A Mother's Prayer for Holy Week

Father,

At the start of this week, that is so significant to us, so dear, I come before your throne like a pilgrim of sorts:

my travel bags for the week packed full of 'provisions' for every day of the journey - in my case, these are activities and stories and little crafts that I will 'feed' to my children this week together with passages from your Word, hoping to nourish them with Truth; hoping to show them the way to the cross... and the glory beyond it.

And my heart is also packed, full of hope and expectation, deeply desiring for a fresh anointing of your Spirit, your Presence on us this week. Oh, that you will come walk with us, that you will open our eyes and our spirits to see, really see: the magnitude of your Sacrifice, the magnitude of your Love.

Holy One, you know that I have been busy, busy, busy the past few days - a Martha, scurrying here and there to prepare, to get everything just perfect.

But now I come before you like that little boy of old with his simple lunch, and I lay it at Your feet:

Father, in the Name of your Son, Jesus Christ, please take my 'three loaves and two fish', these simple, imperfect things I have prepared for my family. This is what I have to give - take it, Jesus, like you did that day on the mountainside, take this which is so utterly lacking, so very insignificant, and multiply it in the hearts of my family.

 I can teach and instruct them and tell them the age old Story, but only You can reach their hearts. They are so young, Lord, and there is so little understanding yet. But will you please minister to their spirits in a way that is far beyond anything I can do. And even though their minds may not yet comprehend it all, will you reveal to their hearts what You did for them, why they are here, and may their little souls sing out to You from that place beyond words.

Oh, Holy Spirit, take our off-key singing this week, our cracked pots and feeble attempts at bringing You anything that is of worth, and turn it into a sweet smell to fill your throne room, a beautiful sound that will bless Your ears.

And help this mother to rest in You now. Give me a Mary's heart and let me sit at Your feet that I may gaze into Your beautiful face and hear Your life-giving words, let me see Your nail-pierced Hands this week, and open my eyes to Your Love.

Amen

Our new 'neighbour'

   Remember the pretty little juice box village I made for Sweetpea last year?

   Well, I've been having a hard time throwing away empty juice boxes ever since, so I was delighted when I stumbled upon instructions for making a felt covered version. The original was a gingerbread house, but since Sweetpea is not familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretel yet (we are avoiding stories with witches for now), ours is just a fun hearts and flowers version!

   I made the doll as a cake topper for Sweetpea's third birthday cake, and just refashioned her a bit into a cheery little juice box home owner with a brood of pet baby chicks!!

   The felt elements of the house are not glued down, so Sweetpea can decorate it afresh every time she plays with it - today the windows are at the side of the house, as is the bird house, but who knows where they will be placed next time. And right now the flowers are growing beside the foot path, but tomorrow they may be festooning the sides of the roof. How fun!

I am linking this up to

ABC & 123's Show and Tell blog hop 

and

"Come over to play at the Childhood 101We Play link up!"

A 'FELT good' weekend!

    I just love all this creative energy that starts to course through my veins every time I enter my second trimester of pregnancy! And since the season is definitely changing to cooler, I have been itching to get my hands on some lovely, woolly felt. So, I spent this blissful Saturday afternoon creating all kinds of felty goodie goodness!!

   I first made a fun felt flower that turned a plain striped beanie into a stylish little hat for the colder weather up ahead...

  
   And then I tried my hand at felting a bar of soap and now I am hooked and cannot wait for the shops to open Monday morning so that I can go buy delicious smelling soaps in all shapes and sizes to turn into pretty-pretties for bath time bliss!! When you felt soap like this, you don't need to use a wash cloth - just wash with your gently exfoliating, felt-covered soap! My husband is off to Botswana on a mission outreach at the end of the month and has already asked for one of these to take along for showering with while up there.I strongly doubt his aesthetic appreciation of the whole business, but he obviously knows a good, practical solution when he sees one!

   I am right in the middle of sewing up a storm to get the Joyful Little Ones all covered up for winter. I had just finished a top for Sweetpea this morning that is light pink with playful little dalmations all over, so I thought a felt hair clip with a sweet little pup on one end would look lovely with it. What do you think?

