Greatest Gift #12 - Merry Christmas

12.  CHRIST EVERY DAY

Scripture: D&C 46:10

Song: I Believe in Christ (HB)

D&C  46:10 And again, verily I say unto you, I would that ye should always remember, and always retain in your  minds what those  gifts are

We should make the Savior’s birth, his life and example, his ministry and teachings, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his Second Coming part of our lives – not just at Christmas or Easter, but 

every day.

Favorite Christmas Song

This is probably my favorite song. It brings me to tears 

of joy every time I hear it.

(Click below to hear the song, it is beautiful)

And His Name Shall Be Called Wonderful

Lyrics

Unto us on this holy night
Unto us beneath a new star's light
Unto us where the lambs have fed
Gently laid in a manger bed
Unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given

Chorus:
And his name shall be called Wonderful
For the world will be healed by his power
He will be our unfailing Counselor
In each uncertain hour
The Mighty God of heaven above
So meekly comes to earth
The Everlasting Father
This child of lowly birth
Tell his name, sing his praise in all the world
Till all the world believes
Till every voice is lifted up
To praise the Prince of Peace

Unto us 'mid the angel song
Unto us, the gift awaited long
Unto us wrapped in swaddling bands
Hushed to sleep at the Virgin's hands
Unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given
(Repeat chorus)

Greatest Gift # 11

11.  For God So Loved the World

Scripture: John 3:16-17

Picture: Christ the newborn babe

Song:  He Sent His Son (CPS)

Greatest Gift #10

10.  The Star Leads to Bethlehem

Scripture: Matthew 2: 7-12 

Song: Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

Song: Oh Come all Ye Faithful (HB)

Greatest Gift #9

9.  The Quest of the Wise Men

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-6

Song: We Three Kings

Picture: The 3 Wise Men 

Greatest Gift #8

8.  The Shepherd’s Response

Scripture: Luke 2: 15-20

Song: Joy to the World (HB)

Picture: Shepherds looking at Baby Jesus

Greatest Gift #7

7.  The Angels Song

Scripture: Luke 2: 10-14

Song: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (HB)

Picture of Angels Declaring

Greatest Gift #6

6.  Shepherds Watching Flocks

Scripture: Luke 2: 8-9

Song: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night

Song: Far Far Away on Judea’s Plains (HB)

Picture of the announcement to the Shepherds

Greatest Gift #5

5.  The Birth In a Manger

Scripture: Luke 2: 6-7

Song: Away in a Manger (CPS)

Picture of the Nativity

Greatest Gift #4

4.  Journey to Bethlehem

Scripture: Luke 2: 1, 3-5

Song: O Little Town of Bethlehem (HB)

Song: When Joseph went to Bethlehem (CPS)

Picture of Mary on the donkey

Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor, sent out a decree that everyone in his empire had to be taxed. Each man was to pay taxes in the city of his ancestors, so Joseph and Mary had to travel from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem. It was a difficult trip for Mary because her baby was about to be born.

Greatest Gift #3

3.  Mary Visits Elisabeth

Scripture: Luke 1:39-42, 46-48, 56 

Picture of Mary visiting Elisabeth

The angel of the Lord told Mary that her cousin, Elisabeth, who was old and had never had children was also with child and about 6 months along. Elisabeth was married to Zacharias. Mary went to visit Elisabeth. She stayed about three months. This is an important event because Elisabeth is going to give birth to John, whom we later know him as John the Baptist. He plays a very important role in the Saviors life.

Greatest Gift #2

2.  The Annunciation

                             Scripture: Luke 1: 26-33, 38

    Picture of Angel Gabriel visiting Mary

Mary was surprised and a little worried when she saw the angel, but she was willing to do whatever Heavenly Father wanted her to do.

Joseph was a righteous man chosen by Heavenly Father to marry Jesus’ mother and love and care for Jesus and give him an earthly family. An angel also visited Joseph before Jesus was born to tell him that Mary would have the Son of God.

The name Jesus means Savior. Jesus Christ would save all of us from our sins and help us return to live with Heavenly Father forever.

Greatest Gift #1

We all know the story of Luke 2. We know the story of the birth of our Savior because of the 4 Gospels in the Bible. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS or Mormon.  I also read and believe in The Book of Mormon which is another testament of Jesus Christ. Not to replace the bible but to go right along with it. It is scriptures from other groups of people on the earth before, during and after Christ. 

With that being said this is the only scripture that is taken from The Book of Mormon. The rest of them are from the Bible. I wanted to start out with this scripture because it is important my kids know that their were those who prophesied of the birth of Chirst. We know it came to past and those who heard the messages and believed were blessed.

