Letter J

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever."

Hebrews 13:8

I simply couldn't choose something other than the name above all names for our letter J verse. And what a great verse about him too! He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He always was, always is and always will be. Can I get an "Amen!"?

Can you guess what our craft was supposed to be? A gold star goes to anyone who guessed jellyfish. It's a 5 eyed, tiny smiled, rainbow colored jellyfish. Those are the best you know. :) When I pulled our craft bucket out David shrieked "A craft?! With eyes?!!"  hence the 5 eyed-ness of this little critter. He just couldn't stop himself at two. :) And don't you like those crepe paper legs? I had some odd and ends leftover from a baby shower I threw last year and David's 2nd birthday party.

Letter J is not just for jellyfish. It's for JUMPING too! Yay for jumping! *Moms of girls should probably look away now. This is not for the faint of heart* I pulled our couch out from the wall and laid down an old spare crib mattress that we had laying around (solely for jumping purposes). I let David climb up to the very top of the couch and jump onto the mattress. He had SO much fun! He must have spent a good 45 minutes climbing and jumping then climbing and jumping again.

P.S. How do you like those spiffy Superman underwear?

Letter I

"In your anger, do not sin"

Ephesians 4:26

A pretty great verse for kids -especially boys- I think. We've talked about how it's ok to be angry sometimes, but that we can't be naughty when we are angry. It's best to use our words to talk about it (i.e. asking for the toy back instead of punching your brother to make him drop it). He grabbed onto this concept much easier than I would have expected. He just stands there now and says "I'm really angry." while gritting his teeth. Huge progress, people, huge progress.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! In my mind nothing says letter I better than ice cream so we made a giant three scoop ice cream cone with sprinkles and a cherry.

Letter H

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."

Ecclesiastes 9:10

We're finally back at our ABC scriptures! We took a break over Christmas, but we got started again a couple of weeks ago. We picked up on letter H. It was a little tricky to find a verse that started with H and didn't have words like "honor" and such that don't even sound like H. Instead I picked a verse that had an H keyword in it.

Hands. It was a natural choice given that David has been struggling being nice with his hands lately. He likes to poke, hit and push a lot. We've been focusing on doing good things with our hands and doing them well. If we are building a tower with blocks, we try to build a really great tower with our hands and work with all our might. If we are coloring with our hands we try very hard to stay in the lines and color nicely so we make pretty pictures.

This isn't so much a "craft" as it is a tracing of his hands. But what cute little hands they are! He got to glue and that's really all that mattered to him. :)

Letter G

"...God is love."

1 John 4:8

    What a great verse, right? It's short, simple and to the point. And very powerful. It is one of the foundational verses for believers and when believed - really believed deep down in your heart - it will change your life. I want so badly for my boys to grow up knowing that being a Christian is not about "following rules" or "not having fun" as the world would have them believe. It's about love. God's unending, unfailing, unconditional love.

    We've been talking about how God and Jesus (because to him these are still two different people) love David very much. Even more than Mommy and Daddy love David - and that's a lot! We've also been talking about how David can be like God and show love to his friends. That means being kind and gentle, not pushing or shoving, never hitting or sitting on our friends and always saying sorry. Mostly this has been directed at Max since he's most often the recipient of David's unloving behaviors. :) He's really into it and when reminded of his Bible verse, he tries really hard to be kind. He's such a sweet boy.

   I kept the craft part of this letter really simple because I didn't want to overshadow the awesomeness of the scripture. Grapes are a pretty easy letter G subject so I drew a bunch and turned him loose with a purple crayon.

Letter F

"Forgive as the Lord forgave you."

Colossians 3:13

Who doesn't love a cross-eyed forgiveness fish? I put together a fish and let David pick out some sequins and eyes and stuff to put on it. His favorite Bible story is Jonah and the big fish so he has a special love for fishes right now. I think he only likes the story because the big fish spits, but hey whatever gets him in the word.

He was feeling super chatty tonight when we did this so we had good conversation about forgiveness. We talked about how Jesus forgives us when we are wrong, no matter how naughty we were. We also talked about how it's important to forgive our friends when they are naughty and mean to us and how we should always say "I forgive you" when someone apologizes. Pretty deep stuff for a little guy.

