It's official - Katherine is now crawling! No longer does she scoot and lunge, she has control over all four limbs. Now I have to keep my floors clean!

After I got out of school a few weeks ago, I reevaluated our school days and our routines to be more intentional about being a good steward of my time and energy. What I found embarrassed me! I wasn't doing a good job at teaching character traits to my children on a regular basis. So beginning with obedience (because after Mama had been in school for a while, the kids needed a reminder), we now have a fun character lesson first thing every morning in school. The kids look forward to it and complain if we have to skip our "obedience lesson". Thankfully, their obedience has improved dramatically! Since I'm not very creative, I've enlisted a couple of books to help me get started: "For Instrucation in Righteousness" by Pam Forster and "The Children's Worker's Encyclopedia of Bible-Teaching Ideas" (one for Old Testament and one for New Testament).

Yesterday, we read in Deut. 8:1-10 about God's offer of blessings to the Children of Israel if they would obey. The "punchline" of this object lesson is:

God gives us special rules and directions because he love us. Just like the Teacher in our game, God can see the whole picture, so he knows what's best for us. God wants to give us blessings we can sink our teeth into! When we listen to God and obey his commands, we'll get to "taste" his blessings! (p. 53 - The Children's Worker's Encyclopedia of Bible-Teaching Ideas: Old Testament)

The kids took turns being the taster, the teacher, and the twister. Here's how it looked:

Not exactly what I had in mind, but I think the kids got the point.