His Treasure Seekers

Over the last couple weeks, our devotions in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski have been about Jacob and Esau.  These are some of those stories where the Bible just tells us what happened without passing judgment on the main characters, which leaves us with a bit of explaining to do when it comes to teaching our children.  The stories are found in Genesis 25 and 27, and in them you’ll find multiple instances of lying, parents playing favorites with their children, and a mother encouraging her child to deceive his father at the expense of another child.  What do we make of all this? I think the answer comes in the chapters still ahead of us.  Jacob was the one through whom God would keep His promise of a Savior, but he wasn’t chosen because of his own righteousness..  Jacob may have been deceitful in this story, but as he gets older, God works in his life and changes him (though he too plays favorites with his children, and that brings plenty of drama of its own).

Since there are only five devotions for each week in Long Story Short, we spent one of our extra nights reading the story in The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski) and the other going through Bible verses about honesty (which Eric looked up easily in Parenting With Scripture by Kara Durbin–see my review from last year).

Go-Along Books

We spent a lot of time focusing on how not to follow Jacob and Esau’s example.  Two books I love are We’re Very Good Friends, My Brother and I  and Brothers Forever by P.K. Hallinan.  They’re very similar, so I wouldn’t recommend getting both, but I think every family with two or more boys should read at least one of these.  (I think the first one is my favorite.  I actually bought a second copy after our first got a bit of damage because it’s one I really want to keep around.)  Reading these led to some good discussions on how brothers should treat each other, which then led to a discussion of our memory verse (the “Golden Rule”): “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Matthew 7:12.

Bible Notebook

For our notebook page on this story, I adapted this idea for making a painting/print of the twins.  Then instead of coloring the men, we just glued hair onto Esau (which we had saved from the boys’ haircuts the night before).  It was messy(!) but the boys really got a kick out of using their own hair.

Activities

I was surprised by how many activities flowed naturally out of these stories.

The first week (Genesis 25:19-34) we compared the descriptions of Jacob and Esau (physical appearance, occupations, personalities, etc.), looked at the difference between Daddy’s “hairy” arm and Mommy’s “smooth” one, and fixed lentils to go with dinner like the stew Jacob traded for Esau’s birthright.

The second week (Genesis 27) we talked about the “5 Senses” and looked for the part each played in the story.

• Sight (Isaac’s eyes are “dim” and he can’t see well enough to know who’s who.)
• Hearing (Isaac remarks that “the voice is Jacob’s,” which confuses him because of what his other senses tell him.)
• Taste (Rebekah prepares goat meat with special spices so it will taste like Esau’s hunting catch.)
• Smell (Jacob wears Esau’s robe, which leads Isaac to comment, “See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.”
• Touch (Rebekah covers the smooth skin of Jacob’s hands and neck with the goatskin so he will feel hairy like Esau.)

In addition to discussion, here are some of the 5 senses activities I found: trace and color pages at Making Learning Fun, a mini-book at Kidzone, page at Homeschool Share.

There are some activity pages at DLTK-Bible related to the story as well.

We also used spent time in prayer during Bible time blessing each child.

Multimedia

Both boys enjoyed reading/listening to The Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule Kindle edition (also available in paperback).

Our “Listening Lesson” was a big hit this week (though I’m not sure why).  Ian requested it at least once a day:

• “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” (our “hymn of the month”)
• “Do To Others” from Sing the Word from A to Z by the Harrow Family
• “The Blessing That Will Be” from The Singing Bible
•  “Gen 25 Jacob and Rebeccah-  Two Sons” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Gen 26 Isaac and the Wells” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Gen 27 Jacob Steals a Blessing”  from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Do to Others” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 1 by Steve Green
• “Do! from Scripture Rock Vol. 2

Last week we jumped back into our Bible lessons with the Long Story Short devotional by Marty Machowski.   I am amazed at what our boys have learned since we started going through this book in August.  Even though it sometimes seems like Elijah’s not quite old enough to listen and participate, when questioned, we discover he’s absorbed an incredible amount.

This week we read the story of Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis 24.  It’s a beautiful story of God moving to work out all the details in response to prayer.  Abraham gave his servant a challenging assignment in sending him far away to find a girl willing to come back to Canaan, but the servant went to God asking for His help in finding a wife for Isaac, and “before he had finished speaking” (verse 15), along came Rebekah, who quickly fulfilled the sign for which the servant had asked.  Throw in the fact the she is “very attractive” (verse 16), and that Isaac loves her pretty much immediately, and you’ve got a romantic story worthy of a chick flick.

Extra Activities

In addition to our nightly devotions, we found a lot of extended learning opportunities:

Camels

Abraham’s servant took ten camels along with him on his journey (verse 10).  Elijah enjoyed singing about them to the tune of “10 Little Indians.”  We enjoyed learning about camels  from a 99-cent Kindle Book 14 Fun Facts About Camels as well as from a lapbook at HomeSchoolShare .  (We didn’t do the lapbook, just enjoyed some of the information in it.)

