We had one of THOSE days today. The kids were whiny and not listening, argumentative and complaining and all this before 9am! My patience was thin and my voice was raising several decibel levels a second. I had to take a 30 second time out with God and make a decision about what was going to get done today. We (God and I) decided that we (the kids AND I) all needed a Galatians 5:22-23 reminder. I scrapped the lesson plans I had for the morning, got the Bible, sat the kids down and we talked about the fruit of the Spirit.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control"
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control"
We talked through each one and what it would look like if we were putting them into practice. By the end of the lesson, attitudes had changed and peace had returned to the house! I printed off some apple shapes and let the kids colour them. We wrote one fruit of the spirit on each one, making one complete set for each child. Then we made a huge tree to hang on the wall... the kids used green paint to make hand print leaves and I painted the trunk. For the rest of the week I will give the kids the opportunity to stick a fruit on the tree as I observe them practicing one of the fruit of the spirit. Hopefully we will soon have a tree laden with fruit! (Pictures to follow.)
Tomorrow we return to regularly scheduled programming... :)
Now THAT is the Work of the Spirit!
ReplyDeleteWhat a GREAT idea!!!!! I LOVE it! Do you plan on keeping the tree up? You could send the kids over to the tree when you have another time where a lesson on the fruits of the spirit would be applicable. I think our tree would get used regularly!! I really like this idea!!!! I am totally bookmarking it!!!
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