Posted by Cindy on January 8, 2008
A peace place. A place for my children (or myself) to go when we are not being peaceful. A time-out of sorts, but focused on God and His desires for us. A quiet and comfortable place for us to reflect on why we haven’t been peaceful and to ask forgiveness. A place to rid ourselves of frustration, focus on the Word and work through forgiveness towards the person or people who have offended us.
In this place, you’ll find a Bible, a peace notebook, paper, pens and a servant jar. The peace notebook includes everything included on Holy Experience’s post about making a peace place (above). As the kids read through the pages in the notebook, my prayer is that their hearts begin to soften. That they grow closer to the Lord and learn to walk in His ways more readily. That they learn how to better handle the frustrations of life (especially life with brothers and sisters.)
The servant jar. When one of my children gets angry and offends someone else in the house with ugly words or ugly actions, not only do they get to spend a little time in the Peace Place, but they get to choose a slip of paper from the servant jar. On the little slips are jobs that person can do to serve the person they’ve offended. What better way to ask forgiveness of someone than to serve them.
We’ve only just begun our Peace Place, but I’m praying that God will reveal Himself to us when we visit. I’m praying that our walk will grow closer to His as we learn better to ask forgiveness and to forgive others. I’m praying that, eventually, we won’t need the Peace Place anymore because our hearts will have turned towards Him in such a way that our actions and reactions are generally peaceful. Ah, peace.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Matthew 5:9
(The original idea for our peace place and servant jar came from a mixture of posts on the same topic from A Holy Experience and Preschoolers and Peace. Love those ladies!)
Posted by Cindy on December 18, 2007
Here’s a peek at our Christmas Lapbooks that we finished last week. Mahayla’s is red, Caleb’s is green. We used many activities from the Symbols of Christmas lapbook unit from Hands of a Child. All the extra math/logic/problem solving worksheets, plus some science worksheets were stapled together inside the large panel on the right side. This keeps all the unit work together in a nice, neat package.
This week is light. We’re working on math everyday, putting together our newsletter and just having some Christmas craft and baking fun. At the end of the week, we’ll be officially halfway through our school year! And on a well deserved break for a couple of weeks.
Posted by Cindy on June 6, 2007
My children pulled all the Miller’s books out again the other day. I can’t tell you how much we’ve enjoyed these books!
From the time they were preschoolers and we started reading
Storytime With the Millers
, my children have intently listened to and learned from the stories. I think they’re so good, in fact, that they were read during devotion time usually.
Even though the books come from a very conservative Amish-Mennonite perspective, I found them to be very useful in teaching topics like trusting God, manners, friendship, obedience, respect, forgiveness, self-sacrifice and much, much more! Each story centers around a Bible verse and that verse is used at some point within the story. Many of the stories are full of some excitement, too. That helps to keep my son’s attention!
Choosing a favorite is hard, but I would probably choose Missionary Stories with the Millers as my personal favorite. This book is just full of the true adventure stories of actual missionaries. Some I had heard of, some I hadn’t. I have read other reviews that said the stories in this book were a little too much for their younger children, but mine had no problems it. Be warned, though, that the real stories of missionaries aren’t always smily, joyful stories. But in each, God’s faithfulness and care shine through!!
Posted by Cindy on November 16, 2006
Ever since my children were babies, we have LOVED books. Because of this love, I have used books as our character building “curriculum”. Just about any good, living book can be used to talk about character issues – good and bad. I’ll include a list of our favorite character building books and give a few examples of how I’ve used them.
Our copy of For Instruction in Righteousness has been invaluable in helping me to tie in Biblical examples and Bible verses to go along with a literature book.
Above are *some* of my favorites that are geared specifically for Christians. Below, I’ve included a list of regular ol’ literature books that we like and how I’ve used some of them for character training.
The Little Red Hen (Folk Tale Classics)
- Pick out either the trait of laziness or selfishness to discuss. For laziness, read some Bible verses that talk about laziness, tell a Bible story about someone who was lazy or someone who was not lazy and talk about how they failed or prospered. Talk about times in our own lives when we’ve reaped the harvest of our laziness.
Stone Soup
– Compare and contrast selfishness vs. sharing and how everyone prospered when sharing. Read Bible verses about sharing and tell Bible stories of people who did share and how they were blessed. Talk about what we can do to be better sharers. Maybe even take on a project that day to share with someone else.
Higgins Bend Song and Dance
– Jacqueline Martin (boastfulness)
Roxaboxen
– Barbara Cooney (resourcefulness, creativity)
Always Room for One More – Sorche Nic Leodhas (hostpitality)
Miss Rumphius
– Barbara Cooney (thinking ahead, opening our eyes to God’s beauty)
Bartholomew and the Oobleck
– Dr. Suess (consequences for our actions)
The Wartville Wizard
– Don Madden (consequences for our actions)
The Duchess Bakes a Cake
– Virginia Kahl (following directions, allowing others to help us)
Mirette on the High Wire
– Emily McCully (perseverance)
The King’s Chessboard - David Birch (forethought)
The Grouchy Ladybug
– Eric Carle (grouchiness)
Boy, oh boy! I think I’ll stop because I could go on forever. Just about any book you read could be used to grow into a character study!! If you run across this idea and try it in your home, please let me know how it goes!!
