When I was growing up, on the side of our refrigerator, my mom hung a Blessing Board.  It was a small framed chalkboard with the word, “Blessings” across the top and on it, we would write things for which we were thankful.

Over the years, there were many words written on that board from the meaningful to the simple:  family, jobs, friends, pets, special events and unexpected blessings.

So today, we are making Winter Blessing Boards with our kids.  Not only will the boards help us count blessings and develop thankful hearts, but they will also be precious keepsakes with our children’s artwork.

>> Head over to Motherhood On A Dime where I am guest-posting today!

The post How to Make Winter Blessing Boards with your Children appeared first on Celebrate Every Day With Me.

Whether we’re talking my own heart or those of my children, I constantly need to be in remembrance of the things for which I’m thankful.  I find that for myself, it is so terribly easy to see everything there is to be done and to focus too much on that.  And my kids . . . well, they are kids.  But I still work to train their young hearts to count blessings and be grateful.

A couple months ago, we made winter blessing boards with cute fingerprint snowmen.  It was fun and the boards came out so well.  But then it dawned on me that I am waiting for spring and my mudroom still houses our winter scenes.  So of course, we had to make Spring Blessing Boards!  Flowers, kites, birds . . . snails.

And once again, the reminder to be thankful.

Here is what you’ll need to make your own Spring Blessing Boards:

• Chalkboards (I picked these up at Walmart)
• Acryllic Paints – spring colors
• Paint Brushes
• Paint Markers
• Wooden Creatures (Walmart or craft store)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Felt Pad Protectors, optional
• Chalk

First, set up a painting station.  I always use a junk plastic table cloth to protect my surfaces.  (Because I’m thankful for a beautiful wood table that I wouldn’t want covered in paint.  See?  Thankfulness starting already!)

Paint the wooden creatures and allow to dry completely.

Next, write the permanent text at the top of the chalkboard with paint markers.

Ideas:

• My Blessing Board
• Name‘s Blessing Board
• I’m Thankful For…

Then, choose the placement of the creature on the chalkboard so you know where your child can paint more pictures.

Allow your kids to paint any other desired designs: flowers, animals, birds, kites…

Hot glue the wooden creature to the chalkboard.

Add felt pads to the back of the board if you are concerned about protecting surfaces.  Since I’m thankful for our newly painted walls and know that my kids will bump these boards like crazy on the wall when they are writing, I opted for felt pads.  Another thing to be thankful for!  

And now, all that is left is to write with chalk that which you’re thankful for and then change it often.

Here is where our Spring Blessing Boards hang in the mudroom, next to the slide entrance.

What are you thankful for today?  

You May Be Interested in The Thankful Tree idea I share at Motherhood On A Dime.

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Today, I have a fun and easy way to celebrate the Risen Savior, and as so many things around here do, it involves cake!

The most profound aspect of Christianity is that Jesus died for the penalty of our sins and conquered death when He rose from the grave.  We don’t serve a dead savior.  On the contrary, He is alive and at work today.  The excitement of that fact is something I want my children to comprehend and find thrilling.

We can teach and celebrate this in many ways, but today we are making a cake!

Here is What You’ll Need to Make an Empty Tomb Cake – 

• 2 Mixing Bowls (one must be metal)
• Cooking Spray
• Flour
• Cake Mix and the Ingredients on the box
• Icing
• Chocolate Candy Rocks
• Heating Core depending on the size of your bowl (this post contains affiliate links)
• One Oreo

Two things I love about this process – 

1.  It’s easy!  Buy a box of cake mix and a can of icing and you’re half way there.
2. You get to bake in a metal bowl!  Throw out the rules.  Pack away your traditional cake pans and feel the freedom.  Embrace baking in an ordinary mixing bowl . . . oh dear, my life must be a little dull for this to be exciting!

Instructions – 

Prep Your Medium-Sized Metal Bowl for Baking.  Prepare your bowl by lightly spraying with cooking spray and dusting with flour.  For a chocolate cake, it is often best to use cocoa powder.  But I didn’t have any and the white flour worked just fine.  