Wells

The whole concept of a well is pretty foreign to these modern American boys.  I found this Thirstin’s Water Cycle Adventure page from the EPA site really helpful for explaining what a well is and talking about the water cycle.  (I also liked this water cycle website.)

Marriage

We discussed marriage in our culture versus arranged marriages.  I don’t remember how it came up, but I had a great opportunity to talk about how love is a choice we make about how to treat the other person, regardless of our feelings.  We also talked about how Abraham sent the servant far away to find the right girl because the women in Canaan worshipped other gods, and importance of marrying someone who knows God.  Marriage may seem like an odd topic to talk about with preschool boys, but I want to plant seeds so they will be able to make wise choices, and this Bible story provided a logical connection. I really like the book The Person I Marry by Gary Bower.  One day at lunchtime I read it to the boys and we talked about some of the pages.

Bible Notebook

Our Bible notebook page wasn’t necessarily about Isaac and Rebekah, but focused on how Isaac (and his family) trusted in God to provide the right wife.  For our Bible verse, I used Proverbs 3:5-6 (“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”)  I found a free clipart image of a childlike bride and groom and put white circles over the faces.  Then I printed out pictures of the boys faces and question marks for them to paste on the circles.

Our “Listening Lesson”

Here’s what was playing on our iPod as we drove around town:

• “Trust in the Lord With All Your Heart (Proverbs 3:5-6)” from Scripture Rock (Vol. 1)
• “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” (our “hymn of the month”)
•  “Gen 24 A Wife for Isaac” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Trust in the Lord” from Sing the Word from A to Z by the Harrow Family
• “SONG I WONDER”  from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Trust in the Lord” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 1 by Steve Green

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything about our Bible lessons.  We’ve still been enjoying Long Story Shortby Marty Machowski, but I just really didn’t have anything additional to write about the weeks we spent on “God Rescues Lot” or “Isaac and Ishmael.”  I’m amazed at how much Ian (4 1/2) has been getting out of the nightly devotions.  Elijah (just turned 3) needs a little extra explanation, but even he has been learning a lot.  Every night as we pile on our bed for Bible time, Elijah gets a grin on his face and says, “Mommy, I know a Bible verse.”  I love the gleam in his eye as he says it.  He obviously realizes this is something important to me, and he’s excited to share.

I’ve mentioned before that we’re also using The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski).  To be honest, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it upon first glance, at least as a stand alone storybook.  However, I’ve come to really appreciate it as a part of our weekly routine.  The devotional readings in Long Story Short tend to break up the story over the course of the week.  We usually read from The Gospel Story Bible as an additional reading at the end of the week, and I love how it not only tells the whole story, but also incorporates the teaching about Jesus.  It provides a great summary and is the perfect way to close our week.

This week’s story was about Abraham being asked to sacrifice the beloved son he had waited 25 years to hold.  It led to some interesting conversations with Ian, especially about the idea of a parent loving God more than his child.  It’s easy to say this is our priority, but when we consider what God asked of Abraham we might have to do a heart check.  I know I did.  Children are such precious blessings, especially when they have been long anticipated.  I can only imagine the delight Abraham and Sarah took in watching Isaac go through each new stage as he grew up.  What amazing faith Abraham had as he set out to make the most costly sacrifice he’d ever offered to God!  (Imagine also what poor Sarah must have gone through when she heard the whole story!  I’m sure Abraham waited until after Isaac was safely home to fill her in on what God had commanded.)

As far as our lessons, we still haven’t added much as far as daytime activities other than watching two movies: Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah (which covers Abraham’s whole life).  We haven’t worked on any new memory verses or added anything to our Bible notebook.  Our schedule this fall just started feeling too full, but over the last week I’ve made some changes, and I’m looking forward to getting back into our regular groove.  Of course, with the holidays upon us it will probably be a while before things feel normal again.  This was actually our last week with Long Story Short until after Christmas.  Instead our Bible Time is going to be a chance to help our children view Thanksgiving and Christmas through a biblical lens.  We’ve already started talking a lot about the holidays, and I’m looking forward to spending the season soaking in the Scriptures!

Last week in our journey through Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we continued with the story of Abraham, and we finally got to throw in a few of the “extras” we’d been having fun with in the first few weeks of this year’s Bible lessons.  We watched VeggieTales: Abe & the Amazing Promise (over and over!) and taught the boys how to sing “Father Abraham” with all the motions (a great tie-in to the night where the devotional talked about how Abraham’s promised descendants included not only his natural children, but also spiritual ones who share his faith).  They ask us to do the song almost every night during Bible time, but I can only handle such pre-bedtime craziness about once a week.

