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.

***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!***

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?

***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!***

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!

***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!***