Teaching & Believing

For guidance and encouragement, perhaps more for me than the children, I’ve decided that the best way to embark on our summer adventures was by reviewing our goals, hopes, and rules in prayer. If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re a family of faith and we live our faith. If this offends anyone, I am not one to apologize for my beliefs, but rather to encourage you to understand that it is only out of love that I do it. Those who know me, I’m that one person who has a passion for lively discussion on the two most avoided topics – politics and religion. This means that I actually enjoy hearing the other side of the argument as long as it’s backed up with some evidence and logic rather than unreasonable, hypothetical, angry outbursts and as long as you’re willing to also keep an open mind and consider and listen to the evidence that the bible presents. That being said I’m open to lively discussions as long as it’s kept respectful and non-offensive to anyone of any chosen religion, and does not pose judgment onto others. As for politics, I’ll try my best to keep things as non-political as possible for this blog’s sake, but it’s my nature so don’t be surprised if you see it every so often. Same rules apply – please always be considerate of others.

Now that that’s said, the kids and I reviewed some family rules that we had done as a project a while back. We have a more generic “Family Rules” canvas in our family room that we purchased at Home Goods, but this one is our personalized one. If you’d like to make something similar here’s how it’s done.

Materials:

• Canvas (You can make yours as large or as small as you want, we had a lot of rules so ours had to be a bit larger)
• 2+ different papers (We used recycled paper bags for printing and wrapping paper for the background… or you can always just paint the background and handwrite your family rules. Printing them out was just a lot easier for me)
• Glue stick

Instructions

Glue or paint a background on your canvas and let dry. Meanwhile discuss and decide with your spouse what family rules are important to you. Type up the rules in a word document using different fonts, sizes, and/or colors and print on the paper of your choice and glue them onto the canvas. You can also freehand or stencil your rules onto the canvas.  Don’t forget to title your canvas and finish with any decorative touches of your choice. Most importantly sit as a family and discuss all the rules and make sure that everyone understand them and ask if there are any questions. Go ahead and hang it up proud!

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A new project we worked on was making scripture cards to learn with the kiddos. Why? For many reasons and among them being found in Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 which calls us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. Memorize His laws and tell them to your children over and over again. Talk about them all the time. Whether you’re at home or walking along the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning.”

So I came across these great ready-to-print ABC scripture cards that will work perfectly with our ABC themed summer. This is just a wonderful tool, not just for the kids, but also for me! I’ve tried to memorize verses and although I have just a few memorized, this is a nice way that we can work on them together. Not to mention that this is simply a nice way to start the mornings. I personally struggle with doing my morning quiet time, which is a morning devotional time with Christ, and this is a nice reminder to hold me accountable.

It’s such a good resource that we’ve already used it 3 times today in resolving problems and disciplining. I even heard my son referring to it when talking to his sister… “God doesn’t like that Gabby, he says don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you!” …. Not only was the seed planted, but man did it sprout quickly!!