Still, small voice; retold

We took a few liberties from the biblical text in our dramatic retelling of Elijah's encounter with God on Mt. Sinai:

Three times

My girls have a well-established flair for the dramatic (I know you're curious where that may have come from?) and this week's study of the call of Samuel was fodder for great material. Perhaps taking her cue from Darth Vader, Sarah cupped her hands around her mouth and dropped her voice as low as she possibly could, yelling out "Samuel! Samuel!" In each of our role playing I of course played the role of Eli, allowing me the briefest of naptimes on the couch during each of the three intervals. (This Home School VBS thing has its perks!) We have sinced giggled through the week at calling one another in the deepest voice we can, culminating in a phone call to our friends Brady and Connor. (Three calls in fact, as Samuel was called three times!)

The story inspired other dramatic moments as well, like when the girls and I joined hands to pray about listening to God's call and mid-prayer Sarah slaps Elizabeth in the arm. Stopping to ask what happened, it became clear big sister no longer wanted to hold hands with little sister, leading to the discussion "Is God calling us to hurt each other or love each other?!?" And later, "Is God calling us to be rude or kind?" And finally a discussion with myself, "Is God calling you to bang their heads together or merely send them to their rooms?"

Thankfully God's voice continued to call out to Samuel as he continues to call to us. May God's voice of love be loud and clear to you this week!

~Jen

"Samuel, Samuel..."

This week has been busy for us with tennis lessons, baseball practices, and the oldest at an all-day camp, so we're talking about our memory verse at the table and squeezing our lesson into our nightly story time. First we read the story from one of our picture Bibles. The next night I read it from the "real" Bible. When we got to 3:9, my oldest says, "Hey! That's our verse!" (What an AMAZING coincidence!)

Today I let the younger one watch the YouTube "movie" link that Jen posted under this week's lesson. Another *amazing*  coincidence- "Mom! We read that story!"

In our outdoor play, we practiced taking turns as the Lord and Samuel. The Lord would whisper a mission to Samuel ("Go down the slide and jump off the end"). Samuel would get only one change to listen then had to complete the mission.

To track our progress and add incentive this year, we are talking about God's Treasure. Learning God's Word and God's stories gives us treasure in our hearts. For each week that we do a lesson, each child will also get some tangible treasure (a coin) taped to their chart. At the end of the summer, some of the money will be to keep, and some of it will be to share with God. (How we will split that up, I'm not sure. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Here we go...again!

It would be reaaaaalllly easy to let the summer slide by without much intentional parenting. We love unscheduled mornings of pajamas, late breakfasts, and more Nickelodeon than we care to publicly admit. That's one reason why it's great to have a circle of friends to join us along the motherhood journey-- to laugh with, to vent with, and to help hold us accountable. (So when our kids write their "What I Did This Summer" essays in the fall it's not just plot summaries of The Fairly Odd Parents.)

We are excited for another summer of growing together in faith with our children as we bring Vacation Bible School into our own homes each week. We organized things a little differently this year with the hope of adding more context and discussion to our memorization of Bible verses. Each month has a theme and within each theme are memory verses, Bible stories and songs. We continue our Say it!/Play it!/Pray it! method, so each week still has its own reading, play activities, and prayer suggestions.

As we partner together in at-home Christian education, we hope you will consider joining us. Or, at least, we hope you will check in on us once in a while to make sure we haven't sunk into a summer of Bubble Guppies. Thanks for being a part of our circle! ~ Molly & Jen