AWANAS

We had another new clubber! It is so great to see new kids joining in and having fun while learning about God. Unfortunately, this flu epidemic has really taking it's toll. We only had eight children show up last night and we were also short on teachers due to illness. In other news, I have been teaching a few girls how to knit. I love knitting and now so do they! I gave the three girls a decorated canvas purse with a ball of yarn and knitting needles to get them started (all out of my yarn stash). They're really excited! I don't remember being very excited in the beginning of learning how to knit but I was definitely excited when I finished my first scarf. And I was even more excited when my sweet Mother wore my (ugly) scarf! That's all for now.

In the belly of a whale eating Christmas cookies!

What a strange and terrifying phrase! But that's what EL thought of when I described the day ahead of us!

On Friday we read the story of Jonah. I love Jonah's story but I have to say that the children's story book kind of made it sound...happier...at the end than the real story. I think it's important to be accurate so when we reached the end and the story told us that Jonah was very happy, I went...no.

Jonah was not happy. In fact he was pretty peeved at God. The Bible says that he several times mentioned wanting to die! Wow Jonah...the guy has some issues. I think that Jonah's lack of understanding in the end is one of the main reasons that we can learn from Jonah. He knew God would spare Ninevah but was still angry when he did. He didn't think anyone but he and his people deserved to hear the word of God! Does that sound familiar? Often we ourselves are found thinking who does and doesn't deserve Jesus and that is wrong. Because none of us deserve Jesus and that's what makes the Gospel so great!
EL and I discussed how we could learn from Jonah's mistake. Who should we tell God's message to? Everyone! Some of the main points were:
God saved Jonah and God saved me.
God is everywhere.
God's word is for everyone.

To add to the list of things EL does not like: Art! He hates it! Or so he says... So when I brought out our 'Jonah in the belly of a whale' craft, it was with great reluctance that he participated. I encouraged him to color the paper whale however he liked and he opened up saying that he didn't think he was 'good' at art! Not good at art??? That's what they told Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock! And that's what they tell kids who don't color the sky blue or stay within the lines. So to his horror and my amusement I began to color my whale purple. That's right. Purple. So he followed suit by grabbing a bunch of crayons and coloring his with a smorgasborg of colors. "I still don't like art." he says, but I think we're getting somewhere.
I understand that schools teach accuracy, following directions and more by making kids color properly and stay in the lines. But when it's being used for a Bible lesson, I'm not too concerned if their whale isn't gray/blue. I'm more concerned with making sure they understand the story. In my opinion, if a child is having fun then let them! If they tell you that the blob on the paper is their Mommy, do not question it! If their sky is green and their grass is red then praise them for being creative! Don't berate them for being inaccurate.

One thing EL DOES like is cooking! It's funny because he rarely eats what he cooks. So today when we made Christmas cookies he really had no interest in the eating part. In fact, he thought it was too messy. But he brought out the cookie cutters anyway and began really getting into making shapes. This is where my mistake came in. Anyone who has ever made cookies has most likely made the mistake of making them too thick...
EL was devastated when I pulled out all his hard cookie cutter work from the oven to reveal one giant pan shaped cookie. But I informed him that if we were quick...we could fix this! While the cookies were still soft we pressed the cutters back into them and removed the scraps from around them. Now we had shaped cookies! We ate the scraps as a reward for our quick thinking.

After our cookies we had luch and watched the Veggie Tales Jonah movie. I absolutely love Veggie Tales and if you haven't seen it, I reccomend it for every parent in the world!

Some of the things I love about the Veggie Tales Jonah:
It's Veggie Tales, which means it's going to appeal to everyone who loves the Bible, songs, and great humor.
It gave new light to a story that I honestly, until seeing veggie tales, had not thought of before. It's not often that a cucumber gives a new perspective to a Bible story...
The funnies were hilarious! But the serious parts were still treated with respect.
The music is adorable and impossible to get out of your head
They ended the story just like in the Bible, on a sad note.
Kahlil!! "I am a caterpillar. Actually that is only half-true. My mother was a caterpillar, my father was a worm...but I am okay with that now." So cute!

And finally we played beyblade. Is it bad that I'm actually learning more about it and understand the tv concept? Probably. Is it even worse that I've started encouraging my little spin top throughout the battle? Most definitely. Ah well. It can't be helped...

