Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Doorposts Plants/Cornerstones Co-Ed Version

I do just love all of the Doorposts materials that I own.  For a while now, I have wondered how I will go about doing all these activities with the girls and all of the other activities with the boys.  And so,  I have put it off.  I felt a little discouraged and totally avoided these resources on my bookshelf.  Oh, I would take them off occasionally with renewed inspiration that I could do it.  It wasn't until recently that I pulled them off the shelf with a  sparkle in my eye.  I had was gonna put a twist on it..and get 'er done!  Thus, we have  (drum roll) Doorposts Co-ed edition!!  There are a few things that will be gender specific, but many things are studies that are appropriate for both ladies and gentlemen .  My idea is to take the items aimed specifically at the girls and use those ideas during our weekly 'girl date' and make suggestions to my wonderful husband on those specific things for the guys to chatter about while they do...whatever they do.

This week, we've been working on prayer.  I have noticed that many of the activities that are in both books are similar, if not the same.  There are definitely a few differences, but nothing that can't be tweaked.
So, here's what I did for:
Day 1:
(this all takes place around our table at some randomly chose, inspirational time of day)
Looked up several Scriptures and discussed prayer.  Talked about prayer as a means of building a relationship.  Deep discussions here.   And, we took to the model prayer to learn what the Bible says about it.  During this portion, children are coloring a page from here.  We practice learning the Lord's Prayer several times.  We create a prayer chart to keep track of requests and their dates as well as answers and their dates. It's not fancy..really.  When we went through a few of the things that were important to them to pray about, we posted it on the fridge.  It is easily visible so that we will not forget it.  The older children copied the Scripture that they looked up and read aloud earlier.  We prayed..for our family, the requests on the chart, and whatever came to mind at the moment.

Day 2:
(this takes place in our living room on the sofa..nothing formal...children are not necessarily sitting up straight)
We read a few more of the Scriptures listed to find out new things that the Bible says about prayer, along with their discussions about what that means. More discussion on prayer being the backbone of building a relationship with God.  It's all very spontaneous...no lesson plans. Just going with whatever comes up and the revelation that comes at the moment through the Word and the Holy Spirit.  We read through a prayer from a book of prayers.  I used The Power of a Praying Parent to pray a prayer of protection over my children.  They were enthusiastic to hear specific things, word-for-word from the Scripture for them. During the course of this time, we reveiwed the Lord's Prayer 2 or 3 times, as that is what we are working on memorizing for our Scripture memory this week.  We did not get around to the copywork , but each child should copy the Scripture that they were assigned to look up and read aloud at the beginning.  I'm ok with not getting every single box checked off..what I'm really aiming for is understanding.  And lastly, one child prayed for the things on our list we made on day1 as well as for further prayer requests mentioned.

4 comments:

  1. Great idea!!! Our only son is 3 (almost 4) and we were running into the same problem. I have been trying to tweek some things to fit for him also.

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  2. Sounds great! I think that's what matters too; just getting them to understand it and retain it, not necessarily getting boxes checked off.

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  3. I think it's great that you saw a way you could meet the needs of all of your children. My son is not yet at a point where he can understand some of the things that I am teaching my daughter, so I will wait a bit to get him included.

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  4. This is very inspiring! I've found that the bible lessons that I plan on a general topic...but with a go-with-the-flow format are the best. It allows me the structure to teach something specific but the flexibility that allows me to talk about what's on the kids hearts concerning that topic (and sometimes we chase rabbits...but truly we learn so much from these rabbits).

    Thank you for sharing!

    Michelle
    www.thinkingchristianfamily.blogspot.com

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