T Is For Train

I couldn't get enough of the letter Tt last week.  We made one final construction paper project.  The photo above shows what you will need to cut out or trace for the kids to cut out. ☺

I drew some train tracks onto the paper to help the kids visualize where the train should go.   They look amused, I know!  It was because we had so many pieces that I hesitated to give all of them to the kids at once to avoid having them all fall on the floor or get mixed up.

The gluing continued for a while. 

Tt is for train!  I love this little guys' rendition of the conductor.   So cute!

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥



Let's Just Bake

We had only four kids yesterday morning and that was as good of an excuse as any to just bake something!  We got out the cookbook and aprons and threw everything into the bowl for peanut butter cookies.

It's so nice when we get a small group because it's easier to let the kids help.

The kids couldn't stop talking about how the egg looked in the bowl.  Fascinating stuff.  They thought that was the best part!

Then the time came to hold the mixer.

The mixer then became the best part!

I forgot to take photos of all of us eating cookies afterward.  We were too busy I suppose.  It was a beautiful sunny day again.  ☼

**Please pray for Adam as he is looking for a full time job.  He needs to find one right away! **

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥



God Made These

What a beautiful day it was yesterday!  It was perfect for a nature walk.  We talked about looking for and collecting the things that God has made.

The kids each had a paper bag to hold their collections.

Off we went to the park!

"Did God make the playground toys?"  I asked them.  "No!!"  They were right.  They do know that God allowed someone to have the knowledge to create the toys.

Here we were, being reminded that we are looking for item of nature.  Things that God created. 

"Did God create a flip flop?"   I asked.  "No!" They replied.  Smart kids.

Into the woods we wandered. :)

The collecting began.

The kids realized that they were surrounded by things that God made!  Flowers, weeds, grass, trees, leaves, rocks, pinecones, seeds, dirt, sunshine.  "But we can't collect the sunshine." One told me.

An outing with Adam wouldn't be complete if there wasn't some sort of tall tale being told.  He is now pointing them in the direction of the big brown bear that lives in the tree trunk. 

They were quiet.. maybe pondering it.

"Did God make shadows?"  "Yes!!"  Boy are we thankful to see the sunshine this week!

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥



Tt Is For Tractor

We created tractors out of the letter T yesterday!  The photo above shows you what you will need to cut out ahead of time.

The kids colored some grass onto the paper so the tractor would have something to drive on.

The next step is to glue the wheels onto the paper.

Next, add the letter T.  Most of the kids got the wheels mixed up, but they were pretty excited to see the letter T creating a tractor!  A couple of them noticed that the steering wheel was a T as well.

The art wall looked like a tractor parade! 

I am really proud that most of these kids can still recognize and name the alphabet letters out of order up to the letter Tt.  They are SO SMART!  I am so blessed to have this opportunity.  I love to teach. 

We had a birthday yesterday!  Here he is, 6 years old and putting together a Bionicle guy.  Somehow my usual gift of stuffed animal and book just didn't seem like it was a good fit for him, and I was right.  He enjoyed his special day.

Please pray for Adam and I!  A change in circumstances has come up and we need guidance. 

God knows the details.  Thank you!

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥



Butterfly Art

We created butterfly art last week. I blobbed four colors of paint onto a paper plate and let the kids choose which colors they would like their butterfly to be.

We painted the hands as shown above.  The more you dot different colors, the mroe interesting the butterfly will be!  We learned that butterflies have lots of designs on their wings.

The handprints must be placed just right!  The fingers create the top wings, the thumbs create the bottom.  I love the colors!

Add a body and pen in some antennae and a face, and you have a butterfly!

They looked great next to the flowers!

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥



Fingerprint Flowers

Last week we threw out some worksheets and created fingerprint flowers. 

I thought they looked like Delphinium.  Or a flowering cactus, but we stuck with Delphinium.

First, the kids painted a large 11.  These would be the stems.

We had a paper plate with some beautiful purple paint spread out onto it. 

This makes for easy thumb dipping!

Dip...dot..repeat.

It was nice to add some spring flowers to our wall!  It was so dark last week with heavy rains that we never believed would end.  This morning we have some sunshine to dry us out a little.

The flower box by the front door looks festive with tulips from the gardens.

