God So Loved the World {Free Verse Printable}

This week, we’ve been taking a look at the classic verse John 3:16.  Last week, while I was at the Gathering conference, I heard an inspirational story from a preschool teacher who was also in attendance.  She told me that the 2 year olds in her program all knew John 3:16 and could recite it from memory.  When I remarked how it incredible that was, she explained, “Yeah, we start when they are in diapers.  Every time we change them, we say the verse out loud or when we’re rocking them to sleep.  Most of them can say it before they are walking!”  Inspired by her story, I decided to step up my game a little when it comes to learning memory verses around here!   Of course, if you’ve got older kids, Kelli’s memory verse printables are perfect for this venture!  Handwriting practice and Bible learning all in one!   Check out the free printable for John 3:16 right here!

Let’s get started!

What You Need:

  • Paper Plate
  • Green Paint
  • Blue Paint
  • Paint Dotters (optional)
  • Paint brushes (optional)
  • Red construction paper
  • Heart puncher or scissors

 

God Loved the World

What You Do:

If you are opting to use the paint dotters (don’t know what I’m talking about?  check it out here!), fill them up with blue and green.  The manufacturer’s website says you can fill them with tempera paint, but I found that to be a little too thick.  I watered it down a bit and it worked better, but I bet liquid watercolor would be perfect!

The idea was to have them dot the whole globe so it would take a little longer and enhance fine motor skills, but the kids quickly became frustrated with the bingo dotters and I had to put big globs of paint on the plates to smear around instead.

God Loves the World

Of course, by this time, I had run out of green paint, so we had to use some brown… not exactly the effect I was going for.   It’s about the process, right?  Isn’t that what they say these days?

God Loves the World

Anyway, we’ve been talking a little bit about the planets lately — one of the day care kids introduced me to this little video about planets — so we discussed how planet Earth is our home.

God Loves the World

After the “Earth” is completed, we took our pre-punched hearts and stuck them on the plate.  Our paint was still wet, so we didn’t add any glue, but I did spray the whole thing with Spray Adhesive once they were done.   Just to be sure.

Jesus Loves Me

Lots and lots of hearts!   After Chipmunk was done with the hearts, I wrote the beginning of John 3:16 at the top and the Scripture reference at the bottom.

Jesus Loves Me

The 1.5 year old’s work.  Pretty cute!

DSCN1857

Finished!

More Questions to Ask As You Work:

  • What is the blue for?  What is the green for?
  • What kinds of water are there?  What bodies of water do we live near?
  • What are some other planets in space?
  • Do you think God loves all the planets?
  • What did God do because he loves us so  much?
  • What are some things you can do for those you love?

What About You?

What crafts are you doing this week?  Leave a comment and tell me all about it!

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C is for Cupcake!

Last week, while I was out in California for the Gathering conference, I discovered that EVERYTHING in the hotel gift shop was 90% off!  Nevermind the fact that I had just bought an arm full of stuff at Ikea — surely I could squeeze a few more things into the suitcase, right?  Especially these super adorable cupcakes!

Cupcakes

 

I scooped up 7 of these little beauties, wrapped them in tissue paper and hoped for the best as I checked my very over-stuffed suitcase at the airport!

This week, we decided to capitalize on my new find and have a “C is for cupcake” theme all week.   To begin, we set up a cupcake story in the playroom.

C is for Cupcake Store

We put some quarters in a Stonyfield yogurt cup and each kid got 2 quarters to begin.  There was plenty of counting and math skills involved in this dramatic play lesson as we exchanged quarters, counted cupcakes, switch roles, and had a lot of frosted fun!

Cupcake Store

On Tuesday, we decided to make some fluffy cupcakes with shaving cream and glue.  You might remember when we made fluffy polar bears– same idea.   You mix about 1/2 and 1/2 glue and shaving cream and add some food coloring.  The kids LOVED this project and Chipmunk, my 3 year old, proceeded to paint every single piece of paper she could get her hands on.  Apparently, she doesn’t have sensory issues!

DSCN1917

Fluffy Frosting Paint

Finished Cupcake

Finished Cupcake Painting!