  

  

Sweetie pies and cupcakes

   During a previous play date, Sweetpea and my cousin's young daughter spent an entire Saturday afternoon 'baking' some felt cupcakes in her play kitchen. They would mix imaginary dough in a tiny mixing bowl, stick the cakes in the oven for a while and then decorate their creations with the most splendid, invisible frosting and sprinkles. A tea party would follow, and then 'washing' of the dishes, and then they would start all over again, delighting me with their chef-ly conversations as I listened in from the kitchen.

   They had such fun that I couldn't wait to see what they would do if they had the real thing to work with, so about a week later we invited L over for some bona fide cupcake decorating!

Just after lunch and as soon as ArrowBoy was down for his nap, I set up the picnic table with everything they would need...

Bowls of yummy butter frosting in girlie colours...

...and a muffin tin full of goodies for each.

Two super-excited little chefs just itching to get started...

And then they were off!

Some of the creations...

And the very BEST part:

YUM!!

And of course I couldn't resist and had to join in...the Dad was quite happy with that when he tucked into these after work that afternoon.

   As you can well imagine, Sweetpea had a fairly intense sugar rush after all this, and she and I spent the remainder of the afternoon playing running games in the garden to get it all out of her system!!!

Drum roll, please: I am back!!

   It feels SO good to sit here and type up a blog post again...I have really, really missed these late-night writing sessions, a cup of tea next to my keyboard and the quiet hum of the computer.

   I do apologise for the sudden disappearing act, but trust that you will understand when I say that I haven't been feeling up to much of anything  in the past three months, because...

  Yes, God in His infinite grace has decided to bless my womb once again and I am almost 15 weeks along in this pregnancy!! Yet, delighted as we all are here in the Joyful household, the first trimester has been very hard for me, with severe nausea and exhaustion. BUT, as with my last pregnancy, all that disappeared like clockwork the day I hit 13 weeks, and I am so relieved to be 'back in the saddle', so to speak, especially for my children's sake. I still suffer from back aches and really struggle to sleep at night, but I'll take that over the nausea anytime!!

    Thanks for all the caring e-mails to ask if all was well - it is good to be back!

Play and Learn with Mama - Week 2: "Hou vas, Seekoei!"

    Our book for the week was a lovely Afrikaans picture book called Hou vas, Seekoei! (Translated, that would be Hang on, Hippo!)

Hanna and her dad decides that this beautiful, sunny Saturday is far too nice to spend at home in front of the television, so they pack a picnic lunch and head for the beach, with Hanna's blow-up hippo in tow. When a gust of wind grabs a hold of Hippo, Hanna has to run for all she's worth to catch up to him. A snappy crab nearly pinched him, while a crew of pessimistic seagulls screeches discouragement. But Hanna won't give up that easily, and in the end all ends well.

Elements of the book we focussed on:

• Vocabulary: beautiful, descriptive language describes how the wind bullied Hippo!
• Beach clothing: Sweetpea's favourite new word is 'sarong'!
• Seagulls
• Wind, air, breath 
• Sand and beach activities.

Here' s what we got up to:

Pre-writing and fine motor exercises:

Hippo maze from "Dinkie Mazes" by Smile Education

Tracing the letter S and identifying words related to the story that starts with the s sound

Simple dot-to-dot from "Dinkie Dots" by Smile Education

I was very excited when Sweetpea asked to colour the hippos. She has not shown much interest in colouring before, but asked me if we could colour these and if I would show her how. So I coloured the big dot-to-dot hippo, and she followed suit with the mazes hippos - and loved it! About a week and a half has passed since we did this, and she has been colouring every day since. I leave a few colouring books and pencils out for her and she happily spends at least a few hours a day at this.

Learning about birds

Circle all the sea birds.

We also made a little booklet with facts and pictures about seagulls. The pictures were placed in a little basket, and as we read the heading on each page together (Seagull's webbed feet, Seagull's eggs...etc) she would pick the appropriate picture and glue it down in the space provided on each page. (This was self-correcting in a way, as I had made the spaces/empty rectangles the same size as each individual picture)

'Baking'

We made these fun beach desserts inspired by a similar one I saw here. Ours were made with instant vanilla pudding (mixed with soy milk), crushed Tennis biscuits, and we used an apricot sweetie for a beach ball!

