So, chicken pox and a broken hand slows life down a bit (read all about it here)!

So for now have a look at this video of Mikey acting out our creation story. I feel this shows how important creative story telling is. He engages so completely with story time and is able to show us that he understands and enjoys it!

Plus, he’s cute isn’t he?!

Please excuse my shrill voice though – urgh!

Oooof! Who knew it would take all evening to work out how to upload a video larger than a measly 2MB?!!

If you would like to see how our Bible time works check out this link on you tube. Dan is quieter than usual, but you can see how using signing, limited language and objects of reference helps Mikey engage. You can also see why we do the same thing over and over again – it really works! I hope you can see how much we enjoy this part of our day. Hooray for lovely little moments in our family’s routine!

I had a couple of hours with just Dan and Jemima this afternoon and so we did a craft I’d been wanting to do for ages.

Basically, as we talked through our Bible story we created a giant picture. It was so much fun and great to have another way of chatting about what we’ve been learning.

Dan is now at the stage where he will happily do something like this for a good while – although it certainly helps that there are lots of different tasks involved so it doesn’t involve too much solid concentration. Jemima hangs out in her play-gym while we’re doing this – it’s tough being 12 weeks old!

Perfect world, I would do this bit by bit. I’d do the light and dark and sky one day, another day we’d do the water, another day we’d make animals. But Mikey can’t bear anything like this so getting it done has depended on Mikey being somewhere else.

Dan really enjoyed it. We got messy and chatted about the things God made. It was fab!

In terms of preparation, I guess this is a more time-consuming task. I bought things like cheap blue wrapping paper and flower and star stickers a while ago and had chopped up a bread bag for the water a couple of evenings ago. To be honest, in order to make the most of unexpectedly having some time with Dan, he watched Zingzillas while I got the rest ready!

Oh and that green thing is a tree, OK? I know it looks like a giant leek!

Watch out for new posts on great books to read with your kids and some CUTE videos of Mikey telling our Bible story.

We have season tickets for a local safari park. We were grateful for them on today’s visit – we ended up zoooooming round just trying to get to the exit as soon as we could. The rain came down. Jemima was wailing (the picture below is her at her happiest!), Mikey was growling and kicking the window (eek, don’t you know there are lions out there?!) and Dan was utterly one-track-minded about seeing the giraffes, which of course are the very last animal you get to!

We did manage a couple of chats about creation though. We talked about why God made giraffe with long necks and Dan wanted us to pretend to be giraffes eating tasty leaves. I also asked Dan who made the giraffe. I got answers like :”me”, “the camel”, and his eternal favourite: “I’m not sure”. Hahahaha! I love it when a plan doesn’t even nearly come together!

Still, that’s normal family life isn’t it. It’s making the moments count even when they’re very short moments in a day that feels very long and rainy!

For younger children something that grows fast is good (mustard or cress) or something ready-planted which has pretty flowers/a nice smell/fruit for some instant gratification! The picture shows Dan at 15 months having fun planting mustard seeds (notice the ones round his mouth – mmm, tasty!)

Older children may cope better with waiting and enjoy the process of watering and watching seedlings develop. Sunflowers, tomatoes, beans, etc. are good for this.

Check when you buy plants or seeds that they will grow at the time you want to plant!

How to talk about God:

Lots of repetition of phrases from the story “God made flowers”, “God made plants and trees”. You can talk about how God made land and that it’s perfect for growing things in. Talk about the process you’re going through as you plant. Keep reminding them that we plant the seeds but it’s God who makes them grow!

As you see your plants grow and flourish, relish the excitement and wonder of your children! Keep reminding them that the amazing process of growth and the beauty of the plant shows them how awesome their creator God is.

Activities can be:

Completely free:

Go outside into your garden or a park or walk down the street and look at some of the things God made. Trees, plants, insects, dogs, birds, ducks, etc. Why not do a bark rubbing, feed the ducks, ask to join a friend when they take their dog for a walk or feed their guinea pig, look under a rock and watch the insects scuttle or even just look at a book with animals in or watch an animal programme on TV.

Very cheap:

You may need to pay for some petrol to get to a garden centre, but they are a great place to look at interesting plants and best of all they often have fascinating aquariums! Many museums are free and just cost you the price of transport and maybe a cake if you feel like a treat!

