In this post about our schedule, I mentioned my struggle with being disciplined to have personal Bible study time.  I appreciated your encouraging comments.  I’m working to just schedule it in so that I’ll be more consistent about it.   It’s not like I don’t have time…its just about DOING IT. 

Anyway, in the meantime, I wanted to tell you what works for our family Bible time. 

First, may I hop on my soap-box for a moment?  (thank you) 

The responsibility of teaching the Bible to YOUR children does not belong to anyone but YOU.  It is not up to their Bible class teachers or the ministers at your church or anyone else.  The Bible tells PARENTS to train up their children in the way they should go.  I think Bible classes are wonderful and I LOVE what my kids learn at church from their teachers.  BUT…if we let their Godly training END with Sunday morning and/or Wednesday night Bible classes…we’d be neglecting our duties as parents.  It’s our job.  Godly character training doesn’t begin and end at the church door. 

Okay, now that you know how I feel about that…I’ll sum up what works best for our family Bible training time in two words:

Meal.Time.

It’s a time we’re all sitting down together (ooh, another soap box)…and if the kids have food in their mouths, they are less likely to be talking (hopefully)…so they are able to focus their attention on you and listen.

For years we’ve had “Bible at Breakfast” time.  It’s been a great way to start our day.  We’ve done a variety of things from reading chapters from the Bible to reading through Egermeir’s Story Bible to reading short devotionals from books. 

Then, at lunch and dinner time, we do memory work.  Usually, Daddy leads this and asks the boys to repeat after him as he works to teach them new verses.   We’ve learned lots and lots of new verses this way…and it’s amazing what the littlest guys can learn just by repeating the verses over and over.  Often now, Malachi (age 3) stands up in his chair with his hands on his hips (this is not the exact way Daddy does it, by the way) and says, “‘Peat after me!”  and then he launches into the verse he’d like us to repeat. 

This has made our meal times even more memorable and filled with purpose.  Hmm, you’ve gotta love that kind of nourishment!
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Visit Rocks in my Dryer for more Works for me Wednesday posts!

Do any of the rest of you sometimes feel like you can just talk and talk…and nobody in your house even hears you?

Of course, I know it’s best to keep the orders short and sweet…like, “Come.  Sit. Eat.”  Parenting does seem to work better that way.  But I guess I like to talk more than that or something.  I’m better at pulling out…

“Okay, Big Guys…Mama made you some yummy food…so everyone come into the kitchen…no…go into the bathroom to wash your hands…oh…put your shoes away first…then go wash your hands…be sure to use soap….Asa, take Malachi potty while you’re in there…then help him wash his hands…then Justus, you come into the kitchen and get forks out for everyone…Elias then you please….

“Wait, guys…are you listening to me?  Hey…guys!  Yoohoo, over here!  HEY!  BOYS!  YO, BOYS!!!!”

At this point I usually get a response like,

“Oh, did you need us to do somethin’?”  (And of course only one of the four even says that much.  The other three are likely to still be focussed in the land of imaginary super heroes.)

Sigh.

So, yes, I’ve learned to get their eyes on me first, then keep the command as short as possible (if I can possibly contain myself and reject the urge I normally have to launch into a lengthy string of wonderful detailed information about how I’d like them to carry out the task at hand.)

The usual exception to this problem is when we’re talking about DESSERT.  At that time, the boys’ listening skills appear to be somewhat improved.  Enough improved that I actually have hope for their wives someday.

But yesterday, I decided to let each of them have one last ice cream sandwich from our last Azure Standard order.  We’ve been rationing them through the month since they are such a special treat.  Which means…you’d think that when I say the magic words, “Ice Cream Sandwich” they’d…you know…HEAR me. 

So I’m in the kitchen and I say, “Hey, you guys can each have one last ice cream sandwich today.”

Nothin’.

I try again, “If you want an ice cream sandwich, I put them in the door of the freezer.”

One responder, “Oh, can I have an ice cream sandwich?”

