some wax paper, some no-stick cooking spray, and an iron.

Tear off 2 squares of wax paper, and draw a picture of a “stained glass window” on one side of a square… Flip the wax paper over and spray the other side with the no-stick cooking spray.

Give your child the freshly-sprayed wax paper design and a handful of neon marshmallows.

Then another handful, as he has already scarfed down the first one.

Then show him how he can use the different colors to fill in each different part of the stained glass design.  And give him another handful of marshmallows.

And give the other kid at the other end of the table a handful of marshmallows, too.  So he doesn’t feel left out.

No, he’s fine.

Spray one side of the blank wax paper with no-stick cooking spray, and lay it over the saccharine-flavored stained glass design your little one made.

Iron.

And then turn up the iron a bit more until the marshmallows actually start to melt together.

Then realize that you need to wait longer to try to unveil the masterpiece, because melty marshmallows take a minute to cool down.

OK – they need more than a minute.  They need a half an hour in the fridge.

And then several hours in the freezer.

And they definitely needed more no-stick spray.  Because they were still sticky.  Even after several hours in the freezer.

But it’s OK that it took hours and didn’t turn out the way you expected.  Because you got a picture of these cheeks deep in concentration.

Concentrating on making a cross all on his own.

And pictures of the other little guy, enjoying the sugar rush and time with his big brother.

You know, I get so worked up trying to think of the perfect activity for my boys, so consumed with perfectly conveying whatever lesson I want them to learn…  I forget the important part is spending time with them.

And when I get discouraged that they don’t want to do the craft I prepared?  I need to step back and let them do the craft (or no craft) that they want to do (haven’t I said this before?).  And enjoy the time with them.  Laugh with them.

And I need to learn whatever lesson I’ve planned in my heart – and model it for them. What does it tell my kids about how much I respect God’s sanctuary when I take off my shoes in the middle of worship?  It’s a little thing, but it says tells my boys that I don’t have enough respect to keep my shoes on.

That’s what I’ll be working on from now on… not the perfect lesson or craft, but my heart. Living out Christ’s life in me is the best lesson I can prepare for my boys.

After learning about how awesome God is, I wanted to move to respecting God’s sanctuary, as in the verse, “Have reverence for my sanctuary…” Leviticus 19:30.  But my beliefs about physical church buildings have changed through the years – going from an extreme where the altar is a holy place that only a priest can walk behind, to almost the other extreme where it is not an actual place that is holy – it is what happens there that makes it a place to be respected.

We meet in what many would consider a very large home church – very large because there are almost 300 people meeting together, and we actually do meet in a home – a home with a very large meeting room added on to it.  This meeting room is not only the place where we pray and worship the Lord, but it is also the place where we fellowship together over lunch and where the kids run around to get their energy out after being cooped up in their Sunday school class.  How can I reconcile the idea for Elias that the place where the boys are encouraged to be kids is also the place that at times there needs to be respect and reverence?

Please know that I am not talking about respect for property or even others’ beliefs about their church buildings.  I want my children to fully respect property, a building, a place – and that comes as I correct and train my children.  But I want to get to the heart belief – what makes a place (such as our meeting room) so different two hours after a time of prayer and worship?

Where two or three people meet together in my name, I am there with them. Matthew 18:20 (NIrV) The present spirit of God is what makes a place different!

I prepared a whole bunch of paper dolls (paper people, paper chains, people chains – Josh called them all kinds of things last night as I was cutting them out.  And did you know he didn’t know how to cut out paper dolls?!  He does now!) before the boys were up – they wouldn’t have lasted while I cut out all the chains.

And then I created a little poster for our new memory verse:

And then Elias and I talked about where people meet together in God’s name… church, Sunday school, Bible studies, prayer times, music class, and even when we pray together at meal times and bed times. As we talked, he glued people to a separate piece of paper – we have 6 groups of people for the 6 times we talked about – I thought that was kind of cool!

We’ll continue to talk about this, and I have a couple more crafty ideas up my sleeve to try to illustrate this verse. I will also be trying (or rather, continuing) to impress upon the boys the need for quiet and respect while they are with us in our prayer and worship time.

I’m excited because now Elias knows that God is there when there are even 2 or 3 people coming together in His name! Why didn’t I think about teaching him this before?  This seems like something he was able to grasp right away…

How do you teach your children about respecting the place/time that you meet for worship?