I have to apologize for the crazy free-hand cupcake.  Could you even tell that it WAS a cupcake?? Yikes!  You could also print off some clipart if you wanted to go for a more realistic approach, but I think sometimes it’s best to use the imagination! :)

On Wednesday, we made real life cupcakes.  Yum-o!

Cupcakes

When will they ever be done?

DSCN1931

On Thursday, we made playdough cupcakes!  I grabbed my playdough recipe over at Mommy Footprint.

Cupcake Playdough

As always, the kids loved this activity!

To round-out the week, we started working on letter sounds, not just letter identification, so we learned sounds for “C” “U” and “P”.

What about you?  What are you up to this week?

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Love One Another {Preschool Project and Free Printable}

I’ve been loving Kelli’s free Bible verse, printables — how about you?  It’s the perfect way to review some Bible verses and get some hand writing practice in at the same time.  My little one is just starting to write letters, so practice is always in order!

Anyway, we decided to do a craft project to coordinate with the John 13:34 printable (you can find it here!).  Want to follow along?

What You Need:

  • Construction Paper (any color)
  • Crayons or Markers
  • Heart puncher or scissors

What You Do:

Before inviting the children to the craft table, punch out hearts or pre-cut hearts from construction paper.

We wrote “A Friend Loves at All Times”, but you could also do “Love One Another” to coordinate better with the verse.  We’ve been talking a lot about how to be a good friend, so this was a good fit for us.

Friends Loves

Next, have your child draw a picture of a friend or someone who is important to them.

Friends Loves

I loved seeing all the different ideas and I simply cannot get enough of the cute people blobs!  I love how preschoolers draw!

Once the drawing is complete, talk about how friends love each other and do nice things for one another.  Hand the precut hearts to the preschoolers, one-at-a-time, asking them to think of nice or loving things a friend might do.  Once they’ve answered, have them glue the heart onto the project and continue with another idea and heart.

Friends Loves

After 5 or 6 ideas, hand over the rest of the hearts and have them glue away!

Friends Loves

Finished!

Friend Loves at All Times

Questions to Ask:

  • Why are friends so much fun? 
  • What is one way we can be a good friend?
  • Do friends share with others?
  • What does it mean to love others?
  • What does it mean to love all the time?

Happy Crafting!

About the Author

Lindsey Whitney is a blogger over at Growing Kids Ministry.  A blog designed to help parents, teachers, and Children’s Ministry workers who want to help the kids they love grow in their faith.   You can connect with her via twitter or on facebook.

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Building a Chipmunk Wall

Have the Chipmunks been running wild in your yard lately?

We’ve been noticing a lot more in ours, partly due to my 3 year old daughter’s new obsession with the book, Marc and Pixie by Louise Fatio.  This is one of those books we picked up at a yard sale for a quarter, and she instantly fell in love with it.  You can find it used on Amazon, but it’s pretty tough to locate.

Chipmunk Wall

In this book, a man named Mr. Angelo built walls for Mrs. Jones and then a whole family of Chipmunks moved into the nooks in the walls, including one little chipmunk named Marc.  Everything was going swimmingly until Mrs. Jones got herself a cat named Pixie.  In the end, Marc and Pixie ended up friends, but I won’t ruin the story line for you — it’s a cute little ending.  It’s a great book about helping others, appreciating others, and making new friends.

Chipmunk Wall

Since we’ve been reading this book so much, we decided to build a “Chipmunk Wall” just like we saw in the book.  This craft would be perfect for any book about a wall or any book about chipmunks for that matter, because chipmunks like to build their burrows in little crevices such as those found in a stone wall.   Shall we get started?

What You Need:

  • Green Construction paper for the background 
  • Glue
  • Brown, Gray, Black and White construction paper (torn up into bits) for the wall

What You Do:

Once all your pieces are torn and ready, hand over the glue and let your little one get to work.  If you’re still working on colors, this is a great time to review as you go along.  I know my daughter has some trouble with black and brown when she first got started, so this would be a great opportunity to go over those colors again.

CHipmunk Wall

If you have an older kid, you could also count the number of stones in each row or even challenge them to find stones that fit pretty well together — sort of like a puzzle.

