I've decided to come back! And what better way to start than a couple pictures from Mother's Day, a day I never thought I would get to celebrate. Six years ago, I didn't think it was possible. I didn't think the in vitro cycle would work. I thought I would never experience pregnancy, motherhood, the joys, fears, and love. And now...
Look at my girl! She is 5! Five whole big years old. It is crazy how time flies.
I chose for our family to go to Mary Poppins at Theatre Cedar Rapids. Wow! What a show! I have been there for 3 different shows, now, and they have all been awesome. This was certainly no exception. Mary Poppins was Aria's first show at TCR and she really loved it, too. I know I see a play or two in her future. It was a great day!
I heard about the Easter Un-Basket from a friend too late in 2013 to make it happen for Easter then, so I wrote myself a note about what I wanted to do in 2014. I also researched it on the Internet and fell even more in love with the idea.
I have always thought there needs to be a bigger celebration at Easter, but I haven't quite figured out what it should be. I've always wondered about Easter egg hunts and Easter baskets. I am definitely not a fan of the Easter bunny. I have a desire to give presents at Easter because it is a time of great celebration, but I also want it to have meaning.
The Easter Un-Basket fixes some of that for me. Some may call it the un-Easter basket, but I don't like that. I don't want any kind of "un" in front of Easter. Here is how we did it.
On Good Friday, we went outside and gathered 5 rocks each. Aria chose the number we gathered. Then we sat on our deck and thought of sins we struggle with and wrote them on our rocks. Aria thought of and wrote her own on her rocks. She was incredibly thoughtful in listing things she really does struggle with instead of random things she knows are wrong, but rarely ever does. It was another sign to me that her faith is real. We talked about how rocks are heavy and sins weigh us down. We then put all of our sins in a basket and covered them with a red cloth to represent Jesus' blood. We left them in the middle of our kitchen table for the weekend, right next to Aria's white rose.
On Saturday night after Aria went to bed, we transformed the setting. When we were originally discussing how we wanted to do this activity, Justin and I wanted the basket to be about all of us because Jesus died for all of us. He takes away all of our sins. While we didn't really want to give each other presents, we didn't want Aria to be the only one with blessings in the basket instead of sins. Note to self, start thinking of blessing ideas and shopping for them sooner than Good Friday next year.
On Sunday morning, here was our table:
On the left is the empty tomb where Jesus' body was placed. In the middle is a new basket with Jesus' name on it and inside are all of our sins, covered with a white cloth. On the right is the original basket with our names on it and special blessings for each of us. One of Aria's blessings was a hula hoop, which is what is around the baskets. Attached to the hula hoop is Romans 8:38-39 where it states that nothing can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus. Just like a circle has no end, God's love for us has no end. Aria also got a cross necklace which we purchased to remember her giving her heart to Jesus. The little card the necklace came on actually said, "My heart belongs to Jesus." Aria got an Adventures in Odyssey cd, which are stories that are practical examples for kids to live out their faith. We also gave her a water bottle with the verse from John about Jesus being the living water inside of us. Justin got a new water bottle, too. There is a colorful plaque that has Philippians 4:8 on it, which is one of our family verses this year. And Justin and I both got books to help us grow our faith.
Our theme was to put things in the basket that either symbolized our faith or would help us grow in our faith. Of course it is really easy to find things for Aria, but it was a bit more tricky for mom and dad. After doing the basket and trying to think deeper about the meaning this year, hopefully we will have better ideas in the future. I don't want to buy stuff just to buy stuff, but I want to help us all think about how Jesus suffered severely on the cross so we could have the life we do today. The symbolism was powerful. Aria was equally amazed that all of our sins were in Jesus' basket as she was with the blessings that were in ours. Our sins were just gone and we did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Amazing! It gives me the chills to think about it.
Back in March I came up with a plan for my own version of Resurrection Eggs to help Aria grasp the meaning of Easter more clearly. I made my plan similar to what we did last year. I wanted to tell more than the Easter story; to focus on Jesus' life on earth. My goal was to help Aria understand her Savior beyond His death. After completing all of our reading and activities, I think Aria has a good four year old grasp of who Jesus is. She understands a little about Jesus' time on earth and what he did while he was here. We read the Bible so often that she knows so many of the stories very well. So note to self, next year I want to go back to focusing on the story of Jesus' death and resurrection around Easter. We can go into more detail and deepen her specific knowledge of those weeks.