Proper money:

Visit a zoo, farm or safari park and look at the amazing animals!

How do you chat about God in all of this?

For very young children it is enough to just be excited and amazed at the fun and fascinating things you see. Show them that creation is eye-poppingly wonderful!! Encourage them to explore as much as is safe (letting them hold a tickly ant, collect leaves and sticks as you walk through a park, stroke a rabbit). To introduce them to the big ideas of what the Bible teaches just include phrases like “God made the duck”. It’s really helpful to use exact phrases from your Bible time too as this will help them to relate their experience during the day to what you teach them later on.

For older children you can talk about things like where each animal lives and relate that to other elements of the creation story (e.g. fish in water – God made the sea). It’s fun to talk about the things that make animals different from each other – what ones are big, what ones are small, what ones have pointy ears, which animals have funny noses or colourful bottoms. It’s great to point out that God decided what the elephant would look like and to try to work out why he made the elephant as it is.

As well as really getting them to understand that God made all the animals, birds, etc., you can talk about what that tells us about God. “Wow, God is strong”, “God must be very big if he made a giraffe”, “Do you know what? God thinks the ant he made is GREAT!!!”. The picture above shows Dan trying to push a tree over – a great chance to talk not just about how strong a tree is but also how strong the God who made it is.

How it works for us:

Dan is just beginning to understand that God made things. We can ask him “who made dogs?” and he will say, “God did”. We include chat about what that tells us about who God is to stretch his thinking and to initiate more conversation.

Mikey is at the stage where he is learning to recognise new animals and is able to ‘sign’ familiar ones. He loves exploring the outdoors and learns mainly through experience rather than being told things. With him we love to share his excitement and talk and sign about how God made all this incredible nature!

Jemima? Well she’s small but she can be tickled with a leaf and ‘smell’ a flower. It doesn’t hurt to tell her the truth that God made the astonishing world that she is soaking up!

Hasn’t God made a fabulous world?!

How could you make your next walk outside an opportunity to talk about God?

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

I think this is the biggest and best part of teaching our children about Jesus.  It’s a big challenge to those of us who are parents of young children. As fun and important as ‘Bible times’ are, there is nothing like just getting in the groove of chatting naturally with our kids about Jesus. At it’s heart – this is what play on the Word is all about. I think that’s a big step for most of us: we often find it hard to talk about Jesus with our close Christian friends and it can feel even more strange and peculiar talking to a 2 year old about God!

When Mikey first moved in, I didn’t feel like a ‘natural’ mum – you know, one of those women who just know what to do with babies because they’ve just got the maternal knack. I had to learn how to talk to a baby and I felt a bit self-conscious doing baby-talk and singing nursery rhymes when other people were around! I soon learned though!!

It’s a bit like that with chatting to them about Jesus – it’s something we often need to consciously learn rather than being something that just comes naturally. BUT I think it’s an essential. It’s too easy to slip in to the mentality that says, “my kids learn about Jesus at Sunday club”, or, “reading a Bible story before bed is enough”. We don’t do that with any other part of their education, so why do it with the most important and thrilling part?

For example: we don’t expect our kids to learn numbers because we count to 10 once a day – no, we count the steps as we walk up stairs, we sing number songs, we tell them ‘one more’ go on the slide, we count mouthfuls of food and count as we play hide and seek.

Numbers are handy to know, but Jesus? Essential!!

What opportunities could you take over the next few days to talk to your kids about Jesus? I’ll be posting some ideas and examples of what we do over this coming week. Why not share your ideas and experience – we could all do with a good bit of encouragement in this area! It’s been lovely seeing that our Bible time has been a fab springboard for fun play and chat about God!

I thought I’d explain how we tell the creation story and tell you what we’re using for objects of reference. We’ll be adding more objects as we do more play – for instance we’ll be doing some craft and making a tree soon, so we’ll use what we make at story time.

Excuse the bad pictures – evenings are best for blogging but not best for good light for pics!

We sign all the way through the story – the main signs in this story are “God”, and “made”. They’re quite easy! “God” is pointing up and looking up at where you’re pointing. “Made” is a mime of making something with your hands.

