Teaching Scripture - The Fruit of The Spirit

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
 2 Timothy 3:16
Teaching scripture to our children is a great thing.  Teaching them how scripture applies to their lives is priceless.  It is easier to learn something if you know how it applies to life and why you need to know it. 
We were learning the Fruit of the Spirit and I got a bright idea.  How can I make the scripture verse about The Fruit of the Spirit come alive and help them apply it.

                               Light bulb

Let's make a fruit tree, but not just any fruit tree.  So we made a Fruit of the Spirit tree.  We used old oatmeal boxes for the base, because they are a cylinder shaped.  We cut a circle out of the top and shoved a paper towel roll down in it.  This was the trunk of our tree.   For branches we used throw away forks and for leaves we cut them out of green paper.  This was the start of our tree.  Now to add the Fruit of the Spirit. 

Here are some examples of what we did:
One of the fruit is Gentleness.  So we printed little pictures of the kids faces when they were babies and cut them out into circles.  We then glued them on purple paper and cut the paper to look like a cluster of grapes.   Then we hung it from the branches (forks).  Our kids were able to relate gentleness to a baby. 
You also do not have to just put fruit on your tree.  Take for example The Fruit of the Spirit, self control.  At the time we did this, our oldest was having problems keeping his hands to himself.  So we let him trace his hand and wrote on it Self Control.  We hung it from another branch.  He learned that Self Control meant he needed to control his hands and use them for good and not bad.   

With each Fruit of the Spirit we added to our tree, we told why it is important, how it applies to them, and what each meant.  Each thing we added to the tree represented a way our kids could apply this to their life or it was a way to show them the meaning/example of the Fruit of the Spirit.  Here are some pictures below.  We had so much fun doing the tree, that we invited our homeschool friends over for a craft day on learning the Fruit of the Spirit.  The kids and mothers had a great time being creative and working together. 
If you have any idea's on how to teach scripture or you have taught a verse in a unique way, I would love to hear about it.

Thinking Outside The Box

When our oldest was 3 years old, we bought him the Big Kindergarten Book at Walmart or Target.  We were very excited to get started.  One day we were doing the worksheet "What goes together."  The worksheet had three pictures and the child is suppose to circle the two that go together.  So here are the pictures.

 

                    

                                                OK, so what goes together? 

The answer according to our son was the watch and the money.  Instead of telling him he was wrong, I decided to ask him why he circled those two things.  Here is his answer:
                              
 "When you get ready to go, you have to put your watch on and put your money in your pocket.  You can't leave home without them"

I learned that day that not everyone thinks the same.  You know, our son wasn't wrong, he was just thinking for himself.  He was thinking outside the box.