In your other mixing bowl, make your cake batter according to the instructions on the box.

Pour the batter into your bowl and bake at 350 degrees.  For my medium sized bowl, I was expecting 30-35 minutes like the ladybug cake I made years ago.  But because I used all the batter, it took more like 50-55 minutes.  For the last 10 minutes, I added a flower nail (substitute for an actual heating core) to help push it along.  Maybe I was just getting impatient.

Once your cake is mostly cooled, invert your bowl and pat it out.  You may wish to slice the bottom of the domed cake to make it flat.  I wanted the height, so I added extra icing at the bottom to make it work.

With a sharp knife, begin to cut out your cave-like tomb.

I cut reasonably far into the cake and used the crumbs as the path out and in front of the opening.

Next, frost the cake.  Again, I was thinking simple here, so I just used a can of icing.

Now, you will need to add the stone that was rolled away.  Twist an OREO and use one of the cookie sides as the stone.  What you do with the rest of the cookie (or the box for that matter is up to you!).

To finish up your empty tomb cake, add some chocolate candy rocks.  I put mine around the bottom and in no particular pattern on the cake.

This is a great time to have the kids help!

When we were done with the cake, we grabbed our Gospel Story Bible and read the story of the resurrection.  I love this story book Bible!  It has such a focus on the Gospel weaved throughout all the biblical stories, emphasizing our need for Jesus, His sacrifice and our redemption.  It also has discussion questions for each story that can spur on some great conversations!

Now, I will tell you that my son asked if he could put some figures on the cake.  And if he had been talking about soldiers, angels, the women or Jesus, I would have been okay with it.  But something tells me he was thinking Star Wars and Lego minifigures.  So, keep them on track and continue to point them toward Jesus!

What special things does your family do to focus on the resurrection?

The post How to Make an Empty Tomb Cake appeared first on Celebrate Every Day With Me.

If you have preschool kids or know someone who does, check out this giveaway!  I have a set of three preschool books by Danielle R. Linder to share with one lucky reader.  The books are sweet as can be, filled with rhyming stories and cute, bright illustrations.  

They are great conversation starters between you and your children.  And although geared to preschoolers, my (first grade) daughter enjoyed reading them herself.  With Danielle’s books, children can learn how to work through insecurities and fears from the characters in the stories.  Betsie Bee faces going to the doctor for the first time.  Paige moves to a different country and has to adjust to new friends, a new language and a new school.  Rupert learns that it is okay to look different from the rest of his family because his parents lovingly chose him through adoption.

As part of the The Kind Kids Character Education Book Series, these preschool books seeks to address the growing social and emotional issues affecting young children and focus on building emotional and social I.Q.  Danielle founded and is the CEO of London Day School (a preschool in Florham Park, NJ).

Here is what is included in our giveaway:

You can learn more about Danielle and her books by visiting www.DanielleLindner.com and don’t miss her Amazon Prime show, Miss Danielle’s Preschoolbuds (free with Prime!).

GIVEAWAY:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure:  I received these books at no cost to facilitate my honest review.  All opinions are my own.  This post contains my affiliate links.  Danielle R. Lindner will be sending the books directly to the winner.

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All year, I have been wanting to throw an Election Party.  But truth be told, I just can’t do it given this particular election.  So even though there will be no official party in my house, there is still a great opportunity to teach my children about our election process and the importance of casting one’s vote.

One way I am involving my kids in this election is by making our very own ballot box and inviting the kids to vote for candidates at the various levels of government.  Would your kids like to take part?  Here is how you can take a simple Kleenex box and and transform it into a ballot box.

To see the whole post, visit Motherhood On A Dime where I am guest posting today.

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Changing schools is rough [understatement of the year].  After experiencing it ourselves last year, my heart aches for the kids who are about to walk into that new classroom for the first time, not knowing a single kid, recognizing a teacher’s face or even knowing where the bathroom is in their new building.