Me, “Yes, I put them in the door of the freezer.”

Boy (who shall remain nameless…yet you can make a guess and have a one in four chance of being right), “Where are they?”

Me, “In the door of the freezer.”

Boy, “Ooh, I’m gonna go have an ice cream sandwich!” 

Me, knowing he might not remember where they are, “Great.  They’re in the door of the freezer.”

Boy, standing at the freezer, “MOM!!  I can’t find the ice cream sandwiches!”

Me, “They’re in the door of the freezer!”

Boy, “I can’t find my ice cream sandwich!”

Me, “THEY’RE IN THE DOOR OF THE FREEZER!!!!”  (For Pete’s…sake.) 

Boy, “Oh, in the door of the freezer?  Got it.”

At that point, the other boys perk up and say, “Hey, how come he gets an ice cream sandwich?  I want one!” 

Me (gritting my teeth) “They’re in the door of the freezer…  Eat it in the kitchen…  Hey guys, I do not want a mess…take it to the kitchen and stay there….  Boys - KITCHEN!…”

Oh, to my dear future daughters-in-law…I’m trying, I really am….

I LOVE using summer time around here to work on fun projects that we just don’t seem to have as much time for during the school year.  AND…I think summer time is a great time to focus hard on godly character training with the kids.  (Yes…by summer’s end…I plan to rid my children’s hearts completely of all selfishness and pride and lazyness and…*ahem*…well…we’ll be working on it anyway…) 

Seriously, there are all kinds of fun things to do with the kids during the summer time…and my kids are rarely bored.   (If nothing else…we have a pretty big garden with endless weeds.  And dirty toilets.  And dirty dishes.)

My boys LOVE the summer library reading program in our town…therefore they are inspired to read like crazy all summer long!  

Matt is great at assigning the boys outdoor projects…and they love doing these jobs with and for their dad!  It is amazing how much help they can be with yard work, hauling stuff, cleaning up wood and sticks, etc.  I LOVE watching them work with their daddy!

Inside the house, the boys and I have fun making up new recipes and cooking together.  And we play tons of games of Skip-bo.  And War.  And Old Maid.  And Crazy Eights.  And we make up our own card games. 

As the summer progresses…and we work on fun projects and activities together…I’ll be sure to share the ideas with you!   Here’s one idea to start off the summer:

This week one of our kitchen projects was making cool shaped pancakes.  Using this whole wheat pancake recipe with a couple of extra tablespoons of milk stirred into the batter…we filled a ketchup-like container with pancake batter and started getting creative with pancake shapes and letters.

This little tool didn’t make it quite as easy as I was hoping it would when I first read the idea…but it was really fun to experiment and play with!  (And of course the pancakes tasted good no matter what they ended up looking like!)

Here, Justus is working on a “J” for Justus.

Here’s Asa’s name (And by the way…in case any of the rest of you are wondering ~I’ve been emailed with this question~ Asa’s name is pronounced:  “ACE-uh”.)

We were pretty happy with the way this bear and bunny turned out. 
We decided the bunny reminded us of Buster on Arthur! 

I LOVE this extra “down time” with my kids!  I’ll look forward to sharing more ideas with you during the next several weeks!  Here’s to a wonderful fun summer with our kids!

Find more great ideas at Rocks in My Dryer!

Technorati Tags: kids in the kitchen, summer projects with kids, summer activities

It’s rainy and dreary today…so the boys and I were just sitting down to play a game of Skip-bo…and my Dad called.

While I was on the phone with my dad…all the boys started to go nuts!  They haven’t acted THIS bad while I was on the phone for a couple of years now! 

It was like I had four extra large monkeys in my living room who had just eaten a five pound bag of sugar coated sugar…each…

And here they are pulling each other’s socks off and yanking on each other’s legs and arms…and all the Skip-bo cards that were all neatly piled and ready to play got all strewn around…which of course upset Asa (because he had a good hand).

