Letter H

Attribute of God: God is holy. 
In other words, he never makes mistakes.  In this case, I used a negative definition.  Holy is not yelling in anger.  Holy is not accidentally dropping a plate.  Holy is not…  Mommy, Daddy, Caleb, and Sophia make mistakes, but God never makes a mistake.  He is perfect.  He is holy!  (We also reviewed that God hears us even when we whisper, and we briefly talked about how God helps us obey.) 

Bible Story: The wise and foolish man build Houses.  (Matthew 7:24-27) A good story when we’re already working on listening and obeying. 

Song: Wise Man Built His House on the Rock. Holy Holy Holy.

Common vocabulary: house, help, hop, hug, hear, hospital, hurt, hello, hide, horse, hot, happy, heart, hat

Games: Hot and Cold; Hide and Seek

Give/Serve: Donate an art kit to kids in the hospital who are hurt.  (We’re still working on this one…)

People we know:  Instead of praying for our friends whose names start with H like we usually would, this week we prayed for our friends either selling houses or looking for housing. 

Letter G

Parks in November, puddle jumping in February.  Can’t complain about this winter weather!

Attribute of God: Good.

Bible Story: Not really a story per se. One morning at breakfast I paraphrased Psalm 136 and had Caleb shout, “God is good” every time “His love endures forever” is repeated in the psalm.  Then we talked about some of the ways God has been good to us and continued to repeat “God is good!”

Song: Village Church—God is Good (I’m not sure where I heard about this (possibly this blog post), but it’s a free download, so check it out.) The song spells out g-o-o-d, so I quickly drew the letters on paper and had Caleb jump/run over the letters as we listened/sang the song. 

Common vocabulary: grapes, grapefruit, granola bars, gorillas, giraffes, grass, grasshoppers, grin, giggle, girl

Art/craft: We made a Valentine for Daddy and attempted one for Grandpa and Grandma.  Grandpa and Grandma’s got cut to smithereens.  Let’s just say Caleb was more interested in the scissors than in expressing himself with hearts and glue. 

Books: We checked out several books about gorillas and giraffes from the library. 

Activity: Make granola bars.

People: Grandpa and Grandma, Griffin

Give: 1)A meal for baby Griffin where we also got to meet Gatsby the Great Dane! 2)Granola bars for our garbage pick-up people.  The look on the guy’s face when he picked up the gift bag on top of our garbage can was hilarious!

I’d like to do more in the giving/serving category each we as trek through the alphabet, but I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas that aren’t cheesy and that would actually encourage people.  Any requests?  Any ideas for H or beyond?

10 months

Sophia is growing up!  She’s not a little baby anymore.  She’s…

• Climbing stairs.  After looking longingly at the stairs for several days, she decided she’d start climbing them.  And she was off.  Once she decides to do something, watch out!
• Saying momma, dada. (I love it when we’re eating dinner and Sophia hears Luke open the garage door.  She whips her head around looking for Luke and says, “Dada!” The other day, Luke and Sophia were at the table, and I went down to open the garage door just so Luke could hear her say it.  It didn’t matter that he was right there, she still squealed, “Dada!”)
• Fighting to keep her toys when Caleb tries to take them.
• Charming librarians.
• Hiding in closets.  One of her favorite games is “hide and seek.”  She loves to hide in closets with Caleb, loves to hide in closets without Caleb.  Just say “boo” every once in a while. 
• Sleeping at night (kind of sort of).  She slept past 5 am 2 nights in a row (during which Caleb was up a lot coughing), and now she has a cough and is waking up a lot again.  One of these days I’ll get a full night’s sleep.  At least the post-Christmas-wake-up—five-times-a-night is over! 
• Eating lots of bread.  I’m not sure what to do with a picky eater.  She likes to pick up her food herself, but she doesn’t like anything too difficult to chew or swallow.  
• Loving to snuggle. 

I’m sure I’m missing all sorts of cute and new things she’s doing now, but that all I can think of at the moment.  I’m glad you’re part of our family, Sophia!

Letter F

The kids are coughing in stereo today, so hopefully they get some good naps. 

I doubt Caleb will remember any of these alphabet activities, yet we keep going.  If nothing else, it’s a way to remind myself to spend time with my kids.  Even if Caleb learns nothing, at least we’ve spent time together.

Attribute of God: God is Faithful.  He keeps his promises.

Story: An overview of the covenants, focusing on how God keeps his promises.  Noah. Abraham. Moses. David. Jesus.

I think summing up Jesus was the most difficult.  How do you put the gospel in preschooler terms?  Since we’re sick here this week and have been watching the first 15 minutes of Toy Story 3 a lot, it came out something like this:  “Do you remember how Buzz saves the train so that no one on the train gets hurt or dies?  Jesus did that.  He saves people from sin.”  Let’s just say that I continue to pray for more opportunities to pour the gospel into my kids’ lives and that they have the ears and heart to understand it.  

Art/Craft: Punched holes in black paper to make stars as we talked about God’s promise to Abraham.  Made crowns as we talked about God’s promise to David. 

Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness (Caleb doesn’t sing this one, but he’s been more interested in drumming while I sing/play the piano anyway.)