1. Christ Birth foretold

Scripture: Helaman 14: 2-6

Song: Samuel Tells of Jesus (found int eh LDS Children song book)

Picture of Samuel on the wall

The birth of Jesus Christ was an event that was planned and anticipated even before the creation of the Earth. All of the Old Testament prophets predicted the coming of the Savior and His birth into mortality.

Throughout the Old Testament, the practice of sacrifice was diligently followed, and that practice was in anticipation of the Savior’s sacrifice for us at the conclusion of His mortal life.

At the same time the prophets of the Old Testament were predicting the birth of the Savior, prophets in the New World, as reported in the Book of Mormon, also foretold His birth and His mortal mission. One of these prophets was Samuel the Lamanite. Samuel not only prophesied the actual occurrence of His birth, but also told of the signs by which the birth of Jesus in Judea would be made known to the Western world.

The GREATEST Gift of All

I have a 3 young children. My oldest is 7 then my second is 4 (almost 5) and my baby is 2. Each year they ask for more and more things for Christmas. I was getting sick of it. I really don't like how commercialize Christmas is, as I know many of you feel the same way. The birth of our Savior was a miraculous time.

I knew I wanted to really focus on teaching my kids more about the events surrounding the birth of Christ. So I put together a 12 day countdown to Christmas. Each day we can learn about the events that took place leading up to His glorious birth and the events that happened after. 

Each day I will post the picture, scriptures and song for that day. If you would like the full packet of all the images please feel free to leave me your email. 

Enjoy and Merry CHRISTmas,

love, Leah
aka the momma who is sick of Santa

I'm in need of some balance!!

I started this blog hoping to be a bit more faithful in keeping up with it. Well, after my last blog post in JUNE, I left on a 3 week trip to Utah and Idaho. When we got home it took a few days to recover then school started. Not just for my 1st grader but I also teach preschool. So my 7th year of teaching was about to begin. But the other big change that happened was, a few days after I got home from the trip I got a new calling in my ward  (the church I go to).......I was asked to be the Relief Society President.  So needless to say much more of my time was focused on my new calling. 

But I feel ready to jump back into the blogging world and hopefully share my talents with all of you whom I am grateful to for sharing yours.

Love, Leah
aka Libertarian Momma who can't cook or bake.

Summer Reading Chart

So some kids are bookworms and some kids would rather be playing with actual worms.  

I have 1 bookworm and 2 that would rather being playing with worms!!

So I made up this Summer Reading Chart to perhaps persuade my oldest that reading can be fun, AKA BRIBE him!!

Now some may think this is not a good approach but we sometimes do what we have to do!

Every time he reads a book to me, he can cross off a number.

When he reads 22 books then he reached his goal and will 

get his reward. 

I left a line at the bottom so you can fill in the "BRIBE" that will motivate your child best. 

If you would like to download this summer reading chart

click here

Week 2: Reptiles

 Week 2: June 4th- June 8th

Theme: Reptiles

My son LOVES reptiles, therefore his younger sister claims to love reptiles (she likes to copy a lot of what he does). So this week we are learning all about frogs, lizards and snakes.  

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Frog Puppet

*This one is more for our 20 month old, his favorite song is 5 little speckled frogs

Cobra

Rattlesnake

Snake Pizza

Frog cookie

Lizards

This doesn't really have anything to so with reptiles but  I thought it looks fun and wanted them to have a shirt to wear over their swimsuits. I will let you know how it goes :)

Shirts

Journal Pages

Here is a great activity that helps keep your kids minds thinking. 

A daily journal page!!

I love this because you can start your child doing this as young as you wish.

I helps them practice their writing skills, use their creative juices to answer the question and they get to use their art skills.

But the best part of all is, I hope to start teaching my children about journal keeping.

I have made a book for them (I will show in another post) and each day I ask a question and they can answer it. Every Friday they can write whatever they want to write about.

Sometimes I write some of the sentence for them and Ryker needs to fill in the blanks.

Amelia is still learning how to write so I wrote the sentence for her with a marker and then she traced it with a pencil.

These are older journal pages, but normally I have them write their name and the date.

Here is a link to blank journal page you can download and copy. Get started with your kids, then when you have a little free time, try and make them a book or buy a children's journal page already made.

Journal Page Download

This is a journal you can buy.

Week 1: Beach and Ocean Animals

Week 1: May 28th -June 1st

Theme: Beach and Ocean Animals

Here is a few ideas of some fun crafts you can do with your kids.

As you can see some of these are very simple and you can make from some things you have at home. Start saving TP rolls, egg cartons etc.

