Having Fun With Gardening, God and Your Kids

Having Fun With Gardening, God and Your Kids - Parenting Like HannahSpring is a wonderful time to have fun teaching your kids about God. His beautiful creation is blooming all around us. Trees and plants that looked dead, come to life with new greenery. The birds are louder as they call for mates or chirp warnings for nest builders.

Spring is also a great time to start a garden with your kids. The great news is you don’t even have to own land to garden with your children. There are a lot of great websites and books about container gardening and raising food from plants you grow in your house. (I found Indoor Edible Garden at Costco and it’s on Amazon for just a little more.)

As you plant seeds or tiny plants, care for them and wait for them to grow food, there are also lessons you can teach your kids about what God wants them to know. They don’t have to be formal lessons. Casual conversations as you plan and work often resonate better with children anyway.

So what are some of the lessons you can teach your kids while growing things?

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Fun Activity to Remind Your Kids To Be Grateful

Fun Activity to Remind Your Kids To Be Grateful - Parenting Like HannahOne of the realities of being a Christian parenting blogger is that you often find ideas you wish you had done with your children. Our daughter is a young adult now, but I wish I had known about this when she was younger.

A friend of mine actually created this gratitude idea for herself at first. She was on an extended mission trip in Africa without her family. Feeling a bit lonely and discouraged, she started a gratitude corner in her rented living quarters. It was a very visual reminder of God’s love and care.

Since then, she has gifted her grandchildren with the materials to start their own gratitude corners. The best thing is that this activity can be done on a child’s bedroom door or in a hotel room. It is portable and easy for everyone in the family to create their own or have one large family gratitude space.

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Using Nature to Help Your Kids See God

Using Nature to Help Your Kids See God - Parenting Like HannahChildren who are introduced to God later in childhood often say they have a tough time believing in God. They weren’t taught from an early age to see God working in their world and can’t articulate what it would take for them to believe God is real.

All children are concrete thinkers for quite a few years of their early development. It can be difficult even for children raised in Christin homes to understand concepts like God, whom they can’t physically see. God is an abstract idea for them and difficult for their brains to process. It’s an important part of their faith development to teach them how to see God without actually seeing Him.

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Telling Your Kids Stories That Matter

Telling Your Kids Stories That Matter - Parenting Like HannahStory time is a parent child bonding activity that has existed probably since Adam and Eve told their kids stories. It’s a great way to calm kids at the end of a hectic day so they can sleep. It creates fun childhood memories. It can even strengthen the bond between you and your kids.

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Gifts to Help Kids Reach Their Godly Potential

Gifts to Help Kids Reach Their Godly Potential - Parenting Like HannahGift giving to kids always fascinates me. There are the families who encourage their kids to ask for donations to charity instead of gifts for themselves. There are families who have a three or four gift limit. There are grandparents who shower kids in presents. There are uncles, aunts and friends who purposely seek out the most annoying gifts possible for your kids in order to amuse themselves.

My theory is that if you want your kids to reach their godly potential and become mighty men and women of God, there are special gifts you should give them. Don’t worry. Many of them are actually more fun than those plastic toys with a million pieces (although some of these are probably also plastic with a million pieces…). Yet these gifts have a secondary purpose. They are gifts that make your kids think or help them discover some of the gifts God may (or may not) have given them. Hopefully, they will point your kids towards who God created them to be.

So what are these gifts? In the list below, I have given you categories, but also a link to an example in that category to start your thinking. (I am not endorsing any particular company, brand or product including the website to which the link takes you. I merely want to give you a visual of the types of things I am suggesting.)

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