We also worked on a memory verse, summing up the last few weeks with a verse from Romans: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:3.  We got back to our reading practice by using the Bible memory verse cards I described in this post.  We also finally added another page to our Bible notebook.  (On one of our extra nights that didn’t have a devotional reading, we did a “review” and the boys went through each page of their notebooks, telling us what they remembered about that story.  Ian was excited to discover he could read all of the memory verses and begged to add another page so he could have more to read.)  I got the idea from Christian Preschool Printables, and just added a frame image and used glitter star stickers. (I had some trouble with the link to the file from the regular CPP site, but I managed to do a search and found that the links from this page work.)

  

And of course, we spent a lot of time on our “Listening Lesson”:

• “Gen 18 Holy Ones Visit Abraham from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “The Blessing That Will Be” from The Singing Bible
• “Standing On the Promises of God” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back (our “hymn of the month”)
• Karen & Kids podcast episode “What’s in a Name?”

It was a little shorter than usual, but we’re running thin on Abraham material!  Still, as we discovered during our “review” night, both boys have been retaining a LOT of details about Abraham’s story because of how long we’re spending on it.  So I’m not going to worry about “extras” so much as we get through the rest of the story.

“Never imagine you have rightly grasped a biblical idea until you have reduced it to a corollary of the idea of covenant.”*  When I was in college, one of our mandatory classes was “Theology of Ministry.”  Everyone was required to memorize this quote, and though it’s been more than fifteen years, it was so drilled into my mind that I can still remember it almost word-for-word.  As we spent yet another week on Abraham this quote came to my mind.  God’s covenant with Abraham was one of the most important events in the Bible.  If I were to sum up the major events of God’s whole “Grand Story” as told through the Bible, I would put it this way:

1. God created the world as a place for his masterpiece, mankind, with whom He wanted to live in relationship.
2. Mankind rejected God’s authority, believed the lie of the Enemy, and consequently caused sin to enter the world.
3. Although sin separated man from God, He had a plan to redeem His Creation: He promised that someday He would send a Savior to crush the Enemy.
4. Out of a world now ruled by sin, God chose one man, Abraham, who trusted in Him.  Because of Abraham’s faith, God made a covenant with him, promising to bless his family and from them to bring forth the Savior through whom he would bless all the families of the earth.
5. Abraham’s family became a nation, Israel, the first to be “God’s people.”  Although they did not always follow him faithfully, through His relationship with Israel God revealed His nature: slow to anger, abounding in love, rich in grace.
6. When the time was right, God sent the Savior, Jesus, who conquered sin and death.  Those put their trust in Him are grafted into “God’s people.”
7. Jesus ascended to heaven, but someday he will return to fully establish His kingdom, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where God’s original intention will be fulfilled, and His people will live with Him for all eternity.

The story looks bleak until God’s plan is put into action, when He makes His covenant with Abraham.  This week in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we talked about God changing Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude,” telling him, “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5).  His wife, Sarai, who has spent decades lamenting her barrenness, is told that “she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:16). I wonder what it must have been like to be Abraham and Sarah.  God has promised them something so incredible: not just the baby they have ached for and long since accepted as an impossibility given their advanced ages, but a major role in the Grand Story, one that encompasses all of history, from Creation to eternity.  I think they must have borne their new names with a sense of humility and awe.

I love that Long Story Short is making me consider such things.  The covenant between God and Abraham is at the core of our faith.  While the slow pace through these chapters in Genesis is making me do something a little different with our lessons, I’m still glad we’re using it.  Next week I’m planning to go back to a few of the activities we’ve done before, but for now we’ve just used the lighter Bible lessons to start a math program, focus a little more on reading, and spend time enjoying our composer study.

Even our “Listening Lesson” is less than what it usually is, but here’s what was on our playlist this week:

• “Genesis 16” from the ESV Audio Drama Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Genesis 17” from the ESV Audio Drama Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Standing on the Promises” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back (our “hymn of the month”)
• “God Began a Nation” from The Singing Bible
• Karen & Kids podcast episode “What’s in a Name”

* After seaching for this quote online, I see it is from Paul Ramsey, but I can’t find any more information on it than that.

I think I’ve found my first complaint against Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, and that is the fact that he spends a really long time on Abraham.  Though really, that’s only been a negative as far as our related schoolwork is concerned.  It’s hard to find things to go-along with just the tiny sliver of the story we’re working on each particular week.  However, as far as our nightly devotions it’s been great.  The slow pace and repetition I’ve provided during the day has really helped Ian to understand the main points of the story.  Plus, it’s such a crucial part of the overall story of the Bible, so it’s one I really want to emphasize.

Once again, we took it easy last week, so aside from reading about Abraham inThe Rhyme Bible Storybook and The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers, all we really did was our “Listening Lesson”:

• “Gen 12 God Chose Abram” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Genesis 13” from the ESV Audio Drama Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Genesis 14” from the ESV Audio Drama Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Gen 15 God’s Covenant with Abram” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “Standing on the Promises” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back (our “hymn of the month”)
• “God Began a Nation”  from The Singing Bible
• “Get Along Little Camel/Camel Suite” from Songs from the Beginner’s Bible“
• Karen & Kids podcast episode “What’s in a Name”