The Wise Man and the Foolish Man - Build your life on Christ

Sundays and the command to keep the Sabbath Day holy are such a great opportunity to be creative and have fun. I say a "great opportunity to be creative" because too often we focus only on the things we cannot do, that we forget about all the things we can do on Sunday.

Here's what we did for last week's Sunday activity: the reenactment of the wise man and the foolish man!  Mami Chula is the Sunday School teacher of the adults. We are studying the New Testament, and just reviewed the beatitudes. The new BibleVideos.org videos are just fabulous! I love that they follow the words of scripture word by word, and the production is just excellent. 

So for our Sunday family activity after dinner, I pulled out an empty fish tank that I just had sitting around, hauled a rock from the backyard, and pulled a couple houses I had bought at the craft store when they were on sale for ten cents.  The kids had a lot of fun playing in the water. I gave each of my three kids a house, and asked them where they would build. Last month when we talked about the weather, I had showed them on my phone, in our car commutes, a video about the wise man and the foolish man from YouTube. So they were familiar with the story. So when I asked them were to build, they remembered. Puma Tiger  said: "mine is going to be on the top of the rock!" and quickly took possession of the limited real estate on top.. Seeing this, Blueberries said in an even more excited voice "mine is going to be on the bottoooom!! because I want it to flooooood!!!" Hahaha, I had to laugh. She knew what would happen, and she wanted that fun of seeing her house inundated and floating around.  Aren't we like that sometimes? Crazy people!

"The wise man built his house upon the rock,

And the rains came tumbling down.

The rains came down, and the floods came up,

And the house on the rock stood still."

At the end, when because of the water the house would not stand, Blueberries did say she wanted her house to go on the rock. Just for a change I guess :)  But before putting it on, I told her there was only one way to go from the flood to the rock.... "what is it?" I asked. Sometimes I ask questions even thought I know they don't know the answear so that they pay lots of attention. They love knowing the answear, so when they don't and I ask, they will often give me a good guess, or they'll just listen for about three seconds in anticipation. That is when the answear has to be something I want to stick in their brain.

Something, easy, simple, clear. So I just said "a-rre-pen-ti-mien-to!"  That is "repentance"  I had her say it one or two times, which she did delighted with an extra triple rolling of the arrrrrrrepentimiento   (it took her a while to be able to roll her rrrs, so she will take every chance to show off!).  Then I simply explained "repentance is when we come to Christ. HE is the Rock. HE always wants us to come to him, to move our house over and live His way, the best way."

Papi Chulo and I have decided that besides going to Church and having family dinner, on Sundays we want to be proactive in giving ourselves opportunities to bond together as a family, learn the doctrine of Christ, and come closer to our Heavenly Father, through family activities. We prepare a bit, but most of the time, we just look for connections to gospel principles on activities. We have been doing this for about a year now, and we LOVE IT! The memories, and the learning, are just so worth it!

What do you do to come closer to God on Sundays?

My Heavenly Father Loves Me - the Human Body

This month we are studying anatomy. This past week the kids loved all our activities to learn about the human body. This post compiles about five days of last week's learning.



We started our circle times by singing "My Heavenly Father Loves Me."It was me singing, really, while they tried to keep up. We acted out each of the references to touching the rouses, looking at the butterflies, smelling the lilac tree.



We took this picture a few weeks ago when we were studying weather and rain, and made the connection to plants needing minerals and water to grow. These are the roses my sister got for getting her second degree blackbelt, or maybe they are the roses my sister gifted my mom. In any degree, they were an impromptu connection to weather. They were so tempting, just sitting there on the table, so beautiful and fragrant, while we studied weather, so we had to talk about mud, and plant nutrition. Puma tiger told me after enjoying so greatly the sweet smell of the roses: "oh they are so sweeet! Did you put oil in it?"  They are so used to the smells of Young Living Essential Oils! they love them! So I went and got my almost empty rose oil bottle, and had her compare. We were all basking in the beautiful smell!  Blueberries said "it smells like love!"  And the scent of the roses gave my little Sweet Boy the biggest satisfaction! you could just see it on his radiant smile. I love Young Living! And so I explained to them how YL essential oils are distilled from the plants.  I love nature, and the oils, the roses, the scents, help me feel connected to the love of my Creator.



