Lent Activites #5

Unfortunately we didn't get to do all 12 lent activities that I'd hoped to do from Sense of the Resurrection. But we did make it pretty far, missing out on only 3.

For this activity we read Mark 15:21-32, and talked about Jesus' sacrifice for us.  We put a red dot on our hands to remind us of the marks where the nails went into Jesus' hands.  

We also read John 19:23-30, where Jesus drank vinegar just before he died.  The boys tasted a spoonful of pure vinegar to see how bitter it can be.  It was an activity that showed us how Jesus took the bitterness of our sin upon himself.

Doesn't taste so good, does it!

Crosses in our Easter Garden.  The purple cross represents Jesus' royalty.  He is our King!

I've been busy organizing again.  Like the Lego instructions, our costumes get tossed around the room every time one of the boys digs through the bin.  What a clean up job they're left with then!  I just had to find another solution.

I went out and bought 24 children's hangers and hung up the majority of the costumes.  24 hangers was not enough (Grandma so generously keeps adding to our collection), so the rest of the costumes went back in the bin until I could buy more hangers.  I was sceptical as to whether this solution was going to work (I still am), but we're on week three and the costumes keep getting hung back up in the closet (and not by me).  Way to go boys!

Friends are always fun to have over.  The more Super Heroes, the better.

And Vikings too!

We've been having some personal reading time.  A little extra "quiet time" and reading practice.

We've continued learning about the neighbourhood around us through Come Sit By Me. We're learning what to do when we're lost. What the police do and how they can help us and keep us safe.

Along with the theme of being lost, we looked at camoflage creatures who conceal themselves from danger.  Some of them were really hard to find!

Questions the boys should know how to answer if they ever get lost.

We did a chromatography science experiment.  We found the hidden colours within a colour (secondary colours only).

We're currently reading through James and the Giant Peach.

Other categories we've been reading from include fairy tales, history, poems, character, art and science.

Lent Activities Post #4

Continuing with our Lent Activities from Sense of the Resurrection, I made some spelt bread for the boys to enjoy while we read Luke 22:14-20. This is the story where Jesus and the disciples gather together to eat the Last Supper.  We talked about how the bread represents Jesus' body being broken for us when he died on the cross for our sins.  

Once again we made an Easter Garden, our second year in a row. It's a really fun project to do over the 6 weeks of Lent, leading into spring!  Micaiah is watering the grass seed. In this picture, it is just starting to sprout.

We were supposed to make a purple tissue paper cross to put on our window, but I didn't have purple tissue paper.  What I did have was purple popsicle sticks, so I improvised and we made a purple cross to represent royalty, recognizing Jesus as our King.  While the boys made the crosses, I read John 19:1-16.  Later, I stood the crosses in the soil of our Easter Garden.

We're nearing the end of the part of our science curriculum that focuses on the human body. This week we learned about the human eye. Abishai was particularly interested in the tear ducts.

We read how dim light causes the pupil to widen, and how bright light causes it to narrow.

To see if this actually happens, we took pictures of Abishai's eye. Here is Abishai's pupil in bright light - narrow.

And in dim light - wide

A game of Spiderman Sorry = Addition practice.

We've been learning about our country through this book called Wow Canada.  It's a story about two kids whose parents take them on a trip to see all the provinces and territories. The children document their journey through story telling. Abisahi finds this book quite interesting.  

As we journey across the country with Wow Canada, the boys colour in the province we're reading about. We're just about to leave Alberta (not coloured in this photo).

A friend of mine told me about the Mary's Atlas series, so I picked a couple of them up from our library to supplement our exploration.

In the afternoon, I like to read story books or novels to the boys.  Since they know how to fold certain items of our laundry, I read to them while they work. I once read that Noel Piper, author of Treasuring God in Our Traditions (where I got the Jesus Tree idea from) read to her boys while they folded laundry, so I decided that one day I would do this too (my older boys were just babies at the time I read her book).

Baby Gilead soaking up the sun.

As we collect more and more lego sets, we also collect more and more instructions on how to build those sets.  Every time one of the boys goes to build (which is everyday) they dig through this blue basket to find the desired booklet.  After, there's a big mess of instruction booklets to clean up, and over time they begin to rip and tear.  Now hear me out. I don't have to clean this up; Abishai and Micaiah do, so really this big mess isn't my problem. But I don't like the booklets getting torn.  Once a booklet looses a page or two, it's game over for building (at least according to design).  Since I LOVE organizing, I came up with a plan.

I went to Dollarama and purchased this binder with transparent presentation inserts.  I then "tape-doctored" all the instructions that needed it and slid the booklets into their slots.  Now, only one instruction booklet gets pulled out at a time, while the rest stay safely stored inside, just waiting for its turn!

LOVE IT!

Lent Activites Post #3 - Washing Feet

After reading John 13:1-17 about Jesus being our Servant King, we set out to wash each others feet. We started with the oldest serving the younger.  I washed Abishai, Abishai washed Micaiah, and then Micaiah washed Asher.

I wasn't expecting to get a turn, but after all the boys had theirs, they offered to wash mine. I was delighted.  It felt so good to sink my feet into that warm bucket of water.  All the aches and pains from being on my feet all day vanished away in those few minutes.  And then, as quickly as it came, it was all over, because the boys wanted to have their feet washed again. But for those few short minutes, it was heaven!