I’m not saying that I’m ready for Thanksgiving to already be over, but with Advent coming up soon, I can’t help but be excited!! In our day-to-day studies, the kids are keeping up with their Awana verses and we’re reading {almost} daily from our Hands-on Bible too. 

We received some new devotionals for all of the kids from The Good Book, including a fun Advent calendar we’ll use to start our mornings and then some deeper devotionals that I can do with the kids each day. Kaleb is excited to have his own little book, Beginning with God at Christmas {that goes along with the Beginner’s Bible}, and Laurianna is especially excited to be using the Discover daily devotional.

Something has ‘clicked’ in both of the girls over the last two weeks and it is so amazingly wonderful to watch them take ownership of their own quiet times by really studying God’s word and wanting to dig in deeper. McKenna decided to start reading the Bible in 90 Days following one of the modified Bible reading plans for children. It really makes my heart rejoice to see both girls get excited every morning and find a quiet spot to read and study. :)

I am so excited to start reading the book Tabitha’s Travels by Arnold Ytreeide as a family each night as part of our Advent study. For the last few years we’ve been celebrating the Advent season with the kids to help focus on the REAL reason of Christmas, and truth be told, it helps keep the adults in the right frame of mind too! There have been various books that we’ve used together over the years, but the Jotham’s Journey series has been a family favorite. The other two books in the series are Jotham’s Journey and Bartholomew’s Passage.

Whew! That was a lot…I’m interested to know how YOU all celebrate Advent ~ or do you? Are there special traditions that you have as a family during this time? Leave a comment and share!

Don’t forget to visit Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and visit around to some of the other Raising Rock Star posts this week!

Even though I brought things along for us to do on vacation {again, grand plans}, we didn’t get around to doing all that I had wanted to do. Now that we’re back home we’re back on our children’s Bible Reading Plan and still reading in Genesis. We’ve been reading about Sodom and Gomorrah {Gen 19}, Hagar and Ishmael {Genesis 21}, Abraham’s Decision {Genesis 22}, Eliezar  {Genesis 24}, Isaac and Rebekah {Genesis 24}, Jacob and Esau {Genesis 25}, and Jacob tricking his father {Genesis 27}.

After reading about Abraham’s faith being tested with the sacrifice of Isaac, we did a fun little activity from the Hands-On Bible to go-along with the passage in Genesis 22. It was to help remind us to trust God ~ even when it is tough.

Each of the kids went outside and found a smooth rock that would fit into their pocket. Using a sharpie, we drew pictures on the rocks to remind us of something that we have trouble trusting God with. Here’s a peek at Laurianna’s rock:

I don’t know if you can quite see it, but it has some ‘echo’ marks and ‘woooo, woooo’ sounds on it to represent scary noises at night. The picture on the right is a girl laughing {with her mouth open} ~ laughing because she trusts that God is protecting her and watching over her.

We’ve also been listening along to the Bible Eyewitness Collector’s set from Adventures in Odyssey {a walk through the Bible for kids}. It was so much fun to see the kids suddenly make connections between what we were reading to in the Bible and listening to on the cd’s {for example, Rebekah was Laban’s sister ~ and the kids suddenly realized that he was an uncle to Jacob and Esau and it further connected the stories for them}.

Don’t forget to visit Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and visit around to some of the other Raising Rock Star posts this week!

You can learn more about the Hands-On Bible from their website and also purchase the Bible directly from Amazon. A few sample activities can be found here. We are loving this Bible and the creativity that it offers {and the fact that Mommy has a little less planning to do too!}.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Hands-On Bible that I bought and started using with the kids. Since then I’ve found some other great go-along resources and we’ve started a morning routine using the Hands-On Bible and activities.

Each morning during breakfast time we read a passage from this great kids Bible using the children’s Bible reading plan found on the Hands-On Bible website {you’ll have to create a free account to access it}. There are questions to answer after each reading and I’ve been surprised at what the kids are grasping and understanding already. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I LOVE seeing that our kids understand the deeper meaning behind stories!

As we are reading through, we stop and complete any of the hands-on activities that are in the Bible for that passage. This past week as we read about Adam and Eve hiding from God, we stamped our fingerprints on paper and talked about how our fingerprints are on everything we touch ~ even though we can’t see them. God sees everything and already knew about their sin…but He sent Jesus and will forgive our sins!

Soon we’ll be adding in a family night and using another great resource: family devotions from the folks at Hands-On. There are 52 weeks of plans for us to use and they include activities to do together as a family and the kids can take turns helping lead the devotions.

Awana will be starting up next week too, so we’ll be back in full swing soon. :)That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to visit Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and visit around to some of the other Raising Rock Star posts this week!

You can learn more about the Hands-On Bible from their website and also purchase the Bible directly from Amazon. A few sample activities can be found here. We are loving this Bible and the creativity that it offers {and the fact that Mommy has a little less planning to do too!}.

Recently a new Bible made it’s way into our house ~ The Hands-On Bible {NLT}. I’m not sure where I even saw it first, but this Bible is filled with ‘do-it’ lessons and activities that help kids apply the stories in the Bible. After seeing those few activities {you can get a peek at some of the lessons here}., I ordered one for our Bible time together and before it even arrived we tried a few of the activities together. The first lesson that we decided to try was based on Psalm 23 ~ Good Shepherds.

Lately, we’ve had a whole lot of worrying from one of our kids ~ enough that it has meant an upset stomach, loss of sleep and then everyone gets cranky. We talked about how God is always with us, caring for us and keeping us safe. God is our Shepherd and we are His sheep! We read Psalm 23 together and then the girls recited the chapter since they learned it last year in Awana.

We had a little object lesson when we were done reading and set up an obstacle course in our dining room. The kids took turns guiding each other through the course with just their voice leading.

When we all had taken a turn {and yes, Mommy even did it too!} we talked about some different questions:

~ How was leading your brother/sister through the course like being a shepherd?
~ Could sheep be on their own? Why do they need a shepherd?
~ What would have happened to you if you didn’t have someone helping you get through the course?
~ How is God our shepherd?
~ Think of something today that shows that God cares for you.
The lesson really helped the kids understand a little better the importance of listening to God’s voice ~ and also understand that we have a God who is always caring for us!

Be sure to visit Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and see what she’s been doing with her kids for Raising Rock Stars.