I was visiting Jill’s site last week and saw her post on the Fruits of the Spirit and immediately started printing off a bunch of stuff to do with all of the kids during the upcoming week…and the kids had so much fun working on their lapbooks and learning about the Fruits of the Spirit.

Since our Awana time is done now, we focused on this as our Bible time and also added in some extra activities to go along with the general fruitiness. :) Before I start linking and show you the fun stuff we did with our lapbook, I have to share a little about Zachary’s handwriting.

Zachary finished up his handwriting curriculum at the end of last week, so I pulled out a new book for him to start using  ~ cursive. Can I just say that the boy LOVED it? He’s only worked on the letters ‘i’ and ‘u’ but I’ve found him sitting at the table working on a scratch piece of paper later in the day, practicing his letters.

 Note: From Abeka’s K4 cursive booklet.

Other than our daily reading and writing we started talking about the Fruit of the Spirit and putting together our lapbook. We need the Spirit of God to help us with each of the fruits ~ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

A quick description of the fruits {Galatians 5:22-23} can be found on the DLTK site as well as some great ‘example stories’ at Child Bible Lessons. While we were talking about the different fruits the boys worked on coloring in a spiritual fruit basket craft from Christian Preschool Printables {doesn’t Kaleb look thrilled to be coloring?}.

While Zachary worked so hard to color his fruit the RIGHT color, Kaleb was more than happy to make every piece of fruit a rainbow. Very much so.

We also colored a cover for our lapbook and printed off some fruit of the Spirit mini-books. Kaleb just glued the pictures of the fruit in his lapbook while Zachary folded his as the mini-books. Inside the books we glued some questions from the Fruit of the Spirit file folder game.

As we matched the questions to their mini-books, I asked Zachary the different questions. For example: “Your brother came into your room and took a toy without asking. How can you show patience?” and we talked about different ways we could show the fruits of the Spirit to others.

Bible Verse Card

Click on the thumbnail image to download.

We needed a verse card for Galatians 5:22-23 to go on our morning board, so I put together one in the same format that we did our Awana verses for the boys {and girls} to practice.

Language

We used the fruit of the Spirit words to count out the syllables in words. Did you realize that there are 3 one-syllable words, 3 two-syllable words, and 3 three-syllable words? Zachary sorted his words and put them into his lapbook by syllable count.

Kaleb just glued his and stuck them wherever they landed {grins}.

Character

To tie into the fruit theme, we used this great idea for Runts candy. I filled a jar with the candy and as I ‘caught’ the kids showing a Fruit of the Spirit throughout the day, I gave them a piece of candy {we found our Runts at the Dollar Tree}.

Since the Runts were such a huge hit, we also used them in some learning activities. I have to admit it was HYSTERICAL watching Kaleb periodically stick his little nose down right next to the candy and sniff, sniff, sniff. Zachary disappeared with a bowl when I got distracted….

Color Sorting & Letters

I gave Kaleb a bowl or Runts and he sorted them by color. After he named the color I repeated the color word back to him asked what letter the word started with. “This is red. What letter does red start with?” made the ‘r’ sound

Counting

Next, we lined them up and counted them, trying our best to count with 1:1 correspondence.

Patterns

We used the fruit to make patterns {orange, green, orange, green ~ ABAB} and moved to more difficult patterns {red, yellow, yellow ~ ABB pattern}.

Estimating & Subtraction

Zachary also worked on patterns, but we focused more on less/more and estimating with his pile of Runts. He had to guess which one he had more of and then we counted out to see how many we had of each. We also used them to do subtraction and find out the difference between two colors, etc…

The completed project!

   {and yes, he was trying to make his eyes look like that!}

Songs and Rhymes

The girls knew a Fruit of the Spirit song that they had heard on JellyTelly, so they taught us that, but I couldn’t find it anywhere online to show you all {sigh}. We did find another song though on DLTK that the boys thought was a riot! It’s a cadence/song ~ so really no singing, just more ‘military’ fashion:

I don’t know what you’ve been told…
Galatians’ got the fruit of gold.
Patience, joy, love, peace and faith…
With gentleness He’ll get the praise.

Self-control with kind and good…
We’ll be like Jesus said we should…
Ask me what would Jesus do?
Galatians 5 Verse 22

Sound off: Galatians 5
Bring it on down: Verse 22

Galatians 5 Verse 22

WE’VE GOT- THE FRUIT!

(optional ending)
WE”VE GOT- (clap) – (stomp) – THE FRUIT!

Additional Resources

Danielle’s Place ~ crafts and additional activities for the Fruits of the Spirit{many require membership}.

Christian Preschool Printables ~ Fruits of the Spirit file folder game

Lapbook Lessons  ~ Fruit of the Spirit lapbook

Confessions of a Homeschooler ~ Fruit of the Spirit beanbag toss

Ready to Link Up?