AWANAS, Children's Choir, and Youth

Today we had the Children's musical at my church. One of the girls had a solo that she was having a little trouble with and I had been helping her out. I'm happy to say she did wonderfully. All of the kids did. During this time, I've really learned a lot about some of the children in our church. I pray every day that they are led to follow God in all they do. I have to say the very reason I have chosen to stay at my church is for the sake of the kids there. They are so impressionable and I worry about anything that might hinder their spiritual growth. It may sound silly but I love each and every child that comes through the doors of our church.

At AWANAS we had a new child join us! It was great watching all the kids immediately accept him. So far in the Children's ministry I haven't noticed any real division among the kids. Generally that's how it seems to go. In the youth group, however, so many students feel like they don't belong.

I stood up in a church meeting and spoke my mind about a few things I'd been feeling about a month ago. It takes a lot for me to do that but I knew I had to say something. I was bullied in church as a middle schooler and even into high school. The girls in my youth group felt like they were better than me and wanted little to do with me except to make fun of my appearance, lack of social skills, etc. and now, when I look at the youth group it pains me to see history repeating itself. I've talked to several different teens in the youth group who ALL feel like the other students judge them! I know how easy it is to judge someone. It would be a lie for anyone to say they haven't been judgemental at one time or another. It is HARD work to keep thos judgemental thoughts out of our heads and even harder to keep them out of our actions! All it takes is one ugly glance or one sneer to make someone feel like they don't belong. It's so EASY to hurt people who already have doubts about their self worth and let's face it. I don't know many teens who DON'T have doubts.

That's all for now. I am proud of the children for how well they did in their musical and the youth will also be a part of the adult musical in two weeks. It will be awesome!

Praise God for my church and my family, praise Him for these children for theirs is surely the kingdom of God!

Krispy Kreme, Gingerbread, and Bible Stories

Last week was Thanksgiving and I kept EL for only a few hours while his Mother went to a meeting. But she did ask me to do start doing Bible lessons with him and I mentally smacked myself. Why hadn't I done that before? A majority of my childcare experience stems from my church and I have plenty of experience teaching Bible stories and doing Bible activities.

Today, the second EL's Mother left the house I made him get dressed (I should mention that this task is an activity all on it's own and I have found myself timing him in order to make a game out of it. Otherwise he's standing there in his underwear for 10 minutes!) and we drove up to Krispy Kreme for a Hot and Now!!!
I get a dozen free donuts once a month for a year at Krispy Kreme. I along with 100 other people, camped outside Krispy Kreme for the grand opening. I myself waited 14 hours and let me tell you. It was SO worth it!
Anyway, we went to Krispy Kreme to get a Hot and Now. I don't know about you but I melt in my seat when eating a HOT Krispy Kreme donut. EL was especially excited to watch the donuts being made and I think it was the highlight of his experience.

Have I mentioned before that EL is picky? Well one of the things that weirds him out is food textures. So when he got his donut, I cut it in pieces for him (so it wouldn't be quite as messy) and he put the first bite in his mouth, pondered for a moment, wrinkled his face and went, "I don't...wait...wait yea I like it!" It was hilarious! Every bite he seemed to have to wait out he freaky texture of the glaze to get to the good donut part! He liked wearing the hat, even though he said he was too cool at first. I think we'll do this again sometime but note to self: He could have probably done just as well with a HALF donut!

We got back home and started his homework. Oh boy. I have to say I could not STAND it when my elementary (and beyond) teachers gave me a worksheet and then made me copy from that worksheet onto another worksheet. SO instead of just writing the answers, I would have to write half the problems too! And showing your work! I absolutely agree showing your work is important...on most things. But even I had to admit it was silly to ask what the odd number between 5 and 9 is and then ask to show your work. What work?? (he wrote out 5-6-7-8-9 and circled 7. Sounds legitimate to me.) The very last thing he had to do required him to make a web, and then write a story from it. That took about 20 minutes. No exaggerations. But like I've said before, I’ll spend as much time on homework as necessary. He then had to do silent reading for 15 minutes so I did a little reading of my own for that bit of time. I love to read. Half of my elementary and middle school troubles were from reading on the sly (I was SUCH the rebel!) EL does not like to read and makes it well known with a lot of sighs and mutters. I just smile and let him get it all out.

Finally with homework out of the way, we played Club Penguin. There's a special event going on where you have to save CP from an evil polar bear named Herbert...evil name right??