So, here’s what we do!

First I get things out of a sparkly gift bag. This helps keep everything together (which in our house of mess and clutter is quite a challenge!) and it’s also another little cue to the boys that something special is happening.

I have a script in front of me, but it’s not long before you know it by heart. Notice from the photo the corrections and changes – most of our stories tend to get altered a few times once we’ve actually done them out loud to the boys!

When it was dark (cover the boys’ eyes), God made light (take hands away from their eyes with a flourish)!

God made the sky (reach up with both hands).

God made dry land (sign “dry” and get the boys to touch a rock)

and wet water (sign “wet water” and gently spray the boys with water – this is less messy than allowing them to splash in a container full of water, but I had considered doing that).

God made flowers (sign “flower”) and trees (sign “tree”) and they grew, and grew, and GREW (with hand still signing “tree” make the tree grow each time)!

God made the bright sun (shine a torch), the glowing moon and the twinkling stars (shine torch on a glittery star).

God made the fish (sign “fish”)!

God made the birds (sign “bird” and tickle the boys with a feather and let them touch it)!

God made all the animals (sign “animal” and look at some of the pictures of animals on their tablecloth, make animal noises)!

Then, best of all, God made people like you and me (generally here, instead of “you and me”, I will sign and say each of our names).

“Finished!” (sign “finished”), God said. “It’s great!” (thumbs up, big smiles).

Wow! God made everything (sign “God made everything” and do plenty of clapping, whooping and saying “wow, amazing”!!)!

Then we pray and Dan asks to do it again! We used to do every story twice but Dan gets a bit too excited and forgets to eat.

Obviously this is the formal bit, but this afternoon we were chatting about flowers (can’t remember why!) and so I did the sentence from the story about flowers and trees. I was happy to leave it at that, knowing that it reinforced what we are doing at Bible time and that it helps it apply to real life. But both boys really engaged and so we ended up doing the whole story while sat playing in the garden.

Oh, and does anyone else have weetabix cement on their table? It’s become a constant in our lives.

Our Bible times for the summer are based on creation. We’re going to do the creation story from Genesis 1+2 and relate elements of it to stories about Jesus or stories Jesus told. So, we’ll be looking at Luke 12 and God’s provision for the birds to remind us that he cares for us, and Luke 5 and the enormous catch of fish to teach the boys that Jesus is in charge of all the fish!

We tell our Bible story at teatime when the boys are eating their pudding. It’s when they’re most likely to sit still, focus and listen!

Here is our version of Genesis 1:1-2:3

When it was dark, God made light!

God made the sky.

God made dry land and wet water.

God made flowers and trees and they grew, and grew, and GREW!

God made the bright sun, the glowing moon and the twinkling stars.

God made the fish!

God made the birds!

God made all the animals!

Then, best of all, God made people like you and me.

“Finished!”, God said. “It’s great!”.

Wow! God made everything!

As we tell the story we are using actions, sign language, objects of reference (e.g. a feather or a torch) and, of course, our voices and faces to enhance the telling. All this helps the boys engage and particularly helps Mikey understand. It’s designed to aid memory and makes it a lot more fun for everyone!

It’s been a rainy old Lancashire day (nothing very new!), so this afternoon while playing inside we closed the curtains, got a couple of blankets and torches and played dark and light games. It was fun to hide under the blankets, it was great to suddenly shine a torch under a dark blanket where Mikey was hiding and the boys really loved exploring the torches.

All the time I used the key words from our story: “dark” and “light” and repeated the sentence from our teatime story while we played. After hearing the story for the first time last night, Dan wanted to try to tell it himself – his account of creation is rather selective!!

It was fun, it didn’t take much time to get ready and we could do it again another day. Perfect!

Oh, and here’s one I nearly deleted:

Classy family, eh?!

Unless you’re the mum of three small kids, eh?!

My challenge for the summer: entertain our two boys (4 and 2), attend to the needs of our two-month old girl, and help them all get to know Jesus better.

We’re going to do stories and play that help us discover more about our creator God, his brilliant world and his son who is boss of it all!

I’m excited. And grateful that Dave, my lovely husband, will be around too!