It is a big adjustment for a child of any age to leave what and whom they know and love, and to start all over again at a new school.  Our change of schools was challenging.  There were days when I thought it would never get better.  For my child who deeply struggles with change and for the one who was being torn apart from cousins, it was filled with so many emotions and struggles.  Honestly, I want to start crying just thinking of it.

There were many things we did (along with praying) to prepare for and adjust to our new school.  And if you ever want to hear more, let me know . . . because there was a lot.  But once school started, I became deliberate about asking two questions each night while we ate dinner.  These are the two questions and why I asked them:

Question #1:  What were three blessings of the day?

When everything looks bleak, it is important to treasure-hunt for the good things.  This forced my kids to change their focus away from the hard and horrible to something positive.  I was determined to help them find good things about their new school.  For their responses, I accepted anything positive.

• Pizza was served for lunch.
• My teacher let us pick any book off the shelf to read.
• I liked the note you put in my lunch.
• It didn’t rain and we got to play outside for recess.
• I liked technology class.
• I did well on a spelling test.
• Our class did a fun project.
• I played with someone at recess.
• I made a new friend.

There were some days where it was hard for one of the kids to come up with three blessings.  But persevering in our blessing hunt even on the tough days helped the kids direct their attention to the fact that everything wasn’t awful.  We could find something good.

Question #2:  What was your “fail” of the day and what did you learn from it?

I am a recovering perfectionist and in many ways, my kids expect a lot of themselves, too.  But it is okay to fail.  It is okay to make mistakes.  The key is to learn from those mistakes.

When an anxious child is in a new situation, they may not handle every moment well.  Not only is this a teaching moment on how they could have better handled the situation but also a chance to mold their mindset into one that sees failure not as the terrible end, but as an opportunity to learn and grow. 

Thomas Edison had over 1,000 failed attempts when inventing the light bulb.  You know what those failed attempts were?  They were 1,000 ways Edison learned not to make the bulb.  Learning from failure and persevering is a lifelong skill and training your kids to see past failure is . . . well, it is another blessing to count!

Incidentally, Dan and I participated in these two questions as well.  There were some days when the kids found my failures quite humorous.  And in my telling them what I learned, I was able to reinforce that we were all growing and I was learning through my mistakes as well.

 ~ ~ ~ ~

During the emotional and challenging time of adjusting to a new school, your kids need to know that they are on a journey.  They will learn and grow through this process.  They will make mistakes.  Things will be hard.  But, the difficulty of the first few weeks (or months) is not the destination.  Things will improve.  It takes time.

We also prayed for and with the kids quite a bit.  We used this as an opportunity to trust that God would take care of us and meet our needs.  We felt the Lord helping us through this adjustment and there were so many sweet moments of seeing His hand at work.  It was a reminder for us all of His faithfulness.

Can we pray for your child?  If your family is changing schools, my family would love the opportunity to pray for your son or daughter.  Leave your child’s first name and grade in the comments below (or on this Facebook post) and we will pray for them during this transition.

Related Posts:  Back to School Prayers

The post How to Help Your Kids Adjust to a New School with Two Daily Questions appeared first on Celebrate Every Day With Me.

(This post contains our affiliate link.)

It was unanimous.  We all agreed that every kid should read this book on friendship.  Go grab it now because you will love what and how it teaches your child about being a friend.

The book is Growing Friendships:  A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends.  It is an empowering book that will help your child make new friends, learn how to handle various friendship challenges and much more.  Whether you have a social butterfly or a kid who is struggling in the social arena, this book will help them through friendship situations that every child faces as they grow up.  I wish we would have read this book a year ago when we were switching schools.

Here is What I Loved:

So many times, we as parents try to explain things to our kids but not always in a way they grasp quickly.  This book presented the information well and in a style easily understood by children.  The pages are filled with concrete examples and scenarios that help kids follow a course of thought or action.  I can tell my kids to look up and make eye contact when meeting someone,  but the book takes it a step further by explaining the reason for a friendly greeting and what the other person may feel without it.  That latter point has already helped my kids improve their how they greet others.

