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.