Back to this year. I came up with 20 eggs. Each egg had a Bible verse and an object clue. We started with Jesus' birth and ended with the Holy Spirit coming. My goal was to read from the Bible every day and do some sort of craft or activity to connect to what we read. Aria loves doing crafts and they are great physical reminders of what she learned. She also loves to act things out, which definitely helps plant the story in her mind.
One thing that came of our eggs this year was Aria learning how to read verse references. We talked about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being the Gospel and the books that tell about Jesus' life. She learned how to read the number references for the chapter and verse, too. We read the verses from my Bible every day. Sometimes we read the story from one of her storybook Bibles, too. Here is my list:
1. John 3:16 and the story of Jesus' birth. We made a star like the one over Bethlehem when Jesus was born.
2. Luke 2:49. The story of Jesus as a boy in the temple. We built a temple out of toothpicks and marshmallows.
3. Matthew 3:16-17. Jesus' baptism. We made stick people Jesus and John and acted out the baptism with some gold glitter and a dove.
4. Matthew 4:19. Jesus calls his disciples. We made 12 notes for friends and family to tell them Jesus loves them like the disciples did.
5. Matthew 6:9-13. Jesus teaches how to pray. My goal was to learn the Lord's prayer, but Aria was not interested so it didn't stick.
6. John 9:11. Jesus heals a blind man. We acted it out like this:
7. Mark 11:7-10. Palm Sunday. We made palm branches and acted out Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem.
8. Matthew 26:14-16. Judas agrees to betray Jesus. My original idea was to find a place to give our money to do the opposite of what Judas did when he accepted money to betray Jesus, but we ended up not doing that. I think we had a busy day and we just read the verses.
9. John 13:6-9. Jesus washes his disciples feet. We washed each other's feet.
10. Exodus 12:12-14. The story of the Passover in the time of Moses. I included this to help Aria connect what Jesus was celebrating with the disciples and the same sacrifice He made as the lamb was used for in the time of Moses. Aria really likes the story of the plagues and knows it well. I think she somewhat grasped the connection to Jesus, but it is definitely an idea to explore further. We made a cotton ball sheep because they sacrificed a lamb and because Jesus is the Lamb of God.
11. Luke 22:14-20. The Last Supper. Of course, this is the day that Aria told us she asked Jesus to live in her heart! We ended up not baking bread together like I originally planned because we were celebrating Aria's faith!
12. Luke 23:46. Good Friday. Jesus died on the cross. We did an Easter unbasket this year. I will post more about it later, but we wrote our sins on rocks and placed them in our basket. I was amazed at Aria's sincerity with this activity. She wrote sins she really struggles with. It was wonderful symbolism.
13. Mark 15:42-47. Jesus' body was placed in a tomb. We wrapped up our Jesus stick person in cloth and placed him in the garden tomb we made and closed it up.
14. Matthew 28:5-6. Easter Sunday. Jesus is alive! We made Resurrection rolls. We discovered Jesus was not in the tomb. We found all of our "sins" in Jesus' basket and blessings in our basket. It was a great day!
15. John 20:10-18. Mary sees Jesus near the tomb. We planted some flowers as a sign of new life.
16. John 20:24-31. Thomas doubts that Jesus is real. We made holes we could put our fingers in like Thomas did to Jesus, only ours weren't in our skin.
17. John 21:4-6. Jesus eats fish with the disciples. We ate some goldfish, too. We were going to make a fish craft, but didn't have time.
18. Matthew 28:19-20. The Great Commission. We put stars on a world map of places where we donate money to help others learn about Jesus.
19. Acts 1:7-11. Jesus is taken to Heaven. I found a really cool craft where you use a plastic cup and a piece of yarn to pull Jesus up into the clouds. I didn't take a picture, but it turned out really cool!
20. Acts 2:1-4. The Holy Spirit comes as flames on the disciples' heads. We made a picture of 11 faces to represent the disciples and tissue paper fire on their heads.