I played this video from YouTube "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" in the car on my phone as we go places. This is a beautiful rendition by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, with great pictures.







"Whenever I hear the song of a bird, or look at the blue blue sky."  We have been paying attention to the sounds that come from outside. I also got a little chirping bird at the local good will store, and they just love their little "pet."  The recorded voice of the chirping bird just makes them smile!



"He gave me my eyes that I might see the color of butterfly wings,"  This gradient color activity, where the child is to observe ever so closely the different shades and put them in order, is meant to challenge their vision and help them develop great attention to detail.  I didn't take pictures, but they had so much fun playing with a giant plastic monarch butterfly that I got at a yardsale for like $.25 cents.







Oh and it was sunny one day, and snowy the next. Sweet boy enjoys these changes a lot!

"Whenever I touch a velvet rose" ... this is an activity designed to help sharpen the sense of touch. There is a matching pair of balloons that feel the same because they are filled by the same thing.  So the challenge is to find the matches by the sense of touch. A pair has rise, another sand, yet another flour, and the last has beans.







This is a "sensory bin" with the only purpose of giving the child a sensory experience. Here we have red beans representing red blood cells, and garbanzo beans, representing white blood cells. We also have brains, guts, eyes, liver and other organs floating around, to represent how the blood carries nutrients and carries away toxins from these places. Blueberries and I played a game, after I explained to her that white blood cells are the fighters that keep our bodies healthy and fight off infections and other pathogens. She got another activity, the colored pompoms, and told me I was the germs, and she was going to fight me off as i tried to get into her "blood stream," meaning, as I tried to get the pompoms into her container.  It was fun! And Puma Tiger and Sweet Boy joined in the fun.







"He gave me my life."  We traced their own bodies on paper, cutting it and pasting it for room decoration.  Blueberries drew the lungs with the bonchiles as little dots, while Puma Tiger, being the fasionista she is, drew in fun styles of clothes.

 

That whole day Blueberries would use the name of the organs of bones to communicate what was happening to her.  She would say things like: "I bumped my spine on the couch" or "Sweet Boy hit my lungs!"



Sweet boy had fun just posing for it. After I hung his silhouette on the wall he came and said: "oh! una rana!" (look, a frog!), then he laughed and corrected: "no es una rana, es yo!"  ("It's not a frog, it is I").



During our Chinese lesson we colored, cut and practice saying each of the parts of the body, complete with signing the song Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.



"He gave me coordination, focus, and ability to create"....well that's not part of the song, but it's true :)  Each of them  cut their won shapes. It took Puma Tiger about three sessions to finish cutting hers, but it was a great exercise on focus, perseverance, fine motor skills and cutting, all which are important skills for learning preparedness! She was so proud to finish it off and post it on the wall!

We have also been creating our own Montessori addition board. I wish I had so many Montessori materials, but instead of just wishing, we will make them!

 "He gave me my ears that i might hear thr magical sound of things."  Sweet boy here performing a number.



"He gave me my heart"  Here's a heart we made. We started with this organ.  This was made with a hand sanitizer pump, left over oxygen plastic line , tape and a hot gun  (I simply created a circuit with the  oxygen line, hooked to the spout on one end, and perforated the container near the top to insert the other end of the line, then I sealed it with the hot gun, and added tape on top).

 We all enjoy listening to each other's hearts, and pumping to the rhythm on the heart pump. We went around and figured out who had the fastest beat, baby, and who had the slowest, me.







We also read from a beginner reader book on the heart.  For our reading we also worked on phonics and the parts of the body. Here we are making a game with a movable alphabet and phonics "ir, ee, ai, oy"

 "Of all His creations of which I'm a part, YES! I know Heavenly Father loves me!!! "   Here blueberries is ecstatic as she has finished weaving by herself her very own first bracelet, and is showcasing her setup for the second. The same day she made a necklace, paying special attention to making it symmetric, with a center and matching sides. This activity made her work on her fine motor skills, patterning, and focus. It is a "practical life" activity, because she is honing concentration and coordination skills needed for life.

