The Widow shares her food with Elijah (and gets her hair pulled)

We read the story of Elijah getting food from the widow today. When she shared her limited supply of oil and flour, she never ran out! Alyse enjoyed acting out the story and scooping the "oil." Of course, she never tires of playing in the water. Knox enjoyed playing in the water as well.

Gideon

Today we read the story of Gideon. This is one of my favorite stories because it is so fun to see how God makes such a point of shrinking God's army until the Israelite win could only be attributed to God's power. I often think of this when circumstances seem impossible. If God chooses to change things then, it will be so obviously his power. After all, we are here for His glory. I had also forgotten that God had put fear in the hearts of the Midionites even before Gideon ever showed up to fight. One of the Midionites had a strange dream, and another one interpreted it saying "that means God has delivered us into the hands of the Israelites." Oh how we forget that God is always working to fulfill his purpose-- he is not limited.

We made trumpets and dropped Legos on the tile to make the sound of breaking jars. I guess it was loud enough because it scared Knox and he started crying. We also retold the story using a dry erase board. We covered it in stick figures to represent the Israelite army. Then, we erased portions of the army men as God made cuts in the army. It really helped visualize what God was doing. I guess this could also be done with a bunch of blocks or actual army men if you have any.

New Name to the Blog

Today we changed the name of the blog-- for a few reasons. One, since we are in the process of changing the name of our first book from Bible Buckaroos to Fingers and Feet: Helping Your Young Ones Interact With God's Word. Therefore of course the title of the blog wouldn't make since any more. In addition, I hope to do more posting now and create more of a resource for parents to find and share tools to teach their young children God's word. The blog title Full Hands and Ready Feet somehow emotionally resonates to this mother of 3 small ones. I am sure many of you know the feeling-- you have so many desires and dreams of things you will do with and for your children (ready feet.) However, very often the daily tasks not only take precedence, but nearly obliterate well intentions (full hands.) There is little time for pro-active parenting, and even less time for planning it. I hope we can get ideas from each other. For the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Being a Godly Girly Girl

Over Christmas I have been very interested to watch as my 4 year old Alyse is growing into such a girl. Since she is my only daughter, watching this is new. Of course she has always loved princesses and pretty things. All things pink and frilly. But I have been noticing more. For example, if we are at a playground or ballgame and she "makes a friend" with girls, she almost cannot hear anything else. Those girls are gold, and what they say is true to her. Another example happened a couple of weeks ago when Garden Ridge Pottery had all their books on sale for $1. I told each of the kids they could pick out a book. Alyse first picked up anything small. Most of these books were things like "a guide to winetasting" or "fung shua???" Any of the general kids books were not appealing to her eye. We finally settled on what is probably a tween book, since luckily she is unable to read and she said she wants to write in it. The book was black and hot pink and very "girly." These events, along with the fact that all she wanted for Christmas was make-up has really got me pondering, how can I train her to not just be girly, but to be Godly too?

We have been having such a fun time trying to do Bible stories during bath time. In fact, my 6 year old son, whom I no longer bath, now wants me to bath him so he can experience the story as well. It is working out well, but I'm not sure I should photo the bath time Bible stories :)

Scripture Memory

I have been enjoying watching/listening to the kids learning Psalm 121. Hubby ordered cute little memory verse cards titled "foundational verses" from desiringgod.org It has a bunch of cards with one verse each. On the other side is a picture to help cue you as to what the verse is. I have been so surprised at how well they are learning the verses. I think it would be fun for Von and Alyse to recite them for groups of extended family during the holidays. I want them to practice "public speaking" so they aren't as terrified as I am. We could kill two birds with one stone...

Bible in the Bath

I recently heard an idea that sounded fun. Why not teach the kids Bible truths while taking a bath? Bathtime is already regularly scheduled, what a great idea to use that time as an informal teaching time. I like scheduling a formal "Bible Time" but also having a chance to talk about the Lord throughout our day. I tried it the other day. I just started off by telling Alyse, "did you know the earth used to be all covered in water like this tub?" She looked up at me with surprise (even though she has heard the story of creation.) Because it was such a part of our normal conversation, I think it had a different affect. I was surprised how many illustrations we found while taking a bath. Talking about breathing under water before God created the air, trying to swim everywhere before God created land, etc. Of course the natural flow of conversation shows how smart God was to create the air and the land before he created the animals and people. Very cool.