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?

Rainy Weather

1. Rain is falling* all around,
   On the housetops, on the ground.
   Rain is falling on my nose,
   On my head and hands and toes.

We started off our study for the day with this painting project. We do a "one room school house" approach, meaning, we all study the same topic at the same time. Super educational and super easy! I just pulled out the guide from  our Montessori Bin Exchange, pulled out from the shelf the paint that was conveniently stored and kept with paint in it, in these reusable cups.  We are painting on paper that we are "reusing" as any good boy or girl scout would, "reduce, reuse, recycle." 

 Monkey Boy here is proud of his underground water pool.  

You can also enjoy Sweet boy's grass floating in the sky.  

This paper can absorb the large amounts of water my kids will inevitably put on it when they pain, unlike the butcher paper from the dollar store. The paper came from Costco, it is garbage to them because its just the paper the store uses in their toilet paper section to separate bags.  We just got it and told the lady at checkout it was just for a project. We love Costco because they always let us take boxes, cardboard and such. :)  

We, meaning the six of us, from my 2-year old, to my 9 year old nephew, were copying the Water Cycle that was nicely laminated and provided in our Montessori Bin Exchange.  You can see the finished product in the background.

Now, I know it's not the most beautiful painting, I mean it has green grass floating in the sky right next to the cloud. But, it got everyone interested in it, and because we were focused on the process, and not the final product, no body minded that Bluberries painted a family of six rainbow rabbits jumping higher than the clouds. Because we talked as we drew, everyone understands now that the water cycle starts with evaporation of ocean water produced by the Sun, which then condenses into a cloud, and then there is precipitation in the form of rain, snow, sleet, etc. They know these big words: "evaporation, condensation, precipitation, filtration." They have been hearing it in the car in three of our commutes from our Weather Youtube Playlist.  

And what determines if precipitation will be rain or snow?  I let them respond, but they got distracted. So I let them go. 

We took a break, had lunch, and they all played. while they played, I "finished" the painting. I think this is an important step because I am modeling finishing a project, and also making it more complete so that we can use it later. I went ahead and hanged it in our Montessori room for reference. 

After a while we went into the Montessori room and started our circle time. I hung the artwork on the wall.

What determines if precipitation will be rain, or snow? I asked this open question and referenced the painting on the wall, and listened to their answers. Because everyone had worked on it, everyone paid attention.

I sang, and they did their best to follow and sing a song I had never taught them, "rain is falling all around."  We sang it with rain, and with snow. I had them look at our painting and determine where it might snow, and where it might rain. Puma Tiger went to the window and said "look, snow would fall on the mountain tops, and rain down here!"  She made this connection to real life in her own. 

I set on the floor our model of the sun and the earth (also from our Montessori Bin Exchange , it's just a movable paper model), and gave each kid three cards with the months of the year. I told them they had to figure out where theirs was supposed to go. I grabbed the earth and started singing a song of the months of the year, while moving the earth around the sun.  They had to listen and put their month down in the right spot. I started at twelve o clock and moved clock wise. 

Then I took out the four books on the seasons, and had them pick one.  I had in mind to have them match the seasons to the months, but they got interested in reading so I fueled that. Puma Tiger chose summer because she loves to "swim in the lake," Bubbles picked Spring because she "loves flowers." They all read their books out loud at the same time, and then traded (I didn't even ask them to read or to trade, but they wanted to so they did it themselves). It was a bit noisy, but they were all engaged.

 This picture was taken at the request of Rooster boy to showcase the "Spring buddies" because they were both born in the spring. We had a great time.

Our scripture study often has to do with the subject of our academic study. They seem to get more out of the scripture and of academics when we relate it. I usually read it to them while they are all sitting down having breakfast.

"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?…