And I’m on the phone trying to say, “Uh huh.”  and “Yeah” and answer questions…all-the-while..I’m walking from monkey fight to monkey fight, pulling bodies away from each other…

But of course I can’t pull them off of each other…because one set of hands is attached to another set of socks…which are of course attached to someone’s feet…

And I only have one hand to work with because one hand is holding the phone…

It was delightful.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?  WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THESE CRAZIES COME FROM?!?!”

I’M SORRY FOR SCREAMING.  *ahem*  i’m sorry for screaming. 

I’m okay now.

With four kids…all of them old enough to talk…and all of them with VERY important things to say…things that MUST be said RIGHT now…

Sometimes I can feel overwhelmed with everyone talking at once and never really feeling like I can hear any of them.

It sorta sounds something like:

“MOM!  We-I-Can-But-are-need-you-I-going-to-get-need-to-go-me-to-have-potty-a-pillow-fight-drink-talk-to-you!”

Okay, um…what?!

And of course, trying to have a conversation with my husband…one that I can actually finish…kinda looks something like thi……

(I may never really know how his work day really went…)

So while we’re working with the kids (constantly) to not interrupt…and to recognize that when others are speaking, they need to wait their turn…

And helping them to understand that their need to tell me about what happened to LarryBoy on the most recently watched Veggie Tale show is maybe not as urgent as they might think that it is…

I one day came up with a little tool that worked for me.

As two of my boys walked into the room and both started talking at once…I just reached out my pointer finger at one of them, pushed gently on his nose and said, “Pause.”  (as if I was pushing his pause button…)

And he did…pause.

The first boy finished what he was saying.

And then I turned back to the other one and pushed his nose again, and said, “Unpause.”  He grinned…and finished what he had started to say earlier.

From then on, I have been pushing their little pause button noses left and right.  (so to speak…) 

It’s a lot easier than saying, “Please wait until your brother is finished talking, and then you can have your turn to speak…” 

Oh, and the kids love it!

Now, I am so used to pausing noses…that one day while talking to my friend in the church foyer…one of my kids came up and really needed to say something important…so I reached up without thinking and pushed my friend’s nose and said, “Pause.” 

She started laughing…and said, “Um, did you just pause my nose?”

And I realized that indeed…I had just pushed on my friend’s nose and told her to pause. 

(Thankfully she loved the idea and started using it with her own kids.  I’m pretty sure she has since then paused my nose on occasion…)

While I am now more careful about who’s noses I’m pausing in church foyers…this plan works VERY well for my kids…and I highly recommend it!

Did you get to see the lunar eclipse on Wednesday night (or was that only happening here in Nebraska?) 

(I’m KIDDING.)

I don’t remember ever seeing one before…and it was SUPER cool!

Go God!

My favorite part of the night however, was this…

We have a great window to look out of in one of our son’s rooms, so Daddy took all the boys in there to get a better view.

I went up a few minutes later to see it better…and while the lunar eclipse was awesome…the view in the bedroom was priceless.

There was Daddy, sprawled out on the bed looking out the window…with all kinds of little boys piled on top of him…looking out the window.

For many, many minutes.

I’m pretty sure all the boys will have a special memory of watching the eclipse with their Daddy that night.

Me?  I’ll have a special memory of my boys watching the special event with the man they love most and most want to be like.

Thirteen Ways to say, “I love you!” to your kids:

1.  Hug them.

2.  Smile at them.

3.  Make them fun things to eat.

4.  Play with them.

5.  Giggle with them.

6.  Write them a note.

7.  Teach them to work hard.

8.  Discipline them.

9.  Be consistent with them.

10.  Read with them.

11.  Pray with them.

12.  Teach them about Jesus. 

13.  Say it to them. 

More Thursday Thirteen here.

Hey, want to join me (and several others) by taking a NO SUGAR Plunge!?  Come on…you know you need to!  Read Take the NO SUGAR Plunge, Pt. 1 here!

Yesterday my aunt, who lives in Arkansas, called.  She asked what we were doing.  I told her that we were standing at the window watching it snow. 