Here is what the Delphinium is doing in the garden right now. 

We have a few plants and they are coming up nicely.

I am itching to get into the veggie garden but I feel like it's still too cold and anything I plant right now will rott in the cold wet.

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥



My Testimony

     The blog won't upload my photos- I don't know what is going on! Last night in class we shared our testimonies.  Testimony= How I came to know the Lord.  I got up there, very nervous and what came out was like scratching on chalkboard!  The story did not come out the way I had expected it to-- so much stuff was missing and out of order.  I thought I'd redeem myself because I can't stop thinking about it now.  I have to share it correctly so God can get the glory of what He has done in my life.
      I grew up in Utah.  Grantsville, about 30 minutes Southwest of Salt Lake City.  My mom taught us about Jesus and made sure we knew that he died on the cross for our sins.  That knowledge stayed in my mind, but that was all it was.  Head knowledge.  I didn't do anything with it, think about it, learn from it or accept that as a gift.   
     We didn't attend church on a regular basis, but maybe two or three times that I can remember.  Surrounded by a heavily dominated Mormon society, my mom kept us out of that religion.  The first experience I had with the Mormon church was not being allowed into the church because I was not wearing a dress.  I never forgot that. My friend invited me and then had to leave me at the door.  Never again would I attempt to go because I was sure I was "less than."
     Fast forward several years, my family moved us to Colorado and I graduated from Canon City High School and got married.  I had always wanted to be a mother and raise a family.  My husband was a non believer.  It didn't matter to me at the time, and frankly, the topic only came up at a pivotal point in my life.  After about two years of marriage I noticed the alcoholism creeping into the marriage.  He was drinking every night, whether he was home or not, and never went anywhere without his beer.  It consumed him, and I was consumed with arguing about it.   We had a toddler girl, bought a house and I became pregnant after moving into the house.  The marriage just slid downhill at such a fast pace I couldn't even believe it.  I didn't know what love was- any my daily life consisted of single parenting and work.  That was it.   I would wait up all night worrying that he wouldn't get home in time for me to go to work, and when he would arrive it was usually explosive! Furniture would literally fly.  I now praise God that this stuff happened while my babies were sleeping.  They were sheltered from the storm.
    In a desperate time, I prayed to God for help.  Hunkered down beside my bed, hiding from closet doors that had been ripped off and were being thrown at me, God made me pray.  He was saying, "Don't you see that you cannot do this alone?  Why have you not called on me?" I was scared for my life at that moment- I had no hope for anything.  I wasn't sure I really knew how to pray!  I prayed out loud for God to help me out of this situation.  The closet doors stopped flying at me and because I was praying out loud, my attacker didn't know how to respond and left the house.   I did not let him back in.  It was the first step back into the arms of God.
   
Meanwhile, God sent someone into my life to teach me.  My husband Adam got a job at the daycare I was working at.  I didn't really like him very much, and actually had him removed from my classroom because he was too distracting for the kids.  He was upsetting the order of my schedule.  He mentioned something about being a counselor at a church camp and my ears perked up.  I knew I wanted to know the Lord and here was someone who must know how!
 
    I am a crazy dreamer most nights.  I had an incredible dream around that time- I was walking down the street in Grantsville, a street I had walked down hundreds of times.  I realized that I was not alone, but walking arm in arm with Adam.  There was an amazing feeling of happiness, peace, satisfaction in my soul while we walked arm in arm, not saying a word.  I had never experienced that feeling before.  I woke up.  It felt horrible to wake up, because here I was back in this situation of misery.  I wanted to feel that feeling again.  (And why on earth am I dreaming about Adam?  He drives me a little crazy.)   I truly believe that God gave me that dream to show me that I can trust Adam and that there was something there for me.  Strange, I know.
     Adam started coming over to my house after my kids were in bed.  He brought his Bible.  He actually read it to me.  We talked about so much stuff-- my heart and soul was craving information.  We read about what marriage is supposed to look like and about Gods love for us.  We talked about John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whomever believes in him shall not perish."
   
I finally knew what it meant, all of those times my mom told us what Jesus did.  I accepted that, believed it.  It was starting to make sense.
   
