Seeds of the Heart

Monday, February 29, 2016

Cubbies Bear Hug 19: God is in Charge

Hello again.
Welcome to a series I'm doing on Awana Cubbies! I hope you enjoy your time here. If you'd like, you can visit my previous posts, or dive right in!

Introduction
How I started down the Appleseed Trail
Bear Hugs 3-6: God is Creator
Bear Hugs 7-10: God's Word is Truth
Extra Cubbies Fun - Gingerbread Nativities
Bear Hugs 11-14 - God is Faithful
Bear Hug 15 - Story of Abraham
Bear Hug 16 - God is Mighty
Bear Hug 17 - Valentine's Day
Bear Hug 18 - Crossing the Red Sea

This week was about how God is in Charge. The main focus was Moses story about getting the tablets with the 10 commandments. We didn't go through each separately, but we discussed how the first 4 are about loving God, and the last 6 are about loving others. And if you think about how Jesus answered the Pharisees in the New Testament about God's greatest commands being to Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, it makes sense.

I didn't do too much extra this week. Our church has a storage area with so many costumes and props and things, so I was able to use the tablets from there to show the Cubbies. It is always nice to have as much visual teaching tools as you can. It really helps the kids to connect it to the story more. Another bit of fun was having a poster to draw the mountain where Moses goes to get the 10 commandments. The kids also had a lot of fun marching around the room while pretending to be the Israelites marching around in the desert.

I love the resource disk! I used it to make a 10 commandment game. Basically, you have 10 cards with the same number of hearts as the number showing. Then you have the two 'tablets' with spots on it that the kids can use to match the cards to the numbers. They were quite a lot of fun! I made one set for each of the handbook groups so that when they weren't coloring or reciting verses, they could play a matching game. Another fun thing to do with the cards is to scatter them and ask the kids to find a specific number, then they can put the card they find on the tablet. To help with verses, you can then say the verse with them (which was Psalm 47:7 For God is the King of All the earth, sing to Him a song of praise). Repetition is the key in helping the kids remember the verses.

I've been having fun planning out what we'll be doing in BH 22 and for Easter. I look forward to sharing that with you as well.

So yeah! This coming week is Grandparents night (the Grandparents are invited to come join the clubbers this evening). I love how the Awana Commander and Secretary work on extra fun nights for all the Awana clubs to do together. We have had Parent night, Silly Hat night, Animal night (the kids come dressed as animals... usually around the end of October), Red night (this one is around Valentine's day), Hockey night (we invite some Hockey players from a local team to come and talk to the older clubs. It doesn't really apply to the Cubbies group, but the others LOVE it), and Grandparents night. In the past I remember there being a 'layers' night where kids tried to wear as many layers as possible (I remember helping my sister dress in over 50 layers). These are always so much fun for the kids. Do you have any fun nights that you do with your Awana clubs, or any suggestions that you'd like to see as well? Please leave them in the comments!

As an aside, I've set up a Facebook page for our church Awana group. You can see it here, or search for CFC Awana.

If you'd like, you can also visit my Cubbies pinterest board. Feel free to check it out.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Cubbies BH 18 - Crossing the Red Sea

Had to make a little 'school' of fish. The tape held ok for the fish. I suppose it is because they aren't very heavy at all.

This is where we came in. I brought along my husband's freshly washed housecoat, grabbed a broom handle 'staff', and had Mr. P, one of the leaders, play the part of Moses. My other two leaders held up two more of the blue plastic sheets in front of the hallway, like a large door, barring the way through. Then, when 'Moses' raised his staff (with all the little Cubbies crowding around behind him), the 'water door' opened up, and they could follow him through! It was great fun! I ended up being Pharaoh and the army. When I tried to go through, the leaders with their 'water sheets' threw them on top of me (I had to work hard to not say 'I'm MELTING' and stuck with 'Oh NO' instead, as I 'drowned'). The kids loved it! Nothing like play acting and visuals to help the story come alive!

The previous week we had biscuits for snack, to represent the Passover bread that had no yeast. Some of the kids remembered that in the lesson, too. This week's snack was Teddy Grahams. We made a 'crossing the red sea' craft (picture to follow... when I take one of it) that was inspired by this pin. The teddy grahams crossed through on dry ground... into the Cubbies tummies!

I hope you are enjoying this little series on Cubbies. I can hardly believe we are down to the last two units already!

I've been pinning all sorts of fun things over in my Cubbies pinterest board... although it is branching into more Awana based and Sunday School based ideas as well. Feel free to check it out and enjoy some of the crafts and snacks with your own little ones!

Until next week! God bless!

Monday, February 15, 2016

Cubbies BH 17 - Happy Valentines Day

I had a couple of ideas. My daughter has really small hands (she is two, after all) so the two handed 'heart' idea worked fine for her. However, most of my cubbies have larger hands that would not work doing something like that, so I wanted to see what would work for one hand. The heart in the hand idea was cute, too (pinterest to the rescue). However, due to time constraints, I didn't do the hearts. We did a basic handprint with the cute little hand poem underneath. I also made them so they would be in a 'landscape' orientation as it just looked nicer with a hanging rope than the portrait version would.