Club Penguin is a safe social game for kids and I have to say I really like the way CP runs their safety features. You can make friends and talk to them but the safeties include an automated dictionary that, while it sometimes gets annoying, really restricts any sort unsafe chatting (this includes big words and numbers, even the word 'name') . So he played, I watched as he rescued fellow EPF Agents (Elite Penguin Force. If that doesn't intimidate the bad guys I don't know what will =.=) for a solid hour just as I'd promised.

Once again I had a hard time getting EL to eat anything substantial. However the one snack I'm able to count on him eating is cheese-its with peanut butter. Interesting combination. I've never tried it but I imagine it's just like orange lance crackers.

Then we moved on to the main activity of the day. I bought two big gingerbread man decorating kits from Wal-Mart and we sat at the table decorating. The kit by itself really wasn't worth the $4 it cost. It came with plenty of icing but only 4 peppermints and 5 or 6 jelly candies to decorate with. So we raided the pantry where their candy stash is and added our own skittles, smarties, and milk duds. This turned out to be a terrible waste because, as we discovered when EL nearly broke his teeth, the gingerbread was inedible. Now I know some gingerbread crafts aren't meant to be eaten but if I pay &4 for a giant cookie I expect to be able to eat it. Alas the brick hard gingerbread men went back into the box, uneaten. It was just as well though because the Krispy Kreme was taking its toll on EL's hyperactivity. He was bouncing off the walls!

Finally we did the Bible lesson. For today I simply read the Noah's Ark story out of a children's Bible. I really like the story of Noah's Ark because it shows God's power AND his mercy. In fact in nearly every case where God destroys something he ALWAYS spares someone who is faithful to Him! (the flood: Noah and his family, Sodom and Gomorrah: Lot and HIS family, Jericho: the woman who helped the Israelite spies to name a few instances) But one thing that I was NEVER taught about Noah's ark, just a minor detail. Noah sent out a Raven BEFORE sending out the dove! When I read it in the children's Bible I did a double take. Wait, what? I was all fetch the Bible! I turned to the story in the Bible and sure enough there it was!

"...and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth." Genesis 8:7

Isn't that interesting?

http://cindybythesea.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/elul-10-and-the-raven/

This woman finds great refuge in God's act of sending out the Raven and I really love what she says about it.

In the next weeks I've got more Bible lessons planned and I can't wait to tell you all about how it goes!

Stand Back. I'm gonna do SCIENCE!

So today was quite a doozy! We started out watching a tv episode. Beyblade once again! Then we prcoceeded with...SCIENCE!!!

EL was actually really excited once we got started. We started out in the kitchen with a bottle of vinegar, add baking soda, swooosh! a volcano! He was all ready to add colors, wanting to see what would happen if we put in ALL the colors! Answer: A big dark mess...ew.

Then...we went outside. This was supposed to go way bigger and way better. I was all prepared for the sticky, messy, geyser that is the result of coke and mentos. My mistake: dollar tree coke and a faulty tube.
I kept telling E.L. "Stand back!" and then I TRIED to drop in the mentos using a rolled up paper. Now the generic coke was already doing next to nothing but some mentos got stuck in the paper tube and our outside geyser amounted to nothing more than our 'in the sink' volcano. Boo. Luckily though, I had backup.  quickly unwrapped behind my back (not an easy feat, mind you) my secret weapon. I then attacked with a can of silly string and then, in an effort to get his revenge, he wrestled the can from me (I pretty much tossed it to him) and then came after me until there was absolutely no more in the can.

As always, cleanup is a priority. E.L. has this issue with anything sticky/slimy/ooey gooey so picking up the silly string AND the mento coke remains was not his cup of tea. Still we managed to clean everything up and get back inside. He insisted we make a fort again and watch a movie. So we did.

I've relented from my original strict electronics rule because Eric has reintroduced me to Club Penguin! He loves it and we generally 'waddle around' for about an hour. I used to play CP when I was younger but for the life of me I can't figure out my old info. So at EL's request I made a new Penguin.

If you're not a member on CP, the only thing you can really do is sample what the members get to do. So there it is, I have a penguin. I doubt I'll do anything with it but don't tell EL that! 

I seem to have a hard time getting EL to eat anything. He loves mac and cheese but only ate half of his little pack of easy mac and I nearly had to force him to eat the rest. He's very picky but I think most of the problem is that he wants to play this game on his ipad instead of eating. I'm seriously considering hiding that thing.