Now this is an activity that has drawn much excitement each time we have done it. As a part of our Resurrection Eggs, we read the story of Jesus washing His disciples' feet and then took turns doing it for each other. I really think Aria enjoys both parts. I tried to get her to wait for Daddy to get home so he could be a part of it, but she really wanted to do it right away. Maybe Daddy's feet are too stinky. :)
I am a firm believer that stories from the Bible sink in much farther when we act them out. It gives us an event to connect to and real feelings to remember. I don't think we can reproduce the magnitude of the situation when Jesus washed His disciples' feet, but we will continue to act it out and try to understand.
"If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another's feet." John 13:14
We made a Resurrection Garden again this year, but it didn't quite have the same effect as last year. We had a good time making it, especially since Daddy got to help, but Aria's interest wasn't the same as last year.
After we made it, Aria was not interested in spraying it with water every day, which surprised me. I do love the symbolism. We used it on Good Friday through Easter Sunday to place Jesus in the tomb and then find him not there. I think it really adds to the joy and amazement when you can physically look in a "tomb" and find Jesus not there. We didn't have very much grass grow on it this year, which may have added to the lack of interest. Or maybe we just didn't plant it soon enough because she has been more excited about it lately with the grass growing. I might have to look for an alternative visual for next year. Sometimes I get stuck on "traditions" and maybe a new perspective will help us grow more.
Last year, as I was slightly dissatisfied with our Advent activities, I came up with the idea of doing an A to Z for Advent this year. So I compiled notes throughout the year and looked over things I've done in the past and put together this year's Advent activities, or Jesus crafts as Aria calls them. I called it, "Christmas is Jesus A to Z." I don't claim to be any kind of expert and I don't plan to publish what we did, but what we did worked for us. I think Aria had fun and learned more about Jesus and it kept our focus on Him this Christmas season. I couldn't ask for much more.
After changing my mind a zillion times about what word to use for each letter and what order I wanted to go in, I made a chart for Aria to glue up the alphabet cards as we did them. Here is what our completed chart looks like:
We didn't go in alphabet order, but I tried to have kind of a through the Bible order. Here is what we did:
B is for Beginning. We read the Creation story and talked about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit being the only ones there at the beginning. She really got it. We made this craft, which is supposed to be the Trinity up above that created the earth below.
S is for Sin. We read the story of Adam and Eve and talked about sin entering the world. We talked about needing a Rescuer at that point. We made a snake out of pipe cleaners, which will be in a picture shortly.
O is for Old Testament. We looked through the Bible and discerned what part was the Old Testament and what part was the new testament. I made a "book" out of a box and Aria glued pictures of Old Testament stories on the OT side of the box.
D is for David. Instead of reading David and Goliath that she was familiar with, we focused on David being king and from Bethlehem. She got the connection there. Aria made a harp out of craft sticks and rubber bands. Here is a picture of those three things:
I is for Isaiah. We read about Isaiah's job as a prophet, to tell people that they needed a Rescuer and that He was coming soon. She enjoyed the connection of the Scripture that prophesies about Jesus. We made a megaphone to show that Isaiah told lots of people about Jesus coming.
R is for Rescuer. We looked back at the story of Isaiah (in the Jesus Storybook Bible) and talked about why Jesus was coming to rescue us. We played a game where we used Aria's swimming tube with a rope tied around it and "rescued" her dolls and her when they needed help in the "water." I think it was a good connection point.
X is for eXcited. There is a good story in the Jesus Storybook Bible about getting ready for the Messiah to come. We read that and talked about other things we were excited for.
This is a good time to mention that some of these took 30 minutes and some of them might have only taken 5. It depended on our time for the day. We also did some days with two letters.
N is for New Testament. This was essentially the same as the OT craft. We looked through the New Testament stories and Aria glued pictures of them on the NT side of the book. I was blown away that she immediately recognized the picture of Saul/Paul. She really knows a lot of Bible stories!
Now we move into the actual Christmas story. I didn't plan for it to turn out like this, but we ended up making puppets for each of the characters of the story. We did many, many, many puppet shows with them throughout those two weeks. It totally boosted her knowledge of the Christmas story. A video is coming...
Z is for Zechariah. Aria enjoyed being this puppet when he could no longer talk!
E is for Elizabeth. We used a puff ball for her baby and Aria had fun making the baby leap when Mary came to visit.
