Jesus Prays in the Garden and Breakfast on the Beach

We. Love. Family Time!!

We love starting with worship (There's a post about the worship songs we do and the props we use to go along with them).

And it's the sweetest thing that now our daughter (2) will pray at the end of family time. Right now it's "Jesus, Thank you. Amen" but really do you need more than that?

The past two weeks we have done the two stories: Jesus Prays in the Garden and Breakfast on the Beach. Here's how we made the stories come to life in our home in fun and easy ways!

Jesus Prays in the Garden

For this story, we picked flowers to create a garden and I also drew flowers with no stems on a paper and stems with no flowers on another for her to finish the flowers. Another night, we acted like we were Jesus's friends and slept in the garden. Then we acted like we were Jesus and prayed in the garden when it was dark. We ended the week of this story by finger painting a garden.

Breakfast on the Beach



I guess we didn't do a good job of taking pictures this week because these are the few that we have but we had fun having breakfast on the beach! We played in the sandbox, cooked up some breakfast and had a picnic, used our fish and net bath toy to catch the fish that Jesus ate, and we created a "fire" and sat around it. We weren't home one night so they did a coloring page with the grandparents.

Oh, and then there's a cute picture of Henry doing our worship songs in his new monster jammies :)

I'm so thankful that 6 months ago we started having "family time" (almost) each night before bed. Its fun and rewarding and a lot of times not more than 2 minutes but that's ok because it our kids are going to remember this and I'm glad that it's a part of our families culture.

Jesus Enters on the Donkey (Palm Leaves), The Poor Woman, and The Last Supper

Talk about 3 easy and FUN ways to bring the bible to life in the home!!! At this point, we have been doing "Family Time" for almost 6 months and our daughter still LOVES it and can't wait for it! There's sometimes when maybe we will be getting to bed late and we just plan to get things ready for bed and skip our family time reading the bible but she doesn't like that and won't let that happen--- so I guess that means we're doing something right!?

Here's 3 weeks of simple and fun ways to bring God into the home:

JESUS ENTERS ON THE DONKEY (PALM LEAVES)
It doesn't get much simpler and more fun than getting on the horse and riding into town like Jesus while people wave palm leaves at you! We did this one for most of the week because the kids enjoyed it so much. And then we also had a coloring page--- she REALLY enjoys coloring so this works for us.

 

 

THE POOR WOMAN

This is the story where all the wealthy people are putting in their masses of coins into the offering box but Jesus said the poor woman who gave all she had (2 coins) was blessed.

 

We used some fake play coins from the dollar tree and had some of our cut out people put in lots of coins and then I had put in 2 coins into her purse and had her put in all she had and we clapped and made a big deal out of it.  



Another night, we got out her play piggy bank that comes with coins and had her put coins into it.

And of course, a coloring page :)

THE LAST SUPPER

If you have play food then you're set.

The first night, I had made a Judas and we talked about how he agreed to not be nice to Jesus and how that's not nice.

Then we had dinner the rest of the week!

We invited all of our friends and made sure we shared with them.

And then we had a play loaf of bread that the slices separate so we could actually "break the bread." And then we use a play tea set to pour our drinks.

And we prayed! Simple and fun! You could even do this outside--go for a picnic!!

The Roof

This week for family time was so fun! You'll need a box, yarn/string/pipe cleaners, a Jesus, friends and the sick friend and a "blanket."

We started the story off talking about how Jesus was in a home with a crowd of people---- so we all got together as close as a could with stuffed animals and baby dolls and talked about how there's no more room.

Then the next night we talked about how there was a sick friend and his friends wanted him to get better.

Then we had them take their sick friend up on the roof (the box).

Then the FUN part--- we cut a hole in the roof and poked some holes in it. Then cut off one of the flaps of the box and poked holes in that. The flap was our bed for the sick friend. We attached the bed and then you can lower the bed down into the house! And we tore off a piece of construction paper for a blankie and covered up the sick friend as we lowered him down.

This was such a big hit!!!

And to end this story, we had the sick friend get up and walk! He even walked on our toes!

 

And as promised in the Mary and Martha week, here's family time gone wrong. lol