Caring for the body, this is our "weather" and "anatomy" connection, dressing for success!

This is our French Class picture. You can see more about that class in another post for another day.

YES I KNOW HEAVENLY FATHER LOVES ME!

Identifying cumulus, cirrus, stratus clouds. Clouds give us protection and guidance.

I never thought my preschool children could learn the scientific names of clouds, but the Montessori method has done it again! Annieli prepared for our weather month activities in her bin for our Montessori Bin Exchange. I set it all up, and my kids did not really care to pick it up.

They did like this fine motor activity. Holding a dropper helps practice the correct hold for a pencil.

This fun activity is done from left to right to prepare for reading, and top to bottom. I demonstrated a bit, and Blueberries really got into it.

But, one day I stood by the window and asked Puma Tigger "Hey, look what do you think is going on in the sky?"  We had the three part cards on the clouds right there, so I then said: "look which one of these pictures is a match to our sky today?" we then pulled out the laminated guide to the sky from national geographic, and read about stratus clouds.

Puma Tiger had some idea because she had watched "Rainy Weather" from Rachel and the TreeSchoolers. She loves it! And this is the best learning videos out there. You can find them at the website of Two Little Hand Productions.  I loved these videos so much, I lent them to the Weather bin for other kids to enjoy.

But as we started that day, I myself did not know a thing about clouds as we were going. But we had all the materials right there thanks to Anniele's work. So we learned and discovered together! And this is what we learned.

We ended up learning a lot about the clouds. There are basically three kinds: cirrus, stratus, and cumulus. The rest are combinations of these.

We looked out and saw this. What type of clouds are these? STReachty clouds, that is STRatus, the kind that are a huge stretchy stretch of low clouds, the kind that give us precipitation. Memory aid: stratus starts with STR just like stretchy.

When the clouds acCUMULate they are CUMULUS.

 If they aCUMUlate and also STReach out, they are STRatus CUMULus, like in the following picture.

'

Or this one. Stratus cumulus look like rows of puffy clouds that stretch out in the sky.  Puffy clouds give the "cumulus" and the strechy length give the "stratus" part of the name, hence stratus cumulus. This one is a more impressive example:

When it is puffy, but it seems to go up in a castle-like form, it's called Nimbus.

We remember "cirrus" clouds because it sounds like "zero," zero chances for rain, because the clouds are so high, so wispy and light, not heavy, like a zero that carries nothing.  They tell us we will have nice warm weather, perfect for flying a kyte. 

The Provo LDS temple architecture is inspired in the Biblical story of Jeahova guiding and providing protection for his people with a cloud. A pillar of fire by night, and a cloud for shade and guidance by day. I honestly believe that through the power of the Creator our family relationships can be good, bright and lovely for the duration of our lives, and also that they can last beyond this life.  I love looking at the sky, at clouds, at the starts, and contemplate in amazed wonder the beauties of nature and the miracle of life. Nature awakens awe in my soul, and it inspires me. I believe the Almighty Creator has the ability to guide me individually, and each of the members of my family individually, so that we can find Him and each other during, and after, this life. He can guide us, just like He guided the Israelites on the cloud.

We love the temple. Whenever we drive past it we sing "I love to see the temple." Sometimes I forget, but my kids remember! I started this tradition after my mother, who would do this when I was a little girl. I want my children to know that with God our family can be strong and it can last. Click on the image to listen to a Children's choir sing this beautiful song.  A picture of each child in front of the temple hangs in their room, as counseled by president Monson. I didn't think my kids noticed or cared for the picture, because they never mentioned it. But one day one picture frame fell off the wall and I took it away. That very night my Blueberries noticed and asked "mami, donde estoy?"  "Mom, where am I?" I didn't quite understand, so I asked her what she meant and she said: "mira, ya no esta mi foto!"  "Look, my picture is missing."  So they do notice!  I am glad they like to see themselves with the temple.  

 The base of the building looks like a nice puffy cumulus cloud, don't you think?  It was inspired on one after all. 

Click on this cloud to watch the video of the Israelites and how Jesus guided them with a cloud.