And she said, “Ooooo you’re so LUCKY!”

And I told her (lovingly) that we had been lucky for about FOUR months now and that we were getting a little tired of being so lucky. 

(not to mention the fact that I don’t believe in luck)

So, here we are with our lucky snow, that IS beautiful (I have to admit) but I’m getting excited to see a flower again.  Phooey, I’ll be excited to see a weed again.

And my sweet big boys cheerfully put on their 20 layers of snow gear and went out to shovel the lucky snow when Daddy asked them to this morning.

And, bless their hearts (and bless mine because I went out to take their pictures), it’s -1 degrees with wind chill.

They came in with very painful hands because it was just SO cold.

But, they came in with good attitudes and I’m so proud of them. 

I highly recommend that you get yourself a pair of boys, ages seven and 10.  They are great to have around the house.  

I just don’t know what I’d do without mine.

I’m not a very fun mom. 

I mean, I’m really cool and I’m nice and I do fun things for my kids.  I fix fun food and I make up fun games and I make school fun.  But, I’m not very easily convinced to do fun things with my kids (unless it involves sitting and watching them have fun). 

I’m just not big on running 90 miles an hour to chase one of them so that I can tackle him onto the ground during a family game of football.  (I have four boys, for goodness sake.  I know my limits.)

I’m the mom who, while washing up the dinner dishes, will occasionally poke her head out of the kitchen to smile and chuckle as Daddy (aka Tickle Monster) chases the four shreeking boys all over the house.  Then, after they’re all tickled out, I’ll call, “Who wants Mama’s hot cocoa?”  And they all come running and cheering.  (see, that’s how I’m fun.)

So, imagine  my children’s surprise one morning recently when we were in the living room doing a Geography lesson, and a jump rope was laying on the ground and one of my littler boys (who is too little for Geography) was trying to make the silly thing work.  And (without thinking), I take the jump rope and say, “Here’s how ya do it.”  And then, right there in the living room at 10:43 in the morning, I start jumping rope.

My hair was flipping up and around, my sweater was getting contorted, and yet I jumped on, for a good, oh I don’t know, 40 seconds.  I worked up a sweat and everything. 

And it was SO FUN!  (by the way, we have very high ceilings.)

I’m pretty sure my kids were speechless, for a good, oh I don’t know, 45 seconds (including my jump time).

Then, they all started cheering and saying things like, “Do it again, Mom!”  In which I replied, “Oh well, here, why don’t you try now?”  (I’m not trying to brag, but I was better than any of them, not that it matters or anything.)

So anyway, my point today is to get out there and do something fun with your kids, just because:  why not?!

*Play a game of hide and seek, then reach out and grab them when they find you (in their  toybox).

*Randomly break out into song in the car, singing your very best opera voice.  (they’ll love it)

*When getting out of the car, shout, “Last one to the house has to do the lunch dishes!”  Then make a mad dash (with your groceries and toddler on your hip) to the door.  Don’t worry, you’ll get a head start because they’ll be too stunned to move for a couple of seconds.

*Or, just make some “really fun” hot cocoa and call ‘em in, cause you’re probably worn out from just reading this.

Visit RocksinmyDryer today for more fun!

Today for my “Teaching Tip Tuesday” I would actually like to ask for tips from you!

I’m in charge of helping find a musical for our homeschool group to perform this spring.  I’ve been procrastinating on this responsibility because I don’t even know where to start! 

Our group will be directed by a very talented recent college grad.  The kids who will be participating will be ages five to 12 (of course they are ALL brilliant children!).  We need something simple and not too complicated (is that redundant?)

Have you done anything that you would recommend (or not recommend)?  Any good websites out there that you would suggest that I check out?

If I get my act together, I’ll come back later and post a tip from my house to yours!  In the meantime, any info on musicals will be greatly appreciated (we’ll even put your name in the program under “those we wish to thank because this musical could not have happened without you”)!

For more teaching tips check out The Helpful Homemaker.