Living in the Country...

We live in the country and we love it.  I am content with the peace and quiet here.  I believe it makes living a simple life easier.  I want to share one (of the many) things that I love about where we live.

We have a mobile library truck that comes to our local community twice a month.  It is so cool.  It is like having my own private librarian.  (They even ring me when they aren't going to make it for some reason).

I prioritise this time in our week and make sure we get there in time to sit and read as many books as we can in the hour that it is there.  I sit on the stairs and the boys bring me book to read.  Most weeks my librarian friend even makes me a cup of tea!!  (See the shelf by my elbow, well that is not really a shelf, it's actually my 'coffee table'.  Or so I like to think anyway). What a perfect way to spend an hour or so.

We also can request books online from the 'big' library to be reserved for us and they will come out next time the truck visits us.  Such a great service.

I think library truck days might be one of my favourite days of the month.  

What do you love about where you live??

Sincerity

Last month the character trait we learned about was Sincerity.  Sounds like a big word to use with a 6, 4 & 3 year old boys, but with the definition and bible verse and activities we did, they soon understood the idea.  Here are some of the activities we did through out the month.

We had a memory verse and four statements that helped us understand what it means to be sincere.  These get written up on our black board in the dinning room.  So we see it often!!

We read Horton Hears A Who.  He is a beautiful example of being sincere and caring for others.  It is a very long book though and so the boys didn't lose interest while I was reading I gave them each a Horton colouring page I found 'somewhere' on the internet.

We talked about sincerity coming from your heart and showing what your heart is like.  To help demonstrate this we made a huge heart to hang on the back of our front door.  During the month, whenever I 'caught' them doing something sincere I would write it on a dot and stick it to the big heart.  (They did many more that in the photo - it was at the beginning of the month). We also made other heart crafts and let them at it with glue and heart stickers.

The word Sincere in means 'without wax' in Latin, this is because the ancient roman potters tried to imitate the high quality pots of the Greeks.  But the romans used inferior materials and ended up with imperfections in their pots.  They then filled the cracks with wax before painting the pots to cover them up.  The customers would not know the pots were flawed until they took them home and placed them in the fire and the wax melted.  As a result, the honest merchants labeled their good pottery sine cere, without wax.

As we made our 'clay' and formed pots we talked about the importance of being truthful and sincere and meaning what we day.

 I think this was my favourite activity because it was such a visual lesson the really showed the point so well.  I put two oranges on the plate to start the lesson and talked about how the both looked good and it was hard to tell what they were like on the inside but that the outside seemed to look fine.

Then I cut the skin off the oranges.  One looked good but the other one was all yucky and muddy.  We talked about how sometime people may look like they are going good things but if their heart isn't doing the right thing then they aren't sincere.  (I had filled the orange with mud before the lesson by cutting a small plug in the bottom and removing the inside and the replacing the plug after I had filled it).  The boys really understood this and talked about being sincere from you heart for the next few days and not having a 'muddy' heart.

The orange idea and the clay activity came from Character First, other ideas are from google searches and some I even thought of myself!!

Next month .... Respect.

Craft Supplies Sorted!!

We have lots of craft supplies.  I means LOTS.  I go into those cheap shops and just can't help myself.  I always come out with something!!  BUT I have never had them all sorted out in a way that is easy for the kids to use. So we didn't actually do much craft with them.  Last week, this got the better of me.  I wish I'd taken a before photos because I had some in one cupboard, some in a draw, some in another box, all mixed up and shoved in any which way.  It was literally spread from one end of the house to another.

So here is my new organised craft supplied tray. 

It is simply a wooden tray I already had, with lots of glass jars filled with all the supplies.  I love that you can see whats in each bottle and it looks like fun to play with.  It keeps it all together and the kids can access each item easily.  The only problem is that the tray is way too heavy for me to lift down off the cupboard.  So I'll be just choosing a few jars and letting the kids play with those.

The tidy tray inspired fun creations straight away!  I even had a chance to do a few jobs while they glued happily for nearly an hour. And when I came back there was minimal mess too.  Big win.  I think this will be a great activity to keep little ones busy while the others are doing lessons.