Sweetpea's favourite part was crushing the biscuits with the rolling pin.

Sensory play

We made a batch of play dough and mixed in a whole lot of sand, which Sweetpea then used to make a beach with! She used pebbles and shells (both mentioned in our story book), and one of her small pocket dolls was got the role of Hanna, the main character in our book! 

Here is 'Hanna', riding a dolphin to the beach - not part of the original story, but oh, so much fun that I think it should have been!!

'Science'

Our first science activity involved talking about wind, and how we can make 'wind' with our breaths. We looked at a picture of our lungs from Big and Busy Body by Roger Priddy, and inhaled and exhaled with our hands on our ribs. We then tried to see how many things we could blow - not included here is a small blow-up whale bath toy.

We then learnt about floating and sinking and used a diagram on our dry-erase board to jot down which items sank and which floated.

Art

Sweetpea painted a beach scene with paint mixed with sand. I had pre-cut the shapes and afterwards she glued them down herself. I was very impressed with her composition!! (My apologies: I just can't get this picture to upload in landscape!)

We made footprint flip-flops which will decorate the front cover of our lapbook later.

Another possibility inspired by the book would be to do wax resist painting, like the illustrator used for the clouds. 

A trip to the beach!

 Before we took off we did a quick worksheet on appropriate clothing to wear.

Which clothes can we wear to the beach? 

My youngest sister joined us and the children had soooo much fun hanging out with their aunt!

And just for fun...

A cheery handprint sun! You can print the face from here. (I was going to use this for a backyard beach scene, but we didn't get around to it - see below)

More ideas

Things we just didn't get around to:

• Making a backyard beach scene by sticking poster board palm trees and a merry sun against an outside wall, and then drinking juice from pineapples while lounging on your beach towels, the Beach Boys playing in the background!
• Cut beach pails and shovels from bright cardboard and let the child sort them from largest to smallest
• Counting cardboard sea stars.

Godly Play: The Good Shepherd

   As part of our Play and Learn morning routine, we start the day off with a Bible story. As soon as the house is in order and everyone is dressed and ready, I ask Sweetpea to fetch the Bible Blankie (a small quilt I made for her when she was a baby. We take this to church on Sundays and they are expected to sit quietly on it...yea, well...) When ArrowBoy hears the words 'Bible Blankie' he plonks himself down just where he is!

  To help make the stories more visual and concrete, I follow some of the principles of Godly Play. This is a Montessori-inspired approach that I first read about on Deb Chitwood's blog, Living Montessori Now. At Deb's suggestion I bought the book Young Children and Worship  by Jerome S. Berryman and Sonja Stewart. It is a fantastic introduction to this approach and about half of the book consists of patterns for making your own material. I gleaned a tremendous amount from it, and then added my own style to it, since there are a few things about their approach that I find either lacking or too 'legalised'  in comparison to our family's convictions.It remains a wonderful reference and source of inspiration for our morning Bible stories, though.

  To complement our Play and Learn with Mama theme from last week, for which we looked at the book Psalm 23 as illustrated by Barry Moser (you can see what we did by clicking here), we read the story of the Good Shepherd in the mornings. For this one I followed the guidelines from Young Children and Worship, but used a wooden shepherd figure and sheep from a nativity set that I had made last year. Instead of using strips of tan felt for the sheep fold as the book suggests, we made one out of shaped craft sticks.

Here the Good Shepherd is leading his flock through the narrow and dangerous places toward the safety of the sheepfold. 

  On the first day of our week I read the story from a children's Bible and  just briefly discuss it. We then learn a new song that relates to the story (in this case it was the Afrikaans song, Die Heer is my herder [The Lord is my Shepherd]), and then repeat our memory verse for the week (Psalm 23:1).  On the second day I bring out the Godly Play materials and present the story in this way, and we again sing our new song and practice our memory verse. The same goes for the third day. On the fourth and fifth days of the week I invite Sweetpea to present the story using the materials. She is also welcome to play with the set during the rest of the day, but only in a calm, respectful way. I will give her another toy if she is just wanting to play for fun.