A Fruit-full Summer

Summer break is upon us! Jack finished up school last week (sigh, I now have a 2nd grader!!) and Sophie finishes up this week. We are all very much looking forward to a literal break from so many activities, but I don't want to throw routine completely out the window...in our household too much "down-time" leads to cranky kids & bickering. So for some time now I have been pondering ways to keep the kids on some sort of schedule this summer, to keep them learning/reading, and to introduce a more formal Bible devotional time each day.

I have purchased "summer grade books" for the academic learning portion (page a day type workbooks) and  blank notebooks for writing, drawing and journaling. Jack has a summer reading list from school to keep him motivated & interested. 

For the Bible devotional portion, the Lord put it on my heart to focus this summer on the Fruit of the Spirit. (I think that was on one of those days where we ALL were running short on patience & kindness!) Our summer break is roughly 10 or 11 weeks long, so I figure we will focus on one "fruit" each week leaving us with a couple of weeks to work on the biggies twice...patience & self-control, anyone?

I mentioned this to the kids on Sunday night & they were actually very excited. They are already familiar with the Fruit of the Spirit and we talk about the different fruit frequently. They probably first learned about the Fruit of the Spirit from this song we sing at church: 

(We sing the chorus with cute hand motions, so if you don't know it, ask my kids!)

I asked which Fruit we should start with & we all agreed on LOVE since it is the first listed in Galatians 5:22-23. 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

So for the past couple of days, we have been talking about love....how to show love to others, what the Bible says about love, etc. I am so pleased because we have had great conversations about this in the car or at home. And the kids are quick to point out when others are displaying love in their actions (or not displaying it as the case may be!) We have talked about the verses that they already know concerning love:

"Love one another." John 13:34, 1 John 4:7 and 1 John 4:11

"This is my commandment that you love one another." John 15:17 

"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Deut. 6:5

And added to that verse in the New Testament (Mark 12 & Luke 10), "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

Today we are going to use the concordance (or biblegateway.com) to look up some new verses about love and pick one new one to memorize for the rest of the week.

A few examples that the kids came up with for showing love:

obeying (not grudgingly, but with a joyful heart), sharing, being helpful, giving hugs & kisses (that one was what Darcy did when we asked her how to show love!), letting others go first, & serving others.

It has been fun to see the ways the kids are incorporating the fruit of the week into our daily living! Hopefully they will remain interested all summer long...Jack just mentioned a sticker chart for when they display a the fruit of the week, so we will probably work on that this afternoon. And maybe do fruity treats (roll-ups, fruit snacks, Popsicles, etc.) for when they earn 5 stickers, etc...I will be praying that the Lord will keep this activity fresh all summer & that He helps me display the Fruit, too! O Lord, please grow much Fruit in each of us this summer! I'll keep you posted on how things go the rest of this week with LOVE...and next week's fruit is JOY!

And because I can't do a post without pictures, here are a few from this week...summer fun!

Drew is smiling a lot now & just starting to giggle, too!

Water balloon fun!!!

Drew enjoying the water balloon fight!