I had a rough beginning of the week, and I really appreciate your comments – it’s a wonderful thing to be reminded that I’m not alone…

As the week got better (and praise the Lord it did get better!) I tried a little craft with the boys – just something that I thought they would have fun with and that we could use to help us sing some songs about God (who doesn’t like waving flags while singing songs?).

The night before, I cut out some stars and felt letters, and I glued a rectangle of felt onto a dowel rod for a flag.  I did everything the night before so the boys would be able to play with the flags right away…

You can see I just wrapped the short end of the rectangle around the dowel, and then I smothered it all with glue (Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue worked a lot better than regular white glue, for some reason).

The next day, both of the boys got busy waving their white flags…

…and then Elias got to gluing.  He decided he only wanted stars on his flag.

I gave Donovan an extra rectangle of felt and let him play with the felt stars and letters like a felt-board or a flannelgraph.

Here is Elias’s finished flag…

…and then he decided he wanted a plain white flag again, so he traded with Donovan.  And then Donovan waved the starry flag really hard, and all the stars flew off.

So Gam and I took over the crafting responsibilities.  Hi, Gam!

The boys continued waving the flags and running around, trying to stick them into things…

Great job, Gam!

Great job, Momma!

We never got to sing any songs with our flags, as my boys tend to turn any stick-type items into weapons, so the flags were confiscated.

So lessons learned:

• White school glue does not hold felt together. Tacky glue is where it’s at.
• Plan to do more crafts when Gam is around.  It’s less frustrating to finish a craft without the kids if my mom is doing it with me.
• No more crafts with sticks for at least another 2 years or so.

I’ll be moving on with the boys next week to respecting God’s house… I’ve got some really fun things planned, and I’ve got some things I need to think through with this one, too.

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Thanks to Heather from Not a DIY Life for her guest post about teaching kids to pray yesterday!  Both Amanda and I will be back at you next week after Amanda gets back from the West Coast!

He is more awesome than all who surround Him.  Psalm 89:7

I chose this verse for Elias and me to work on so he could begin to respect God in his heart – nothing is more awesome than God… no one deserves respect, adoration, and devotion more than God!

Hey – God is so awesome, He made the stars!!! And a 3 year old with a fascination for all things spacey can really get in to that…

…so we painted stars on our window!  We didn’t have any real window paint or window markers, so we made our own…

…with shaving cream and food coloring.  Note: do not use shave gel.  I cannot imagine anything but a mess with that…

Mix together a healthy amount of shaving cream and a couple drops of food coloring (I used way too much shaving cream – I filled up a large yogurt container with it!  No need to do that unless you are going to cover every window in your house with the stuff).   You can just eyeball it – when you get to the color you want, stop adding food coloring.

I cut out a couple stars out of card stock and held them on the window while Elias “painted” the star with our shaving cream concoction.  He painted 2 stars, and then he moved on to taking pictures of me finishing up the project.

Good shot, kiddo!

We painted 5 stars, and then we added our memory verse to the window as well…

I globbed the shaving cream on the stars because I didn’t want it all to dissipate as the shaving cream evaporated… and I think it would’ve been OK even with just a thin coat. The places that the shaving cream was painted on thicker are still more yellow (second picture is 4 hours later), but you can still see everything that was painted on thinly, too.

While we painted the stars, we talked about how awesome it was that God made the stars, and how much fun He must’ve had creating something so beautiful for us!  We repeated the verse a couple times, too, and when I took Elias’s picture, I told him to say “God is awesome!” instead of “cheese.”  This stuck with him a while, because I heard him repeating (in Rhino’s voice from the movie Bolt) “God. is. AWESOME!”

I’m going to continue on this for a while – Elias is very much into things and people being awesome, big, and strong, and I pray that learning about how awesome, big, and strong God is will replace whatever is in the first place spot in his heart right now.

I know it’s possible to over-analyze your kids, but I’ve really been trying to figure out what is at the root of Elias’s current behaviors – and the one that gets me more that any other is his crying/pitching a fit when he doesn’t get his way.

So I’ve been praying that the Lord would show me how to get to the root of this crying and whining – and what did the Lord show me?  It is not the time to be focusing on the symptoms of crying and whining.  What we need to focus on right now is a lack of respect.

Respect for other people and their feelings, respect for Daddy and Mommy, and most of all, respect for God.  Elias has been required to show respect, but it is not inside his heart.  So the disrespectful behavior is leaking out everywhere…

Please pray with me as I figure out how to impress this in his heart.  I’ve got some ideas that are actually fun, and we’re starting at the top – respecting the Lord our God.