On Fridays, I attempt to plan a simple object lesson to go along with Bible study. Since we have been studying knights of the Middle Ages lately, I thought a lesson on the Armor of God made a nice tie-in.
The lesson is quick, but powerful.
Materials:
two oranges
a glass bowl large enough for two oranges to be completely submerged
water
Bible
Read Ephesians 6:10-17
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Talk about what each piece of armor stands for and how it helps us stand against the devil.
Ask your children to pretend to put on each piece of armor as you discuss how that particular piece might help them throughout their day.
Place both oranges in the bowl with their “armor” on. (In other words, keep the skin on both oranges.) Talk about how the oranges are floating, or “standing firm” in the water.
Little by little, begin peeling away some of the “armor” (skin) of one of the oranges. You might peel off a chunk and say something like, “Uh oh, this orange forgot to put on his belt of truth. When someone says something ugly about him today, he might believe it. If he believes that lie, instead of the truth that he’s wonderfully made, he might not stand as firm in the water.” Place the orange back in the water and notice that, although it doesn’t sink completely, it begins dipping further in the water than the orange still wearing all its armor.
Continue on this way, peeling back a little at a time, talking about a new piece of armor the orange forgot to put on, talking about how that might affect his day, and then placing the orange in the water to see it sink more and more each time.
By the time you remove all of the armor, the orange will completely sink. It is not able to “stand” at all.
Challenge your children to think purposefully each day about putting on each piece of armor. Maybe you could even pretend to put on each piece together every morning. When I purposefully try to put on my own armor, I know I’m able to stand more firmly against the devil’s wily schemes. I bet kids can, too!
Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s frustrated in the check-out lines. WooHoo!! A nationwide petition has been started to either clean up or cover up Cosmopolitan! When I signed the petition this morning, over 18,000 people had already added their names! Will you??
Welcome to Day 1 of my series 10 Days of Teaching Values!
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be taking part in the Heart of the Matter’s 10 Days of… Blog Hop. My posts will focus on creative ways to teach values (or character training) to your children. My prayer is that you and I will both be inspired (or re-inspired) to train our precious children in the way they should go with methods that reach deep to encourage and motivate their souls.
I hope you’ll stop in every day over the next two weeks (weekdays only) to not only get fresh ideas, but to encourage me with your comments and fresh ideas as well.
First, just in case you’re new to my blog, I’ll take just a minute to introduce myself. I’m Cindy West, wife to Steve and mom to Mahayla (14), Caleb (11) and Eli (4). We live on a cattle farm in Central KY which is an awesome setting for tons of homeschooling opportunities and rambunctious students! I own Shining Dawn Books where you can find my NaturExplorers studies and other “living” curricula. I love encouraging homeschooling moms to embrace every moment with their children by making their time together meaningful and enjoyable.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23
The Fruit of the Spirit is our “go-to” list of virtues as Christians. We should strive to exuded each of these traits in everything we do! Do we mess up? Sure! That’s part of the learning process – and thank God for His sweet mercy day in and day out as we fail!
One tried and true method I’ve used with each of my three children to help them understand and begin to display these values is a Fruit of the Spirit tree. As early as the age of three or four, whenever I notice that the “fruits” need a little, ahem, fine tuning around the house, we stick a branch in a jar and have great fun catching each other being kind, peaceful, gentle and so on.
Beforehand, I’ve prepared little fruits tied to strings that get hung on the branches when someone has been caught. There’s never a competition between kids to see who can gather the most fruit, but instead it’s a cooperative effort to see the good in one another, be good to one another and watch our family tree hang heavy with fruits as a result.
When one child needs a little more encouragement (like the four year old recently), the tree will be all about him. In this instance, as often as we were able, we made a big deal about the values he was displaying and let him put his fruits on the tree. At the end of the day, we counted the fruits together. His goal the next day was to see if he could gather even more fruits than the day before. After about a week, he had begun a pleasant habit which replaced a not-so-pleasant habit and we not longer needed the tree.
Old or young, every time I’ve pulled out the Fruit of the Spirit tree in our home, positive character has resulted. It’s so easy, too!
How to Make:
Place a tree-shaped stick in a jar/bucket of beans/rice/rocks.
Cut out fruit shapes from construction paper, card stock, foam sheets or anything else you like. (The fruit shapes in my photo were prepared shapes I found several years ago at a dollar store.)
Punch a hole at the top of each fruit and loop a ribbon, yarn or string through it to become a hanger.
For very young children, I don’t write anything on the fruits. We simply talk about each value as its displayed and the child hangs any fruit of his choosing. For young readers, write one value on each of the fruits so that you have at least one per Fruit of the Spirit. When a particular value is displayed, they find the correct fruit to hang on the tree. For older children, place a list of the Fruits of the Spirit near the tree along with the blank fruits and a marker to create their own as a fruit is displayed.
That’s it! What are you waiting for? You could have new, wonderful habits started tomorrow!
While not necessary, I know many of you like to find fun extras to reinforce your lessons, or actual lessons to help you specifically teach the Fruits of the Spirit. I have included some of both in the widget below for your convenience.
Be sure to visit these wonderful ladies during our 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Welcome to Day 2 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… series on Teaching Values in your homeschool!
Today I’m writing about one of my very favorite topics – living literature! There are SO many ways you can use literature to encourage good values in your children – and teach about the consequences of poor values as played out in the lives of book characters. Whether you’re teaching preschoolers or high school students, living literature is a gold mine for values training.
