by Jenny
We've got the
JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY down in our hearts...where?! Down in our hearts...where?! Ok...I'll stop singing. That's just one of the songs that pops into my head when I talk about joy with my kids. That and
Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice! Rejoice....rejoice...
We've had a great time focusing on LOVE. If you want to start with us from the beginning here's our first post
Fruit of the Spirit~A Homeschool Study then we
We Made a Giant Tree for our fruit. We spent
a lot of time on our first fruit "
All Ya Need is Love..." and made
Stained Glass Art with Kids for love. Now for some
JOY.
We start each bible time saying our scriptures together and with each fruit add another verse. We say Gal 5:22-23
(fruit verse), Matt 22:37-40
(love), Phil 4:4 & Prov 15:30a
(joy).
Our first day we all spent time in God's Word finding verses on joy. We each picked at least one verse then on the second day we copied them on our construction paper banana. We settled on these verses to hang on our tree:
James 1:2
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
Isaiah 52:8-9
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion,
they will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together,
you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
Hebrews 12:2
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Proverbs 10:1
A wise son makes his father glad. But a foolish son brings grief to his mother.
Psalm 71:23
My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praise to you-
I whom you have delivered.
3rd day: while listening to music (a couple were Rejoice in the Lord Always & Don't Worry, Be Happy {that was super fun and stuck in our head all day}on YouTube) we used chalk pastels and construction paper to create what we thought represented JOY. We didn't talk to each other and I told them they had a time of 3 songs to create something. It was amazing to see their creations but it was more amazing to hear them describe their pieces and how they felt.
4th day: We created some large free standing letters of JOY that I've thoroughly been enjoying on the bookshelf. There will be a post to follow on the letters.
5th day: We read and discussed people from the bible that we thought exhibited JOY. We chose David and found an abundance of scripture where he's rejoicing, worshipping and praising God. One of our favorites is Psalm 100. We also talked about Paul and how he chose joy even though he had to endure prison. Phil. 1:12-26.
6th day: Using index cards, each one of us wrote down things that we could do to practically show JOY. They wrote things like "always have a joyful look" "be joyful in everything" "in all times good and bad have joy and it will spread, but not just once, always" and "don't just be happy, be joyful."
One point I've reiterated with kids through out our whole study and will continue to remind them of is where this fruit comes from. This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that we can produce after living with, walking with the Holy Spirit. Anybody can chose love or kindness but the love or kindness we exhibit after continually being with Holy Spirit is deeper and true. I don't want them to fall into the trap (that I often did growing up) that it's all up to them to be good, loving, kind, patient- that it's a "works" thing. We need to have a continual relationship with Holy Spirit and then we produce love, joy, patience, peace, kindness, etc.
Please share any comments or ideas, I'd love to hear!! :)
