Dinosaur Party

I had promised the kids in our Wednesday night class a Dinosaur Party if we could all bring our Bibles every Wednesday night.

I have great memories of doing tea parties and kid's campouts and snow nights growing up, and I guess that's just something I love passing on to the younger kids in our group.

I thought dinosaurs were a cool theme, and I am concerned that some of our students only hear that they came around through evolution. I really believe that God created them, along with everything else, and wanted to share that with the kids.

I spent some time looking up articles and information on dinosaurs before the party. It got a little hairy, since a lot of scientists like to argue back and forth on who's right and who's wrong and throw names around, and I didn't find a lot of easy facts.

I also found this great book at our library, and picked some of their games and crafts to do.

Here are some pictures of what we did Sunday afternoon....thanks to the wonderful help of Keren (couldn'tve done it without her! Thanks Keren!) and Mathew.

We decorated our living room like a jungle...complete with vines and monkies and grapes (?) !

We left some dinosaur footprints around....

Blew up some "Dinosaur Eggs" with baby dinosaurs inside.

Colored some wall art.

When the kids came, we started with a Egg Hatching relay race.

Next we "grew" some dinosaurs in water. (Expandable sponges)

We frosted dinosaur cookies.

We made dinosaur terreriums.

We read the Creation story from our Bibles and also the verses about the Behemoth and Leviathon. We talked about what might have happened to them, and also that I believe they lived at the same time as humans.

We made pizzas and ate edible rocks.

And we made fossils with shell imprints.

Two of the parents stayed around for the party, and mid-way through, 3 of our friends stopped by spur-of-the-moment. In all, I think we had 15 people for the afternoon!

Saturday Activities

This Saturday we had Family Friends Potluck (an international gathering).

At first, we thought not many people were going to show up....but after about a 1/2 hour, lots and lots came. Surprisingly, there was a lot of main dishes and not many desserts! (For us, that's not normal... ha ha)

We (M and I) had decided to keep it pretty easy, as to what to bring. We brought a rhubarb cake and a chick pea dish. The chick peas were really yummy.

Samante

After the meal and visiting and clean up, we headed over to the college football game with some of our students. We lost, but oh well. We still had fun.

Nisha

The sun was pretty much in ours eyes so we had to improvise!

Shamani

After that, we picked up a couple of our other friends and headed over to our parents for some croquet games. That was fun, except we lost there too!

And then, a quiet evening at home. How nice.

Chick-Peas in Coconut Milk

Combine in saucepan:

• 2 c. cooked or canned chick-peas (garbanzos), drained (500ml)
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 4 whole cloves or 1/8 tsp ground cloves (.5 ml)
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 c coconut milk (375 ml)
• 1 1/2 tsp. ground tumeric(7ml)
• 1/2 t. salt (2 ml)

Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer at least 20 minutes to blend flavors. Serve with rice.

Wednesday Night Lessons - God Hears and Answers our Prayers

This past Wednesday we learned about God anwering prayer. Keren and I went early to set up the classroom, and shut the door so the kids would....stay out(? ha).


Our story for the night was in Acts 12....Peter gets out of jail, so we decorated the basement like a jail....with torches and candles and then left it pitch black. Here is our lesson outline.

God Hears and Answers Prayer

1. Met outside for Bible story.

• We sat outside in the grass while I read them the story from Acts 12. It's quite a dramatic story in any version, so pretty easy to just read it straight from the Bible. After reading it through once, with voices for Peter, the praying Christians, and the angel, I summarized it again, asking the kids to participate as we told the story. We "snored" for Peter, "clinked" for chains falling off, "knocked" (incessently) for Peter at Rhoda's door, and "exclaimed" as the Christians saw Peter for real. We emphasized that God heard and answered the prayers of the Christians.

2. We re-enacted the Bible story in our pre-made "jail."

• We have a back door to the basement of the church, that leads through a pretty dark and spidery hallway till you get to the classrooms. We had all the light turned off, and Aaron and I were the jailers (everyone else was Peter). I had made a torch out of my large flashlight and some orange tissue paper. Looked pretty cool.
• We took "Peter" down into the jail, where we had some candles set along our path to light as we passed. Everything was dark.
• We acted out the story....I was the jailer....then handed the torch to Aaron and slipped away to be the angel....then "dissapeared" and played Rhoda while narrarating.
• We had set up Rhoda's house in the kitchen, since it had a door to close.