Letter E

"Do Everything without complaining or arguing"

Philippians 2:14

Ok, so this one doesn't start with the letter E, but there's a keyword that starts with E. David has a problem from time to time with not wanting to pick up toys or help out with putting things away so this verse was a big help. It served as a great reminder that all things should be done without a drawn out argument first. I love it when he obeys without talking back first. :) It makes me so happy.

What goes better with the letter E than elephants?? Nothing. We made 2 so that there was a momma elephant and a David elephant. He picked out the craft foam and told me it's the coolest yellow he's ever seen and it would make him so happy to use it for an elephant. How could I say no? Sometimes he really cracks me up. He wasn't satisfied just making elephants that day (and was too bored with it to make bodies too) so we filled in the empty space with letter E stickers and some other random shapes.

Letter D

"Do not be afraid, for I am with you."

Isaiah 43:5

Do not be afraid. How much do you love this verse for a little kid?!? It's perfect. In an adult sized world, little kids can so easily feel overwhelmed and scared. David is not a fan of thunder, extremely loud trucks, the dark or being away from mommy and daddy. I'm really hoping this verse helps him in some way. It creates a good foundation for knowing that Jesus will never leave you.

For our little craft, we made a dinosaur(on a side note, David actually asked me to do a craft for this. He said he wanted to glue something. Hehe.). Do not judge my dinosaur. I really wanted to use the letter D for a body. David was asking me what I was doing so we started chatting about our dinosaur and what it would look like. We talked about the colors and I showed him the body piece and asked what the dinosaur's head should look like. David said "happy". Um, ok. One smiling dinosaur coming up. I started cutting out feet and David said he wanted it to have skater shoes (that's what he calls his sneakers) like David. Um, ok. One smiling dinosaur with shoes coming right up. Believe it or not, that dinosaur looked a little goofy...and somewhat like a turtle. Yeah, I know. Can you imagine that? Huh. In an effort to look a little more mean and dino-ish, we gave our smiling, shoe wearing dinosaur some duct tape spikes. David was all about this craft and wanted to do it, but as soon as those spikes were on he was done. He picked up the paper, said "all done" and put it on the fridge. I guess you can't mess with perfection. You just have to walk away. :)

Letter C

"Children, obey your parents."

Ephesians 6:1

You already know that we went to the cow farm and had cookies for the letter C. When we got home we made a picture of the cow farm and colored it. We also did another coloring page with cupcakes on it.

I chose this verse for pretty obvious reasons. Obedience. Plain and simple. We've talked about how it makes Jesus happy when David obeys mommy and daddy. When he's disobedient we sandwich punishment inbetween trips to the fridge door to read our Bible verse. So far, so good. I think he's actually getting a better picture of how we'd like him to act.

We are still hanging out on letter C, but I'll post again when we move onto D!

Letter B

"Believe in the Lord Jesus"

Acts 16:31

I don't know if there's anything I want for my sons more than them believing in Jesus. I've prayed for their salvation and relationship with the Lord since they were born. Obviously, at this point David doesn't get the whole "being saved" thing. I left that out of the verse so it wouldn't be distracting. Our trimmed down version still gets the point across though.

Since I have little boys, bugs were naturally what popped into my mind when I thought of the letter B. I cut out little bug parts the night before we did this craft and put them in an envelope. After laying down newspaper to protect my table, I gave David a glue stick and the envelope and let him have at it. I helped a fair amount on this one, but he still had a lot of fun.

Letter A

"A gentle answer turns away anger."

Proverbs 15:1

For the letter A, I chose Proverbs 15:1. I paraphrased a little bit to make it something David could say and understand. The NIV version says "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." He doesn't quite understand wrath, but he definitely gets what it means to be angry. We talked about how we need to use gentle kind words with each other so we don't make each other angry. When he used a sassy tone, talked back or yelled at me, we were quick to find our Bible verse on the fridge and talk about the importance of gentle words. I pointed out that he didn't use gentle words and it made me angry. It turned each and every defiant moment into a teachable one.

