Category: Family Devotionals

Easy Scarf Service Project and Devotional For Kids

Scarf Service Project and Devotional for Kids - Parenting Like HannahHot weather seems to make us long for the cooler weather that will come in a few months. If you and your kids are in the house trying to stay cool, there is a fun, easy project you can do that will help keep others warm this winter.

Go to your local fabric or craft store and find some fleece fabric. You will want enough that you can cut five or six foot lengths that are six to eight inches wide. In theory, a couple of yards should be plenty. When you get home, you will probably want to be the one to cut the fabric into strips that are six to eight inches wide (if you get really lucky, the fabric store might help!).

Continue reading Easy Scarf Service Project and Devotional For Kids

Fun Way To Teach Kids About Developing and Using Their Gifts From God

Fun Way to Teach Kids About Developing and Using Their Gifts From God - Parenting Like HannahDid you know a few strips of scrap leather and some ping pong balls can teach your kids a lot about identifying, developing and using their gifts from God? That’s right. You see the story of David and Goliath has a lot more to teach us than we generally realize, because we don’t understand a lot about shepherding and warfare in ancient Israel.

David was the youngest of a lot of boys. They were old enough to join the army fighting the Philistines. He was left at home to care for the family flocks. Your kids will be interested to learn the family wealth at the time was generally in their herds. Entrusting David to care for the flocks would be like you withdrawing all of your cash from the bank and giving it to your child to keep safe from being lost, stolen or eaten. (Okay, no one would probably eat your cash, but you see the point!)

Continue reading Fun Way To Teach Kids About Developing and Using Their Gifts From God

Kids, Clay and God

Kids, Clay and God - Parenting Like HannahIf you haven’t introduced your kids to the fun of playing with real clay, I encourage you to buy some at your local craft store. Don’t get the play clay or the colored clay strips, but the real gray clay potters use.

Take your kids outside and spread out a plastic tablecloth or something that can be easily wiped down. Place a bowl of water where your kids can periodically wet their hands to smooth their creation. Cut off a block of clay and encourage them to create a pot or dish.

As they work, share with your kids that in Bible times people couldn’t go to Target and buy dishes when they needed them. Everything was created by them from clay or by a local potter. They would have been very familiar with how a potter formed dishes and pots, as they probably had to go to a pottery studio more than once to commission or purchase pieces. The ideas the Bible shares about God as the potter and people as the items he creates from clay would have made perfect sense to them.

Unless your kids work with clay, they may never understand all of these verses on the level they were meant to be understood. Here are some of the lessons you can share with them as they work with their clay:

Continue reading Kids, Clay and God

Adding Meaning to the Cross for Kids (At Home)

Adding Meaning to the Cross For Kids (At Home) - Parenting Like HannahHave you ever really thought about how children are taught about the death of Jesus? When they are young, the story is sanitized quite a bit. Even if the beatings and other horrific aspects are mentioned, they are told in story form. A child who has never been exposed to the things in the story will have little understanding of what really happened.

Teens may get exposure to one of the more realistic movies that act out the details very graphically. The problem is when older children reach the age of accountability (which differs from child to child), they are often too young to see these “R” rated movies and only have the sanitized version of the cross in their minds.

Part of becoming a Christian for many is understanding the depth of the sacrifice Jesus made so we can have forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. If the sacrifice Jesus made was no big deal, they may feel perhaps faith isn’t really that important. Think about it. God could have chosen a much less horrible way for Jesus to take our place and yet He didn’t. There is something in the details of what happened that is important to our faith.

So how can you help older children and young teens understand the details of the cross and the sacrifice Jesus made a little better? A few affordable visual aids and some basic facts can help them begin to understand the enormity of what happened to Jesus. We did this in a Bible class of 5th and 6th graders recently, but they are things you can easily do at home:

Continue reading Adding Meaning to the Cross for Kids (At Home)

Creating Game Cards for Christian Games for Kids

Creating Game Cards for Christian Games for Kids - Parenting Like Hannah Last week in Creating Christian Games for Kids, I detailed how to create game boards that would last and could be used to create multiple games. A reader contacted me wanting to know more details about the types of games I have created over the years that could use the game board.

I am not a huge fan of getting children so focused on the facts of the story, we forget to teach them what they are supposed to learn from it and how to apply it to their lives. It is important though that they remember enough details so they can accurately re-tell the story to someone they meet and with whom they are sharing their faith in a conversation.

If you want to create your own Bible trivia game to use at home, you can cut up one of those inexpensive Bible trivia books you find in Bible bookstores and attach each question to an index card. (It’s up to you whether or not you want to use some of the really obscure questions those books can sometimes contain.) Or if you prefer, you can create your own questions and write them on game cards.

Continue reading Creating Game Cards for Christian Games for Kids