Fruit of the Spirit and Strawberries

This summer the children and I are studying the Fruit of the Spirit during our morning Bible time. We have covered: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience (longsuffering), Kindness, Gentleness, and Goodness. We have a song for each week, a verse and a coloring page. I have also tried to incorporate a craft and hands-on object lesson for each topic. We have done: John 3:16 stuffed paper hearts to hang from the ceiling, Happy face coloring sheets, John 14:27 doves to hang from the ceiling, we spent a week trying to be kind (it's hard!), we tried to gently not pop a balloon with a skewer (it didn't work! So we threaded large buttons on angel hair pasta. Anastasia loved that one!) This week we took water from  a large full cup and transferred it to a small empty cup. This illustrated our limited capacity for goodness and God's unlimited supply and how we get our goodness only from Him. Goodness has been the most abstract and so I am focusing on the fact that God only is good and He gives us any goodness we have. Our theme this week: Goodness Does!
In addition to our Fruit of the Spirit Bible times we did a week-long unit study on Strawberries. We read The First Strawberries, by Joseph Bruchac and an early non-fiction book about Strawberries plants. We happen to have strawberry plants potted on our deck. They have produced fruit all summer and we have observed the flowers and eaten the fruit. We rubbed some of the leaves with crayons and took a morning looking at the plant with a magnifying glass, discussing different aspects of the plant. Ana used produce cartons as stamps for painting, Tristan and Ana painted with Strawberry Jell-O paint. They were disappointed that the smell faded when the gelatin dried, but it was fun.

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