A is for Angel. This was my favorite puppet with a gold sparkly dress and white feather wings. We counted, angels appear in the Christmas story 7 times.
M is for Mary. Jesus' mom on earth. Enough said.
J is for Joseph. Jesus' earthly father.
T is for Trip. We looked at a map of Nazareth to Bethlehem and talked about how far it was. It is about the distance from where we live to my hometown, so that was an easy way to explain it to Aria. And of course we did puppet shows.
K is for King. I struggled with not doing J is for Jesus, but decided I needed Joseph in the story and we could talk about Jesus as the King of Kings. We made a baby Jesus puppet with a crown. We talked about leaving Heaven and becoming poor.
Here is our puppet show from our Christmas celebration as a family of three using all the above characters (warning: quite long):
U is for Under the star. This was for the star the shepherds saw above Bethlehem when Jesus was born. We made a big, shiny star.
L is for Light of the world. We added a little key chain light to the tail of our star and hung it above our nativity scene and shined it on Jesus. We also started learning John 8:12, "Jesus said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."
It is kind of hard to see the light at the bottom and I will explain the cross in a minute, but this was a hit addition to our nativity this year.
P is for Pray. Now we moved into Jesus' time on earth and our relationship with Him. He taught us how to pray. We spent some time praying.
Q is for Quote. Another way we can talk to Jesus is to read the Bible and memorize the verses. We continued practicing our new verse and reviewed several of the ones we already know.
W is for Worship. We talked about how it feels good to get compliments and that God wants us to praise Him. We talked about what we could praise Him for and then we sang worship songs. This was a day where I was struggling with some stress and it felt so good to worship my King and give it all to Him. Amazing how God works in our lives.
F is for Friends. Jesus wants us to love God and love others (that is our preschool verse). So, we loved on a few of Aria's friends and made them some homemade play doh and delivered it as Christmas presents.
C is for Cross. The whole reason Jesus came to earth as a baby at Christmastime was to die on the cross for our sins. I hit this hard this year and I think Aria understood. We made a cross and used alpha beads to put Jesus' name on it. When we were trying to find a place for it, we thought of attaching it to the star above the nativity to remember that was why He came. (See star picture)
V is for Victory. We read the story of Jesus' resurrection and talked about how he won over death. We had to explain what victory was by comparing it to playing a game and winning. We did this letter on the same day as...
H is for Heaven. We read the Jesus Storybook Bible story of Revelation and John's description of Heaven. Then we drew pictures of what we thought Heaven would look like. We talked about going there someday. This was done as a family and was really fun!
Y is for You. We reviewed all the things we did for these A to Z activities and read the very last part of the JSB where it says that "it is your story, too." We talked about how much Jesus loves each of us and did all of those things in the Bible because of His love for us.
G is for Give. This was our family of three Christmas celebration day. We incorporated this into our celebration which included a puppet show, opening a present from God that was baby Jesus and a cross, and picking out presents for Jesus from the Samaritan's Purse catalog. We also give each other three gifts at Christmas, which match the wise men gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And that is the end of our "Christmas is Jesus A to Z." It was excellent for where we were at this year. I would totally do it all again, but then again I never do the exact same thing when it comes to special learning and activities.
Our church doesn't have a full fledged, put on the Christmas story, Christmas program. Instead they just turn the monthly Family Experience night into a birthday party for Jesus. There is a program with cute little kids singing and of course that is right up my cute little kid's alley. Last year she got to dress as an angel and sing a few songs with just the rest of the two-year-old class. To be honest, I was kind of dreading this year's performance because last year they grouped age three through second grade all together for singing and it was just very chaotic. However, it was much more organized and well done this year.
There was a sketch that went on throughout the program that included the songs by the little ones. The twos sang by themselves, then the threes and fours sang by themselves, and then the school aged kids joined them for a few more songs. And the sketch went on between each of the different groups. It isn't very formal, but the kids have a blast!
Of course Aria just loves the songs with all the actions and she loves that the Turn It Up group comes to her Children's Church class to teach them the songs.
After the singing was over, there was a cake and Bingo to complete the birthday party for Jesus. It was a fun night and Aria was so blessed that all 4 of her grandparents were there to watch her!
Aria sang 4 songs, but I am not going to put them all on here. It would take forever! Here is what I thought was the cutest one!