Water bottle fish

*Water bottle

*tissue paper

*glue

*water

*paint brush

Whale book

*Paper

*Then let your child decorate the whale with markers, paint or crayons.

*Read a non-fiction book about ocean animals or look up info on the internet and let your child write at least 3 to 5 facts they learn. You can have this project fit the level of your child, so your 4 year olds book will be different than your 7 year olds.

Egg Carton Lobster

*egg carton

*red paint

*paint brushes

*pipe cleaners

*googly eyes

Octopus plush toy

* I will post later how I'm doing this because I'm not going to use a sock when we make ours. 

Octopus Craft

This project can be as elaborate or as simple as you want. If all you have is paper, that is fine. Just use paper to decorate the Octopus. If you have buttons, stickers....whatever, than use that as well. 

Shark Craft

*paper

Starfish s'mores

*I'm going to change this a bit and be adventurous and use ice cream instead of marshmallows. 

*This is also going to be apart of our service project for the week, because we are going to make these and take some to a friend.

 Awesome worksheet ideas

Here are some great examples of ways to keep your child writing and learning. You can find all this clip art on the computer for free.  It doesn't have to be as cute as this teach made it, but it gives you an idea of how simple you can make learning fun.

PLEASE leave me a comment if you have any questions on how to do any of these. I don't mind helping at all :) I can even tell you the best place to get the supplies you may need.

Summer Schedule and Ideas

I had a few friends ask me how I plan my summer out and thought I would share it with anyone interested.  First off.....I'm a preschool teacher! I have been writing up lesson plans for the past 7 years of my life so it is habit and very routine for me. So if this seems excessive, then just do what you are ok with. But for me...

this is all I know :)

Start out by printing out a calendar page for the months you need to plan. I will be gone the first week of August and then school starts so I just wanted to focus on June and July. 

Start out by asking your kids what are some thing they would like to learn about or know more about. My sone LOVES animals so I told him to tell me specific ones to learn about. 

Then I went through each week and gave it a theme. Our first week will be "Beaches and Ice Cream"

Now plug in all the activities you have schedules already like swim lessons or summer camps etc.

I made a simple (plain and boring) weekly schedule. I don't have time to make it all cute and whatnot and really who cares.....it is for my eyes only and I will throw it away.

This is where you can get more specific and the Saturday or Sunday before the week.....plan out your week so you can be prepared. Yes, it will take some time on your part but well worth it to having a smooth week at home with the kids. 

Now the time I really need to plan for is the afternoon. We have swim every morning, it is after lunch that kids start asking to watch TV and then 3 hours go by and your child hasn't moved from the couch. This is where the planning will really help.

Luckily my toddler takes his nap at this time so I have to keep my 7 year old and 4 year old busy and learning. 

We will do cooking one day, art projects, service projects, work pages, activity bucket (I will explain below), play dough, science project etc. 

I also have my kids do one hour of quiet time in their rooms and they can play with any and all the toys they would like. They can't come out unless to go potty and this did take a good week to really get them to understand. But now they know what I expect and they usually end up playing longer than an hour.

Here are what I call our "Activity Buckets". As you can see they are not fancy, just a buckets with random activities in them. I have coloring pages, stickers, blank paper, crayons, markers, glue, scissors, work sheets and dry erase markers.  I let my kids choose what they want to do from the activity bucket. I will add new items when they run out of them.  My sone LOVES Mario and Legos, so I will get online and google "mario coloring pages" and print out several different ones. I even let him choose the ones he would like to color.  I have had these activity buckets for about a year now and they really have been a great success.  My daughter never complains when she sees me getting them out, sometimes my son does because he is not into coloring as much as she is but once he sees his mario or something from Lego land he is happy as can be.  

I LOVE to find already made worksheets online. My daughter loves Wizard of Oz so I found these tracing work sheets for her. p I print them out and I slip them into a sheet protector then she can use them over and over again. Kids LOVE dry erase markers.

My last tip on summer boredom busters is keep your eyes open. Whenever you see something on clearance or really cheap, it is worth the money to keep your kids entertain for awhile. I LOVE the dollar store and dollar sections.  Also use your local crafts stores coupons...they are always for 40% or 50% off so buy fun art project for them to do. JoAnns, Michael and Hobby Lobby have sooooo many fun crafts and projects you can buy.

I hope to post weekly, some of the projects and plans we will be doing. Please share your ideas with me as well. Happy Summer!!!!!

Oh and last but not least........as you can tell, I'm not a photographer nor will I ever be. So sorry for the lame pictures but you get the point ;)