Growing Friendships assigned names to things.  For example, a person who holds too tightly to a friend and doesn’t want them to play with anyone else is called an Octopus Friend.  The authors shared why this isn’t good and how it can hurt a friendship.  Picture an octopus wrapping its arms around a person.  What a clever way to explain the lesson.

We learned many practical and helpful strategies for dealing with conflict and handling stressful situations.  One of my kids was concerned about crying in public during a stressful moment, so we remembered back to one of the calming strategies and thought of distractions (counting things in view like ceiling tiles or making a mental list of something else . . . )

The book normalized the feelings that kids may experience when it comes to friendship ups and downs.  There were times when my kids were a little uncomfortable with a section, mainly because it pushed a button of something they did or a way they felt when something happened to them.  It was good to talk it out, identify the issue and work towards healing and healthy responses.

When the authors presented a negative action to avoid, they always gave a positive replacement.  One of my favorites was in the Reaching Out To Make Friends section.  Instead of trying to impress other kids with knowledge or experience, the authors encouraged the goal of connecting with them.

The book used humor.  Throughout the book, there is a comic with a dog and a cat giving their take on the material presented.  At first, I was concerned my son would find it juvenile.  But the humor is not childish in any way.  In fact, we all laughed and found it quite entertaining.

Here are some of the other topics discussed in the book.  

• Taking first steps to make friends
• Tips for fun and successful play dates
• Joining a group of kids already having fun
• Recognizing stop signals and times when you might be annoying someone
• Giving a friend the benefit of the doubt
• Standing up for yourself
• Identifying a friendship that needs to end vs. a “Friendship Rough Spot”
• How to answer teasing and what to do with bullying
• Contributing to a conversation and matching the tone
• Working as a member of a team
• How “I” statements can help solve problems
• Moving past conflict
• Being a good sport

This is a great book, one I’m so glad we read.  I would suggest reading it with your child so you have the opportunity to discuss the ideas and concepts together.  We read it as a family and now each of my kids is re-reading it on his or her own.

Do you think this could help your child?  Which topic would be most beneficial to your child?

Disclaimer:  I received this book at no cost to facilitate an honest review.  All opinions are my own and after reading the book, I am thrilled to share this resource for your family.

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Nearly five years ago a deal was struck.  My kids had been wanting pets but my husband, never having owned an indoor pet himself, was not eager to introduce hair, odor and more chaos to our home . . . especially when we were planning to build a new house.  Thinking he could postpone the inevitable, he told the kids they could get indoor pets if they memorized the book of James.

Between trying to sell our house, living with my mom and building our house, it was an easy thing to put off.  But once we had been in the house over a year, the kids became more interested in working to get their pets.  My son wanted a hamster and my daughter, a dog.

It took them about four months to memorize James.  They were allowed to split the book which meant that my daughter memorized chapters one and two, and my son learned chapters three, four and five (53 and 55 verses, respectively).

When taking on such a task, I knew they would need help.  They would need it to be accessible.  They would need to be able to measure their progress.  They would need my listening ear with verses in hand and they would need lots of encouragement.

Here is what we did and how you can help your kids memorize large portions of Scripture:

Print the passage.  I printed the book of James and cut out each verse.  (I found copying and pasting from Bible Gateway into Word was the easiest and then formatting the passage into two columns.)  Knowing the wear and tear the slips of paper would take, I also laminated the verses.  I love laminating!

Figure out a good spot to hang the verses.  For us, this meant the kids’ bathroom mirror, knowing that they are in there at least twice a day when brushing their teeth.  It became a habit to learn a verse while they were brushing.

Progress at their pace.  Only one verse went up at a time.  Then, when they felt they were ready, I added another verse to the mirror.

Work on verse to verse flow.  Even though they were only working on a verse at a time, it was important to regularly read through the entire passage so as not to forget what they learned but also prepare for that final delivery of their passage.