Yesterday, I mentioned the Fruits of the Spirit as defined in Galatians 5:22-23 as our “go-to” list of values for training our children. And, while that is certainly the list I focus on most in my home, there are plenty of other values which are important to instill in our children – gratefulness, truthfulness, hospitality, thriftiness, punctuality, attentiveness and many more.
You can find a wonderful list of virtues along with an amazing set of Bible and teaching ideas for each virtue at Home Life Ministries. Don’t miss this website! Also, while I’m not entirely sure of the content of The Virtues Project website, they have three printable posters of virtues you might be interested in.
Considering all the possible values to reinforce, it would be nearly impossible for me or anyone else to give you a comprehensive list of the best books to use for each and every value. While some websites and books set out to get you started on the practice of using literature for character training (see below), my intent is to show you how I take just about any book we read and use it for at least some character training.
A Sample Lesson
Let’s use just any ol’ non-secular book you might find at the library…The Three Little Pigs. You know the story, right? After reading the story with my children (if I was intending to use it as for part of a values lesson and not just sweet reading time), I would start asking open ended questions. Typically, I would only focus on one topic per book per day. In other words, I wouldn’t try to cover every single character flaw at one time.
Two possible character discussions:
Topic/character flaw = being mean
What do you think about the wolf? Why do you think he was called the ‘Big Bad Wolf’? I wonder what prompted the wolf to be so mean? You think he was just hungry? Okay, what could the pigs have done to help him? When people are mean, should we try to help them? What if they don’t want to be helped by us? Is there ever a time when we should run away from people instead of helping them? (Stranger talk!)
Topic/character flaw = laziness
Tell me what you think about each of the houses that the pigs made. Whose house stood strong against the wolf? Why? What did the other two pigs want to do rather than build strong houses? Do you think they were prepared for the troubles that came their way? What other troubles might they not have been prepared for? What does God tell us about being lazy in the Bible? Is there a time to play and relax?
There are obviously other discussions you could have based simply on this little picture book, too! And, just about any book you find will lend itself to character building discussions!
One other thing I might mention… When I’m preparing for a character talk (or when one comes out of nowhere), I’ll browse through my copy of For Instruction in Righteousness. It prepares me with Bible verses, Bible stories and ideas to bring home the point on a huge number of “character flaws”. It’s been one of the most used book in my home! In fact, I’m planning to write a whole post on how I use this book as part of our values training later in this 10 Days series.
Some Great Resources
The following websites offer wonderful collections of character building literature:
You might find this large selection of Aesop’s Fables helpful since every story has an obvious moral to discuss with your children.
(Short fables like these are good for assignments, too, where you ask your child to develop her own moral or write/act out a new version where the character makes better decisions.)
The books in the widget below contain either book lists of great literature (with a moral) for all ages, or are collections themselves of literature selections.
I hope you’ll join me tomorrow as we discuss teaching values through service and leadership opportunities!
Be sure to visit these brilliant ladies during our 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Welcome to Day 3 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… Series about Teaching Values. Today’s topic focuses on one of the most important things (besides the Bible) we’ve added to our homeschooling schedule – Service Opportunities.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13-14
In our home, learning to serve plays a major role in values training. Of course, we train our children to serve one another in our home, but we’re also intentional in finding service opportunities outside the home. As soon as our children are able to take part in service activities, we get them involved! Helping to clean up after a co-op event, setting tables for a bereavement dinner at church and taking out the trash for grandma and grandpa are all simple to-do’s even for little ones.
{Serving at a local soup kitchen.}
As our kids get older, we actively seek opportunities to serve. Working at the soup kitchen, making meals for shut-ins with the youth group, and bagging groceries at the food pantry are some examples. Believe it or not, not once have my children complained about these times of work! Oh, they will complain quite often about chores around the house, school assignments, not having time to watch a favorite tv show, or how often one of them touches the other in the car!! But, there’s something magical about serving others outside the home that make us all very humble, eager and incredibly thankful for the blessing of serving others. Through these experiences, my children have also learned values such as empathy, acceptance and compassion. It’s truly beautiful to watch your children joyfully serve others.
{Making mop ponies for a children’s home for Christmas. K.E.E.P. Youth Council}
As my children have gotten older, I’ve found serving in leadership roles to promote values training just as well (in different ways) than the type of serving I was talking about above. My children (mostly my oldest – 9th grade – at this point) have been part of youth councils for various things like 4-H and the Kentucky Equine Education Project. They have attended leadership conferences for Christian youth and helped set-up our state’s annual homeschooling convention.
With each of these opportunities, I’ve watched my children mature. They’ve learned work ethic, respect, perseverance, cooperation, confidence and so much more. Not to mention, in each case they’ve made wonderful friends who share common goals.
{Bagging food at the local food pantry.}
Just where do you begin involving your children in service and leadership opportunities? Well, that answer depends very much on your child’s age and what is available in your area. I’ve created a list of ideas to get you started below.
Just for the record , I address the topics of service and leadership in my new book, Homeschooling the Gifted and Advanced Learner – Chapter 8 “What About Socialization?”, p 116! You certainly don’t need to have gifted children to participate in these wonderful experiences, though. ALL children benefit in such character building moments! What are you waiting for? Start thinking seriously about how you can incorporate more service time into your homeschool!
I’d love to hear what you’ve done in your homeschool to serve others!
Be sure to visit these sweet ladies during the 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
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, I address the topics of service and leadership in my new book, 
