Yes -- I'm back!!! At least for now, that is! I've had a few friends ask about my blog and said they missed reading things, so I figured now that I have some more time on my hands, I'll go back to blogging about my adventures of teaching my children moral excellence. This blog does truly help me stay accountable to the job of training my children in the way they should go!
So the lesson for the day was being JOYFUL vs being ANGRY. I love the book "Parenting With Scripture: A Topical Guide for Teachable Moments" by Kara Dubin. She lists all different types of behaviors and then shares Bible verses related to that behavior. The book also provides some questions and activities for teachable moments, but I feel are a bit advanced for my 2 1/2 yr old and my 4 yr old. So I come up with my own. Tonight, we used the Bible verse from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, which says "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
Owen loves the show "Special Agent Oso" so tonight I made him "Special Agent Owen" and his special alert mission was to locate those faces who were angry and those faces who were joyful. I had gone through one of my magazines and cut out some pictures of angry people and joyful people and glued one to each side of some stock cards. So each card had one angry person on one side and a joyful person on the other side.
We reviewed the Bible verse and talked about what it meant. And I then asked him if he wanted to be joyful or angry. And how does Jesus want us to be. Then I gave him the 4 stock cards and asked him to find all the angry people. We talked about their angry faces and how that makes them feel and how it makes those around them feel. Then I had him flip over the cards to the joyful people and we did the same thing - talked about their faces and how it made them feel and those around them feel.
Then in true Special Agent Oso fashion, we had our "three simple steps" - which were:
Step One: be joyful always (I added the ASL sign as we talked through the steps)
Step Two: pray always
Step Three: give thanks always
And within 20 minutes of our short lesson tonight, Owen started to get upset about something and I asked him, "do you want to be joyful or angry" and he quickly turned his attitude around and said "joyful". Hopefully lesson learned! Ah, the joys of non-conflict training! Even Anna (my 2 1/2 yr old) had a great time going through the lesson with me afterwards!
What areas are you working on? Do you need some creative ideas on how to install a particular teachable moment?
