This is Tony, my music minister from the church where I grew up.  Tony has always been very active in serving others in the name of Christ.  For the past 25 years, he’s worked monthly to organize food and helpers to serve the needy at the local soup kitchen.  We were blessed to help serve again this April.

The menu:

Day old pizza donated by Papa John’s

Salad

Corn

Fruit

Day old desserts donated by Kroger

After all the food has been served, we eat right alongside those we’ve just served.  It’s a humbling and honor-filled place to be.

A day of school spent serving ranks higher than any other.

We’re very blessed to go to a church that participates in the local food pantry mission.  Once every three months, our church is on duty and asks for volunteers to donate a couple of hours to man the operation.  My children look forward to this service opportunity so much!  From filling orders to stocking shelves, I just sit back and watch as they take the reigns when needy people come for food.  What a blessing for us, as well as the people who leave knowing their families will be well fed.

The children and youth of our church prepared a lovely Valentine’s Day spaghetti dinner for the adults of the church yesterday.  They set up a very special dining experience with decorations, music, greeters, waiters and waitresses, and a yummy meal!  Here are my two servers in action.

I LOVE activities that bring all ages of the church together.  I think it’s so important to make generational connections – that’s why our family VBS was so special to me this year and why we’re doing an Easter program that involves all ages.  That reminds me, I never posted about the ins and outs of our weekend-long family VBS.  Maybe I’ll do that soon.

Wanna see why I didn’t participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend?  Go here.

Yesterday was Tuesday and that means another busy, but very rich day of learning in our house.  After a bit of Bible and math, we went outside for nature study from a distance.  Instead of observing God’s creation up-close and personal, we took time to view the beautiful autumn trees as they grow in groupings.  All the greens, yellows, organges and reds together are just breath-taking!

To record nature study today, we created sponge painted treescapes (a very easy and fun activity.)  Take a cheap sponge (I found a bag full of 15-20 sponges at the Dollar Tree the other day) and let your child cut it into various odd shaped pieces.  You’ll need a little piece per paint color.  Squirt several fall colored tempera or acrylic paints onto a “pallet”.

We started by using a few different blues and a white paint to make the sky.  Then we moved on to the ground by using a couple of greens and a gold.  Using a thin paintbrush and a couple different colors of brown, we just went along the ground/sky line painting in several tree trunks.  Then using reds, yellow, orange and the green paints, we dabbed the edges of the sponges into the colors and gently dabbed onto the paper to create leaves.  My explanation probably makes this sound harder than it was!  At any rate, the finished product was lovely.

This week started new artist and composer studies.  Keeping with the theme of Impressionistic artists, we began studying Edgar Degas by reading Edgar Degas: Paintings that Dance.

Since Degas painted so many ballerinas, it just seemed fitting to teach Tchaikovsky at the same time.  I found a wonderful site for composers called Classics For Kids.  Where have I been, right???  We were able to listen to a couple of biographical stories about Tchaikovsky and hear some of his famous Nutcracker.

And finally, after our tea time and a history activity we headed to the first 4-H meeting of the year.  Our homeschool 4-H club is designed mostly as a service-oriented club.  The kids packed snack bags for needy children in the area, then worked on fall-themed thank you magnets for our local hospital workers.

Like I said – busy, but wonderful!

Making the blankets is a cinch.  You take one yard of fleece and cut 4″ squares out of the corners.  Then, cut slits up 4″ about an inch apart on all sides.  Loosely tie two “slits” together in knots until you go all the way around the perimeter.  There you have it – beautiful lap robes that kids can easily do on their own.

Here’s a site I found that gives directions for other fleece blankets, as well as ideas for other worthy groups to donate to.  There are also some literature suggestions if you want to make a mini-unit out of the project.

We decided early on that we wanted it to be hands-on, meaningful and service oriented.  Forget the meeting minutes and officers and such!  Well, we met for our first meeting this week and it exceeded every expectation I had!

The children were asked to bring ingredients to make their favorite Christmas cookie.  They each got to be “Emeril” as they demonstrated their recipe to the rest of the group.  After a cookie tasting party, they loaded up the leftovers and we delivered them to our local fire stations as a Christmas gift.  What fun!!

Next month – making lap quilts.

Have you ever seen the colored bells from Krystal Bell Method???  We’ve been using them at church for some time.  They’re SO incredibly easy and make music that puts a broad smile on every adult listening.

Today, our Keepers group (+ brothers) borrowed the bells.  We visited a local nursing home to sing and play several Christmas tunes for the residents.  Smiles abounded.  Our hearts, too, were filled to the brim.

Silver Packages by Cynthia Rylant is an excellent book for the Christmas season!  About a gift train that heads into poor Appalachian country each year, it makes for a wonderful example of giving at Christmas time.

I loosely used this unit from Homeschool Share to do a mini-unit this week.  We covered geography, history, social studies, some language arts, a little science, and a lot of Bible.  It brought us back to our cozy Five In A Row days.  What good memories!

The best part of the unit was when my children decided to each buy a gift to give to a needy child.  We were going to send the gifts to the real gift train, but in the end the kids decided they would rather help a child in our own community.  So, with their wallets in hand, they each bought a gift that will be given to our local fire station’s Toys For Tots drive.  It warms my heart to see them giving.  Remember my frustration the other day?  Yes, this proves all isn’t lost to selfishness.