Once each verse is learned, print another copy of the passage and keep it as a full sheet.  After the kids had learned every verse, they began to take their (full) sheets of James around the house with them, capitalizing on different opportunities to work on the flow.

Help them connect verses by underlining key words.  If I found a word that started two consecutive verses, I underlined it and drew little dots connecting them.  (I did this with the verses on the mirror and on the full sheets.)  Try this with repetitive words, antonyms, similar concepts or even a particular style of composition such as a series of questions.  Think of how you can help their little brain to visually connect what they are learning.

Know that the brain remembers best in short, separated bursts of study.  I didn’t have the kids ever spend a significant amount of time polishing their passages in one sitting.  Short bursts not only work well for the brain, but also for their encouragement and sanity.

I shared this story about my college days in order to demonstrate the point:  In all four years of college, I never pulled an all-nighter studying for an exam.  In fact, I never even had to stay up late studying and this is how.  About a week before an exam, I would read through my entire class notes.  I would do this once a day.  As it got closer, I may have added in a second read-though.  The result?  By the end of that week, I had such a good handle on the material, I didn’t even take long to study the night before the test.  That little time each day working on my notes allowed me to learn it fully and without the stress of last minute studying.

Read a good portion or all of the passage before going to bed.  I was amazed when my kids would read one of their chapters through once before bed, things just seemed to click better in a morning recitation.  You’ve probably heard how the brain processes all kinds of things while we sleep.  I think that in polishing memorization and getting that flow of verse to verse, a brief read before bed is invaluable.

Encourage, Encourage, Encourage.  It was certainly more than once that my kids, particularly one of them, grew quite discouraged when thinking about how far there was to go in memorizing over 50 verses.  This is natural and normal!  It is a great opportunity to encourage your sweet babes in continuing on what they started, in perseverance and not giving up!  This is lifelong lesson and skill to develop.

Celebrate!  When they are done, celebrate!  Maybe you have given them an incentive to drive them to finish.  Maybe there is a reward shining that light at the end of the tunnel.  Obviously for my kids, they wanted pets and this was their way to earn them.  It was such a sweet trip to the pet store to get my son’s hamster after all his work and we loved bringing home the dog my daughter wanted and surprising her after school.

And in case you wanted to see what happy looks like, here ya go:

Have you had your kids memorize large passages of Scripture?  What do you think would help them most?  

You May Also Like:

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Are you struggling through a situation or having to deal with a difficulty that seems too hard to overcome?  We all face challenging times.  The question is how do we handle them?  Do we try to address the situation on our own and in our own strength or do we reach out for help?

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my son and shared this story with him.

I asked him to imagine himself grown up and in his twenties.  He was living on his own but struggling to pay his bills.  Money was extremely tight.

There came a day when a man gave him a very large sum of money.  I mean a whopping, enormous amount.  But this older version of my son didn’t use the money.  Rather, he put it in the drawer of a night stand and never touched it.  He continued to have trouble paying his bills.  He didn’t have the funds to buy enough food and he couldn’t afford to do anything fun.  Yet, there that pile of money sat, untouched and untapped.  I asked my son what he would tell his older self to do in this situation.

There was no hesitation.  He would tell him to open the drawer and use the money!

Yes, exactly.  Open the drawer and take advantage of the resources available to him.

And that is what God wants of us.  You see whether you’re ten years old or 100, God has provided all the help we could ever need.  He has promised help, hope, refuge, peace, wisdom and direction.  He has made every resource available to us in Christ but we DON’T OPEN THE DRAWER.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”  -Matthew 7:7-8

I cannot count the number of times I have tried to do things all on my own.  To solve the problem in my strength . . . carrying the burden, along with all the frustration, stress or disappointment.  And I am sure that my Heavenly Father was all along whispering, “Kristen, open the drawer.”

What are you facing right now?  Think about how big and great is your God.  Think of the promises in His Word to care for you and help you.

. . . Now, OPEN THE DRAWER and ask.

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