So that's about it. We took pictures of our science expirements but since he is in most of them, I won't be posting them. I've got to become more organized in planning. I don't mind him playing on his ipad or watching movies. But the main reason EL's mom has me sitting is so that he doesn't spend the whole day on his ipad. Next week, I have a fairly solid plan which I will tell you about, later ;)

EDIT: I completely forgot about the crayon melting art! We spent the last bit of time we had melting crayons on canvas. EL's patience was wearing thin, waiting for the crayons to melt with the hairdryer, so I pulled out the big guns, the long handled lighter. Long story short, instead of that rainbow of color you see on pinteerest we had swirly colors mixed with gray. In an effort to artsy it up, I melted EL's name onto canvas in bright colors. It looks alright. :)

Forts, Swords, and Beyblade

I've started sitting for a boy on fridays when he doesn't have school. He's in this awesome program where they only go four days a week. Lucky duck. Now mpst of the time I babysit as needed for a few hours and it's never been a permanent thing. Hopefully I can be "better than daycare" for this boy. Now because I don't  feel right using names this second grader shall be known as EL. I am also, in his presence, not a baby sitter because he is NOT a baby! I am kid siting! But really I got to thinking and with EL bouncing off the walls I'm really kid-sprinting...or kid herding!

So today I started out the day with him simply getting up of his own accord (I've not seen many kids do that.) and turning on the TV to watch cartoons. Unless I'm emergency sitting and have absolutely nothing planned, TV has become my last resort. (Movies are ok but just randomly watching tv endlessly is not my idea of child care.) So I allowed him to watch one cartoon. The cartoon of choice: Beyblade! If you were a 90's kid or parent you know about beyblade. A hyped up version of spin tops made of metal and plastics and of course a plastic arena for the most serious of battles! Of course in the cartoon they use some sort of energy or whatnot. So I immediately used his love for beyblade to my advantage with homework! I told him that he had to start his homework right after the show and as soon as that was done I would battle him in beyblade. It was very hard not to laugh at how serious he was about this battle!

Homework actually took a long time. EL is easily distracted and would stop mid-sentence to tell me about something random during the language arts portion of homework. I have to say, though, I'm a very patient person. We can spend as long as it takes getting homework done and even stop every other sentence to talk about other things. Of course he is very good at math so while I would start explaining how to work something out he had the answer written down...

But enough of that homework. Let the battle begin! So beyblade is, like I said, a glorified spin top and if you have a nice one made of metal or even some that have little wings pop out when touched then it's pretty easy to win. EL has a billion beyblades so we had a fairly good battle in which I was crushed in a hopeless defeat. Obviously the kid has way more experience than I do.

He wanted to play video gameson his Nintendo 64 (Ah nostalgia!) But the few multiplayer games he had got old after a while...(and frankly I lost too quickly to be any kind of challenge for him.)

So then we actually moved on to my original plan for the day. Building a fort! EL lives in a house that provides plenty of light so getting a dark fort was next to impossible. Still, we stripped the blankets off his bed and hung them from the top bunk, turning the bottom bunk into a fortress. He got really excited when I told him that he was now the Captain of our fort and it was imperative that he choose the perfect movie to watch. Of course what good is a fort if you can't eat in it? I was really worried about him spilling on the bed (regardless of his promises not to) so I designated myself drink holder, and we ate while we watched Spy Kids 2 on Netflix. I'm pretty sure I dozed off every few minutes because every time I opened my eyes we were a few more minutes into the movie than when I'd closed them.

After the movie in the fort we sort of...ran out of things to do! I was trying very hard not to turn on the TV, since we still had two and a half hours or so to go. And then...out of the toy closet, I emerged with...plastic...swords... O.O Well didn't that just spark up a few ideas. When I was taking Karate, I trained with a Katana (a curved Japanese sword) and basic stick fighting/defense. I pulled out two plastic swords and we took to the backyard where we engaged in yet another battle, only this time, I was the one with the advantage. I taught him a fighting stance, and some basic sword moves, and we practiced/played for about an hour before coming back in for Lunch and then we went straight back outside.

His Mother came home shortly after and EL was very proud to demonstrate his newlyfound sword skills. Let's hope he uses his power for good. I think next week I'm going to prepare more than enough to do ahead of time and that way I won't have to worry about running out of things to do.