I did not have enough gem stickers to do this with the cubbies either. Would have been so nice. Ah well. If I'd have had time to pick some up from the dollar store, it would have been a nice touch.

Nice thing about Valentine's day and Cubbies is that they really go 'hand in hand'. After all, our key verse is 'God loved us and sent His son, 1John 4:10'. Perfect for Valentine's day. There are really so many things you could do with your Cubbies as a craft!

I did love this one. If you wanted to do this, you'd just need larger paper. I was using 5.7 matt boards I had on hand already. It was great, because they look fantastic (these were from a framing shop that I used to work at. She had a bunch there that she wanted to use for arts and crafts but never had the time, so she gave me a stack. Thanks, Aunty P). Otherwise you can get canvases from the dollar store for projects like this... they run at 3 for $1.

Anyway... the way we did it to decrease mess was this. I painted the kids hands using a brush and pressed it on the board, then immediately we wiped their hands using baby wipes, and then they washed up in the nearby bathroom. I wrote their name on the paper poem that I had pre cut, and we glued that down right away next to their handprint. Have the yarn or string/ribbon hotglued on the matts before you start as well. Makes the whole thing easier. Then, when they were dry, I mod podged over the whole thing to help protect it.

Here is the poem. I cannot take credit for this as I found it online somewhere. Sorry, I do not remember the source (and I saw it on multiple sites, so I'm not sure where it originated from)

You may get discouraged

Because I am so small

And always leave my fingerprints

On furniture and walls

But every day I’m growing –

I’ll be grown some day

And all those tiny handprints

Will surely fade away

So here’s a little handprint

Just so you can recall

Exactly how my fingers looked

When I was very small

Love: .

Happy Valentine's Day

2016

I also wanted to make a little Valentine for each of my Cubbies. I didn't want to do sugary treats... but pencils are nice! And the dollar store had packs of 10 for $1.25, so I grabbed two packs and got to work using some of my scrapbook paper and making my own printable.

Here is the file in case you want to print 20 out yourself. (best if you can print it without using margins on your printer. I was able to do so with my gimp program printing through gimp itself)

Don't forget your leaders! Give them each a little something special as well, to thank them for their dedication in coming each week. We couldn't have Awana without them!
I used a printable on pinterest for wrapping a chocolate bar. There are literally hundreds of free ones out there that you can get! I used the white one from here. It is very cute. I just resized it and printed 6 to a page to use with a pack of Kit Kat bars. These ones had white chocolate, which I thought was super neat!

I hope you all had a great Valentine's day.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Cubbies BH 16 - God is Mighty

See this one here.

I had another, similar, idea to this. Use egg cartons instead of the eggs. Cut them so that you have three segments per bug, and let the kids color them. Add the antennae, legs, and eyes. If you have long legs, you could make them look like grasshoppers or locusts.

This webpage needs translating, but they don't have instructions, nor do they link to someone who does. But really, no instructions are necessary. This is a great snack idea. I know butterflies aren't part of the plagues, but hey... they're bugs. ;)

Other snack ideas included hailstones... or powdered doughnut holes. Or, you could 'build a bug' using crackers, cream cheese, raisins, and pretzels (antennae or legs).

This craft at Homeketeers is adorable... great for Valentine's day as well. I kinda wish we would have had time for this. The kids would have loved it!

Hope you had fun here this week! There will be a lot to post for next week, so stay tuned!

You can follow my pinterest board for Cubbies, here.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Cubbies BH15 - Story of Abraham

For lesson time I made a... star... watcher? Star... gazer? Star show. Yeah... let's call it that. Something like this was said to be optional in the book, so I made one that I can tuck into the Cubbies Closet for subsequent years. It could maybe even be used during the creation unit someday! It worked rather well, and the kids liked watching the stars 'move' as I rotated the flashlight... well, why don't I just post the video and you can see how simple it is to make one yourself. Preschoolers and even older kids will get a kick out of this!

I was also in charge of snack this week. Wanted to do something that all my kids could eat (I have one child in my group who cannot have sugar or milk/cheese, although if dairy is baked into something, that is fine). So, I made star sandwiches. Bought some bread (I usually make my own, but sourdough isn't something that kids that aren't used to it will like). Used a cookie cutter to make them into stars to go with our lesson. My kids were thrilled to have white bread for the first time in... well... I don't think I've ever bought white bread (they've had some at grandma's though)! They gladly ate all the cut-offs at lunch time.

Besides that, the crafts we did were outlined in the book already, and I didn't take pics of them anyway. I really want to have a craft for the kids to do at start up and leaving time, but every time I do so, we end up with craziness, so I might need to forgo that for the rest of the year. If you have enough leaders, setting up a craft for coming in and leaving time is great fun! And there are so many fun ideas on pinterest, too.

Thanks for visiting my blog! I hope you are enjoying this 'series' on Cubbies. If you have any suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them! Thank you!