Question:  How do you teach a 4 year old about God?

Well, I have been asking myself that very same question for a while.  I have realized in these 4 years of parenting that I feel very ill equipped in teaching my 4 year old most things.  I struggle breaking things down so that I feel he will understand.  Lets table the spiritual convo for a second and simply talk about things like throwing a football, putting on a shirt, or using safety scissors (our latest venture).  I try to think step by step about these tasks and end up just probably confusing the mess out of the poor kid.  I am blessed in that I have a smart son who learns despite his momma.

Ok, back to God.

I needed a simple yet structured way to teach him some basic truths about scripture and the God that we serve.  Now is the time we are building a foundation for his understanding, so for me, I didn’t want to simply teach him the ’stories’ of the Bible, but I want him to know the God of the Bible.  For instance, instead of him being able to know all the details of the story of Noah, I want him to understand that that story was a beautiful picture of God’s grace and mercy to those that believe, and how he is a good God that is trustworthy.

Since my child is super excited about his ABCs at this age, I thought it would be a wonderful way to help him remember the lessons.  So, I created one lesson per letter that also has a Bible verse and a few activities or crafts to go along with each one.  We do one letter per week, because repetition is key!

If there is one thing that I would say to any parents of young children, it is that we will never feel completely equipped to shepherd our children, but don’t let that stop you from doing something.  Start wherever you want, but just start!  Before we get to the first lesson, I had to give a shout out to the BEST child Bible I have ever read!  It made me cry!!! I know right?!  It is so different from any other one that I have ever read.  The other Bible’s simply told each story very dryly.  This Bible does an amazing job of bringing each story to life and pointing each one back to God.  I put a little snippet of it at the end of this post if you are interested in reading.

So, here we go with the letter ‘A‘.

Lesson:  Armor Of God

Bible Verse: “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”-Eph. 6:11

I talked to him about how God is strong and how He wants us to be strong.  And how we should take everything He has set out for us and put them to use so we will be able to fight anything the devil throws our way.  We are up against more than we can handle on our own, but God has given us weapons to conquer our enemies.   We talked about how we  don’t have to be afraid, but we have to be ready  And so, like a great warrior, we need to put on our armor. And because our enemy is a spirit, God will give us spiritual armor.

So put on the full Armor of God!

A while ago I had read a blog that mentioned finding a knight costume for super cheap at the Dollar Store, so I went to one and found it.  The helmet was 1.00, the breastplate was a 1.00 and the shield was 1.00.  They were out of the sword so I just constructed one out of cardboard.  I wrote on each piece what it was, such as for the helmet I wrote ‘Salvation’ etc.

I had the ‘armor’ in a bag so he couldn’t see, and then pulled out the first piece and talked about what it meant before I let him put it on.  He LOVED this!

First, we tied the Belt of Truth around his waist.

I told him that God is real. God loves you, and Jesus died for your sins. God is on your side – that is the Truth!

Hold on to the Truth, and like a good tight belt, the truth will hold you up and keep you strong when Satan attacks.

Next, we put on the Breastplate of Righteousness.

Guard your heart.

Put on the Breastplate of Righteousness. Always do what is right and good. That way, Satan won’t have anything to grab onto to worm his way into your heart. You will be able to stand straight and tall, with your head held high.

Next, we put on the Shoes of Readiness.

Be ready to go wherever God sends you to tell the Good News of God’s amazing love for us.

Do you love that the shoes of Readiness are Spiderman slippers?!  I thought it would add a little fun!

I gave him this helmet and he immediately looked in the mirror and said, ‘Hey, wait. Something is missing. I need a feather.’  So, thankfully in my stash of craft clutter I found a feather to stick in the top of his helmet.  And, I have to admit it adds a lot to the outfit.

Here is Gracie doing her “Happy Christmas Dance” before church.

Gracie posing in front of the Christmas tree wearing Daddy’s tie.

And now for the presents…

Gracie “helping” Daddy open his present.

The Mickey and Minnie Gracie painted for us.

Now that the presents are done and Christmas is over we are focusing on New Year’s Eve, the day we will celebrate our sweet new baby into this world!  We hope you had a blessed Christmas and have a happy new year!

…and sweet little piggy…

…and their buddies, little bear and Mr. giraffe. And then….out of nowhere……came….

..The Marshmallow Monster!!!

And after a cynical monster laugh, the monster proceeded to destroy all of the sweet baby animals, one by one, until all that remained was….

the monster.

Victorious.

Another Christmas craft that I attempted this year was the no-sew ruffle tree skirt my sister found on Pinterest.   Thanks to Nicole’s belief in my ability to do this craft, I actually finished it!  It only required $8 in fabric, a lot of hot glue, and quite a bit of time to finish, but I do actually love the way it turned out! (in the pictures above you can see what it looked like before I refashioned it)

Another thing that has made December so much fun is watching Gracie do the advent calendar I made for her.  I made  a scavenger hunt advent game with numbered tags from 1 to 24.  On the backs of the tags I put pictures of items in our house that she knows well.  Her present for the day is hidden in the item pictured on the tag.   She is so cute as she finds the correct number on the tag (with our help), looks at the picture, and then throws the tag down and runs full speed to find her present.  In this case her present was hidden in her mickey mouse clubhouse toy.  She got a baby bottle ($1 at the dollar store) which she loved as you can tell.

I praise God for this time to celebrate Christ’s birth with my precious family!  Soon we will be celebrating the birth of Silas – crazy!!!  God Bless!

Halloween 2011 proved to be the most fun one yet!  This was a Halloween boo-nanza!!  Ha!  Ok…I know enough cheesy jokes lets just get straight to the pictures right?  Well, I wanted to start out by showing how Jackson and I decorated the house this year.  My favorite thing this year was the chalkboard of halloween sayings.  I just love this chalkboard and how useful it will be for each holiday.

We had some home made decor too, done by my little man.  Such beautiful work.  The skeleton we made was good but in his words, ‘wasn’t quite right.  It needed some spiders on its head!’  Well, I have to admit it adds a nice Halloweeny touch.

We started the sweet eating a little early on Halloween by making some fun ghost cookies.

After I filled my son full of sugar cookies I sent him off to consume inhumane amounts of candy. Mother of the Year!!! He decided that he wanted to be a fire breathing dragon, and although he ran around acting scary, I think he is the cutest doggone dragon I have ever seen.  

Before we went out trick or treating, we stopped by to see some sweet neighbors and friends.  Are these little girls not just the cutest EVER?!!!

And….my favorite picture of the day.

Answer:  Why you let your 3 year old paint it of course.  No seriously, here are the three reasons why we did this little ‘project’.

1. We were bored.  No Rangers on this day.

2. We were lazy.  I was NOT wanting to renovate anything.

3. Why not at least see if he could make something cool out of it. (lets be honest…it was one big fat eye sore to begin with! What do you expect for 15 bucks?)

So, we gave him a paint brush and lots of colorful paint and he went after it.  He started with the paint brush, and quickly moved onto the finger painting method.  He squirted paint, splattered paint, even used marker on this thing.  It is a master piece if I do say so myself.  I think it is going to look perfectly lovely in his playroom. Lots of messy fun for sure! And needless to say, afterward we had one rainbow colored bath.