Apples are sort of the only way to go when talking about the letter A so we made apple prints on our paper. I cut the apple in half and let him pick out the seeds. We talked about the really neat star/flower hiding in the middle of our apple and then we pulled out the paint. I was using pretty thin paper and didn't want giant globs of paint on it so I let him paint the apple with a brush instead of dipping the apple in paint. He was so thrilled. He really had a good time with this one and we got our ABC's off to a good start.

The teachable twos

So many people (myself included) have referred to the late toddler years as the "terrible twos". I am just about fed up with this title. It's negative connotations have done nothing in the way of helping me or my child adjust from the baby years to the much more independent small child years. Without realizing it, I've allowed the "What are you going to do? He's two" and the "Oh my! Just wait until he's two!" mentality to set my child up for failure. I look for him to disobey or misbehave before taking action. The idea is not to sit back and wait for your child to do something wrong before you explain to him how you expect him act. I don't have to put up with misbehavior and brush it off and move on explaining that he's just two and will do it no matter what. I want to be more proactive than that. I want to be more hands on and have a bigger impact on my child than that. The Lord entrusted these boys to my care and I need to give them more than that.

As language skills and independence are forming, kids can get frustrated from time to time. I get that. Whether it be that they can't find the words to make you understand what they are saying or they don't understand why they can't pour the brand new and very full gallon of milk by themselves, frustration will come at some point. It's what David sometimes chooses to do with his frustration that I have an issue with.

I've resolved to call this phase of life the "teachable twos". I've recently been asking the Lord to show me my calling or purpose as a mom. As my boys move out of the "basic needs" baby stage and into very impressionable years, I'm really relying on the Lord to reveal to me what my course of action should be in raising them. As he always is, the Lord was faithful to answer. He lead me to a website that I'm absolutely in love with called Impress Your Kids. It was founded and operates on the principle of impressing God's word into your children's hearts as described in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Within a week of finding this website and it's mission statement verse and with a lot more prayer, I also ran across this verse 3 more times. I really felt like the Lord was laying it on my heart that this would be the next step in raising my little guys to be young men of God. It is time to make a stronger effort to impress the word of God into their teeny little hearts. It's time to toss that "terrible twos" concept out the window and focus on the "teachable twos". When is a better time to introduce ideas like patience, love, obedience, kindness and the like?

In order for a mama to make her child a better child she needs to first make herself a better mama. Instead of letting the boys be my alarm clock and waking me up between 7-7:30am, I am now setting a real alarm clock and getting out of bed at 5:30am to meet with the Lord and have quiet time before the boys get up. This gives me 1.5 to 2 hours to do my bible study, work out, eat breakfast, shower, have a cup of coffee or get things done with out the boys. When they get up, I am ready to greet them with a happy attitude and get started with the day. Let me tell you - mornings go a lot smoother around here now.

To get our new habits started on the right foot, I have found a couple of things on the internet that we can use to get ourselves on track. Mine is the Maximize your Morning challenge from Inspired to Action. It's a step by step month long challenge to get moms out of bed in the morning and get them ready to face the day. It gets them making (and reaching) goals and praying for their children. Sounds like exactly what I needed, huh? I've downloaded her free eBook and gotten started. Good stuff! For the kids we've decided to do something along the lines of Impress Your Kids' ABC Scriptures. It's exactly what it sounds like - a mix of the alphabet and scripture. You take the alphabet - one letter per week - and do a craft, scripture memorization and read books corresponding to that letter. Since David is so young we've tailored it down some. We do a very simple craft (mostly coloring), learn a Bible verse (I don't use a lot of hers from the website - I've found my own that fit our needs better) and a coloring page with our letter on it. For us it's not about memorizing the scripture. We're focusing more on exposing David to scripture and trying to teach him the concept behind it. We've been speeding it up somewhat too. We are doing a different letter about every 4 or 5 days.

We are really excited about the changes this is bringing to our family. I can't wait to share our new experiences with you guys! I'll be posting David's ABC scriptures later in different posts so you can see what we're working on.