I started to pray that God would take all of these burdens from me.  I no longer wanted the house, the cars, the struggle, the darkness.  One by one, I was relieved of all of these things.  He even sent that abusive man away from me and my children and have kept us safe from him every day since then.  I was given a second chance!   Now I actually had hope!   Do you see the power that God has to change your life?
   
A pivotal moment for me was when Adam invited me and my kids to church.  I never forgot the way I felt being turned away as a child.  How hard it was for me to enter a building of people who I was sure were going to look at me and my kids and assume I was trash and ignore me.  I was sure they would voice their concerns about what I was doing, trying to leach onto Adam.  I clearly didn't deserve him.  I honestly didn't want him to waste his life on me.  How wrong I was, the first person I met was Ruby, and she jumped right out of her chair and came to greet us and was very kind and welcoming.  The Lord was showing me how a church family can love.  This was where I was supposed to be.  I was not "less than", but welcomed.

    We got involved as a couple and married.  I was experiencing real love for the first time in my life!   I had no idea marriage could be such a blissful experience.   I now rely on my husband who teaches me and loves me.  He looked at me as not less than, but someone who needed the Lord desperately and he wasn't afraid to share that gift with me.  I need to share that gift as well.  Without messing it up so much- so here it is!

    God loves you, he has given you an "out".   If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and ask God to come into your life, He WILL!  I have experienced it.  I can see the difference in my life then vs. now.  Who knew that God would pluck me up out of life of sin, hatred, anger, worry, disbelief, darkness and turn me into a youth pastors wife?  God knew, that's who.  All of those things happened because God knew that's what it would take to get me on my knees.  I've been there ever since.
  

Birthday/Bubbles

We had a Birthday day yesterday.  Hooray for cookie sandwiches!! This was the big, "Say cheeeese" before she blew out the candle.

 She was 100% successful in extinguishing her flame. ;) 

Something of note: we have been stacking blocks in group time to get an idea of just what the numbers look like in stacked blocks form.  Right now we are working on counting to sixteen.  

The kids really like getting nervous about whether or not the blocks will topple down with a crash.  We have been stacking them up on the book shelf so that in the event that they DO crash, it'll be entertaining.   Actually seeing sixteen blocks can help them remember the number rather than just counting out loud.

We went outside to blow some bubbles.  This time we had some wedding bubbles from the dollar store.  They are small and just right for small hands, but a bit of a challenge to actually blow bubbles.  The kids had to learn that if they blow GENTLY, the bubbles will form easier.

Dip....blow...dip...blow...

They got it! 

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

Smudge Vs. Ducks

Meet Bonnie and Clyde.  (Original, right?)  These are the two ducks we notice on our street every Spring.  If they had entered our yard in the past, we didn't notice.  They seem to pop by every day now.  There is no shortage of bread here.  They just kind of waddle around, eating bugs out of the garden.  They aren't shy!

Someone else is interested.  Maybe a bit TOO much.  Adam and I joke about what beast Smudge will haul in next.  Fish?  Goose?  He is an amazing hunter.  I wasn't too happy when he noticed the ducks. 

He wasn't too happy that I noticed his noticing.  Inside he went.  I was pretty surprised he wasn't thinking clearly enough to exit through the cat door and go around the house to get the ducks.  He couldn't take his eyes off of them for a second.  

Yesterday the kids were delighted that the ducks came to the back yard for a visit!  Hooray!  We could feed them!  We are not allowed to feed the ducks in the park, so I was very happy they came to us.

 Even the little ones pushed some bread through the fence for them. 

 "Miss Cole!   Miss Cole!"  Everyone made sure that I was looking. :)

Enter Smudge.  We didn't know that he had been hiding in the tall grass waiting for the right moment to kill our joy.  He darted at them.  We did get to see the ducks spread their wings-- it was pretty exciting.  For the first time I wasn't egging on Smudge with his hunting fiasco.  I cannot imagine he would actually succeed in hauling A DUCK home.  For now, he has someone to play with though.  I hope Bonnie and Clyde return. 

Meanwhile, Ss is for snake and sun.  We threw out the boring S worksheet and did some coloring.

The tulips look so beautiful!  I remember planting 70 of them last Fall- I'm very grateful for the bright colors. 

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