CHipmunk Wall

My daughter was really excited about this craft, even though it was pretty simple.  She just kept saying, “Look at the wall I built!”

CHipmunk Wall

Gluing! Gluing! Gluing!

Chipmunk Wall

It just keeps getting taller!

CHipmunk Wall

My 1.5 year old son also attempted this project, but as you can see — he doesn’t have the diligence of his sister just yet!  :)

Chipmunk Wall

Finished!  A perfect wall for little chipmunks to play in.  If you wanted to take it one step further, you could use some tiny chipmunk stickers and put them all over the wall to represent Marc and his very large family.  Stickers are great for fine motor practice, but I couldn’t find any little chipmunk stickers myself.

Follow-up Questions to Discuss with Your Little One

  • Why did Mr. Angelo build walls?
  • Who loved living in the walls?
  • What happened to Pixie when she jumped out the window?
  • What are some nice things that Pixie and Marc said to one another?
  • In the end, what happened with Pixie and Marc?

More Chipmunk Freebies to Check Out:

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5 Ways to Teach Kids Patience (and free Psalms printable!)

Waiting! Waiting! Waiting!

Patience is a tough skill to learn, even as an adult.  I know I often find myself praying for more patience, though I don’t exactly want more opportunities to practice my patience skills!  We’ve been talking about patience at church and we’ve been doing some practicing at home too.  If your home needs a little improvement in this area, check out some ideas below for teaching kids patience.

Patience

 

Mail Yourself a Letter!

Mail Yourself a Letter

I loved this patience-building activity idea from Doing Stuff with Kids.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we’ve been reading through Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! recently.   At the beginning of the book Buddy Bear receives a package from grandpa and at the end of the book, Buddy returns the favor.  Naturally, now my daughter is really interested in sending mail, so she would love this activity!    Doing Stuff with Kids also suggests mailing a letter to a family member and asking for them to write back.  Building relationships and patience — it’s a win! win!

Pass the Parcel

Pass the Parcel

This idea comes from Children’s Ministry Vault and it gives kids some hands on practice with patience.  In order to prepare for this activity, wrap one piece of a puzzle in some paper (24 piece puzzle or smaller).  Place another piece on top of the wrapped piece and wrap again.  Continue in this way until all the pieces are wrapped.  Gather the kids up and have them unwrap one layer and then pass the parcel to the next child.  Continue in this manner until all the piece are unwrapped and then work together to assemble the puzzle.  Kids will learn patience as they SLOWLY unwrap the package and as they work together to complete the puzzle.

Develop Strategies for Waiting

As Daniel Tiger reminds us, “While you wait, you can sing, think or imagine anything!”  During a recent episode, Daniel had to wait quite frequently, so he came up with some great distractions and built up his patience skills.  You can do the same with your kids by having a “go-to” list of songs or simple word games you can play while you wait.

Timers and Turn-Taking

Timers

Patience is especially hard to practice when it means waiting for a coveted toy.  In our house, we set the microwave timer when turn-taking gets especially heated.  When the timer buzzes, it’s time to pass the toy along.  Using a sand timer might  be even more helpful because it would also the  waiting child to see the passing of time in a tangible way.

You could also use a timer in a game like we did in the Hibernation Game from this post.

Song to Sing

When all else fails, having a little ditty goes a long way in producing desirable behavior.  Why not try making the following song a part of your regular routine and see what happens?

“I Am Learning Patience”
(Tune: Ten Little Indians)

I have learned to wait my turn,
I have learned to wait my turn,
I have learned to wait my turn,
I am learning patience!

I have learned to sit and listen,
I have learned to sit and listen,
I have learned to sit and listen,
I am learning patience!

I have learned to stand in line,
I have learned to stand in line,
I have learned to stand in line,
I am learning patience!

BONUS: HANDWRITING PRACTICE

Keep up the learning with this great Handwriting Free Printable of Psalm 27:14

Grab your copy today: Psalm 27.14 Handwriting Practice!!

You can also find more Bible Verse Free Printables here! 

Happy Practicing!

Lindsey Whitney is a mom of two, home day care provider and blogger over at Growing Kids Ministry. You can connect with her via twitter or on facebook.

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