3. Ate snack and read the Bible.

• On Rhoda's table we found crackers and water and tunafish. We celebrated Peter's return by eating and sharing stories.
• Keren had prepared a list of neat Bible verses talking about prayer. We helped each kid look up the verses in their Bibles, and Mara read them out loud. This was a pretty neat activity....but maybe the kids are too young, they lost interest pretty fast in that. Wanted to play with the torch instead.

4. Prayed

• We had made a prayer chart for the wall......"God does answer prayer!" and then 3 columns....Yes, No, and Wait. We talked about how God can answer our prayers, and then added some prayer requests to the list. Next week we'll see which category to put them in.
• Note: I was a little hesitant to teach using this illustration, since I have, in my experience, run across some anti-Christian ridicule of this system. I was unsure how best to present that God really does answer prayer and it isn't just co-incidence. While preparing the lesson and praying about it, I couldn't find another way to tell it, and so am trusting God that He'll help us believe the truth. Have you any successful teaching ideas for prayer?
• We asked if the kids wanted to pray. Two did...about our two things. But, after actually sitting down to pray, we realized that A. really was a bit shy about praying out loud. We tried encouraging him, and also explained he could "pray in his head" and then say Amen so we could finish. He wasn't sure about that. So, I showed the kids how to pray in your head (by bowing my head and silently praying and then saying Amen.) They all burst out laughing! After both Keren and I tried to explain it again, A. stopped and stared at me and said, "You really think God heard you?!" That was a great opportunity to teach about God knowing our thoughts and prayers, even when they're silent. Hopefully they understood.

Free Museum Day

I ran across this great site today. It's a free pass to a participating museum Nationwide. Just click here on the map and it will list the participating museums.

The day to participate is Saturday, September 27th.

All you have to do is fill out your name and address and then print the "member pass card."

Too bad M and I won't be around any participating musems that day....but hopefully one of you will!

Chester

Isn't this a nice dog? I think so. It's my sister and brother-in-law's "new dog." (dog sitting....possibly long term)

He's only four months old and so has lots of energy and personality. I love how he cocks his nice floppy ears. And he's hilarious when you come home after being gone for a while.....pretty much terorizes you.

Poor Sami gets knocked over when he jumps.....even though he's small. Daddy and Mommy are trying to teach her to say, "No, Chester. Down," and push him down with her hands. She pretty much just squints and squirms away and then follows through with the procedures while Chester is busy terorizing someone else.

We had a fun weekend visiting them and attending the Labor Day Rally. We heard some good thoughts from the speaker, Paul Barber, especially his encouragement on Submission and Discipleship.

For one of the sermons I went down to help Becky with class. What a fun bunch of kids! She told them the story of Moses and the Israelites in the dessert while they played in sheet tents. Then we went for a walk and found our memory verses and also some manna and quail. They also drank "water from the rock" (drinking fountain).

While we were waiting for them to come back from drinking, the other kids were getting antsy. I had a hilarious time with them. I was trying to encourage them to sit down, but they, of course being kids, didn't want to sit.

Instead of wasting my voice, I plopped down on the carpet, turned to the kid standing next to me and said, "I'm sitting on a big purple mushroom. What are you sitting on?" and I patted the floor next to me. She plopped down and said, "I'm sitting on a big purple mushroom too!"

I turned to the girl next to her and asked the same thing while patting the floor, and she plopped down too, saying, "I'm sitting on a grape!"

I just had to laugh as we went around the room and the kids told me what they were "sitting on." Did you know you can sit on alligators, old grapes, blueberries, ponies, logs, clouds, empty air, porcupines, toadstools, etc?!!

After a few minutes I said I was tired of my mushroom, so on the count of 3 we all switched places and did it again. Kids are so much fun. Who else would sit on a big purple mushroom with me?

Alphabet Project

This weekend I finally finished a birthday present I'd been planning for a while. I found this neat book at the library, with all sorts of lettering and home-projects. Inspired, I determined to try a few of their projects.

My first (and so far only), was a set of towels for a good friend of mine. (I ended up finishing it in the car on our way down, and it made me a little sea-sick....not recommended!)


I haven't embroiderd for a long time! I hope it's sturdy.

I also included a wicker laundry basket, a purple bath rug, and some vanilla hand soap.

German Chocolate Cake

Yesterday a friend of ours had a surprise birthday party, and we were asked to bring the cake. I was told his favorite was German Chocolate, so I looked up a recipe and made this one....it turned out yummy. I was pleased because I had all the ingredients on had....including sour milk! ha ha

Chocolate Zucchini Cake II

and

German Chocolate Frosting