Common vocabulary: food, flamingo, fish, flower, fire, fly, flower, flashlight, frog, freeze, flood, foot, four, friends

Books: Horton Hatches an Egg “I meant what I said and I said what I meant.  An elephant’s faithful one hundred per cent.” 

Games/Activities: What Floats?  (In other words, throw stuff in the bathtub and see if it floats or sinks.) We also tried a game of “freeze,” but that didn’t work so well.

Food: fajitas, french fries, and Frozen Blueberry Popsicles (healthy way to soothe a sore throat!)

People we know:  I couldn’t think of anyone, so if your name starts with an “F” and you’re actually reading this, let me know!

Sporting our crowns we made as we talked about God’s promise to David. 

The Shallows

I recently finished reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr.  I found it to be a fascinating read.  It played to my interests in reading and education, but also kept my attention while covering topics in neuroscience and biology. 

The basic premise of the book is an evaluation of how technology, specifically the Internet, changes the way we think.  While not being a total alarmist, the author encourages his readers to think about what we’re losing (in addition to what we’re gaining) with each technological advance.  His conclusion?  The more we use the Internet the more we train our brains to be distracted and shallow in their thinking. 

“When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.  It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it’s possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that’s not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards.” (Pg. 166)

Greatest strength of the book: His synthesis of ideas across a variety of fields.

Greatest weakness: The beginning of the book. The complaining tone and arbitrary quotations from unknown bloggers made me not want to continue reading. 

Interesting insights:

• History of writing, print, and books from clay tablets to Twitter.  Did you realize early writing didn’t contain spaces between the words?  Can you imagine how much work it’d take to decipher a writer’s text, much less their meaning?
• Reading online (with hyperlinks and hypermedia) is like reading without spaces between the words.  It requires greater processing power, leaving less available for close, deep reading.  We begin to simply decode information instead of decoding, evaluating, and synthesizing information. 
• We sell ourselves short when we compare our brains to computers or machines.
• In opposition to the current trend which views memorization as a mechanical, mindless process, Carr highlighted Erasmus’ use of memorization as a tool to creativity and deeper understanding.
• Quoting Barnaby Rich, who in 1600 said, “ One of the great diseases of this age is the multitude of books that doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought into the world.”  I wonder what he’d think today?

As you can see, I’m not going to stop using the Internet, but I will consider when and how I use it. 

Sledding

We live about a block away from a great sledding hill, so Caleb has already made good use of the sled he got for Christmas.  He and Luke often go out on the weekends, but last weekend was warmer than usual, so we all got to enjoy the sledding.

Giggles!

Chipmunk

Sophia likes bread.

Letter E

The creativity is low and the snow is high this week, so our letter E activities have been pretty skimpy. 

Attribute of God: God has Ears (in the figurative sense). He hears.   Psalm 4:3; 1 John 5:14

Sure we could have done eternal or Emmanuel, but ears seemed more manageable for someone whose concept of time consists of “Saturdays are days Daddy stays home” and “Bedtime is when we put PJs on.”  And we can wait for Emmanuel until the letter I and spell it “Immanuel.”

Story: Elijah (focused on when he built the alter and God heard his prayer)

Craft: Glue pieces of “fire” to Elijah’s alter to God, not to the alter built for Baal.  

I totally stole this idea from Caleb’s Sunday school class.  He’s already done this activity, but it’s been awhile so I figured it’d be good review since he’s not overly familiar with the story.  It also fit in well with the theme that “God hears us.”

Common vocab: elephant, egg, envelope, ear

People We Know: Great-Grandma Etcher, Erica

We also hard-boiled an egg so we could look at the different parts, but Caleb was not at all interested in eating it, so that was a flop.

If you have ideas to add, please do!

Elijah

A long, long time ago there was a man named Elijah.  He was God’s prophet.  He listened to God and told other people what God said. 

God’s people had stopped listening to God or to Elijah.  Instead, they worshipped a fake god named Baal. 

So one day Elijah challenged Baal’s prophets.  You build an alter to Baal.  I’ll build an alter to God.  Then we’ll both pray.  The god who answers by sending fire is the one true God! 

Then Baal’s prophets (all 450 of them) called out to Baal, “Answer us!  Send fire!”  But Baal did not answer.  All morning long, the prophets called out to Baal, but did he answer? No.  Then they started dancing.  But did Baal answer? No.  They called out louder and louder.  But did Baal answer?  No.  The prophets started hurting themselves, begging and whining and pleading for Baal to answer.  But did he answer?  No.  All day long the prophets begged Baal to answer them and to send fire.  But Baal did not send fire.  He did not hear them.  He did not answer them. 

Because Baal was a fake God, he couldn’t hear them calling out.  Because Baal was a fake God, he couldn’t do anything.  He couldn’t send fire. 

Then it was Elijah’s turn.  He built an alter to God.  Then he prayed, “God, please answer my prayer so that these people will know that you are the one true God." And do you know what happened?  Fire came down and burned up the alter!  God heard Elijah’s prayer.  God answered Elijah’s prayer.  God is the one true God! 

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Themes: God hears.  God is the one true God.

Visuals always help, so we used two candles (an idea I saw here) to serve as “alters” and acted out the story as I told it.  This was really effective with Caleb.

Source: 1 Kings 18:16-39

Pictures