Have Fun Creating Art with Your Child!

Providing sensory experiences for your child is positive for his or her development.  Creating art allows your child to use his senses and build his brain.  Playing with play dough, painting, drawing and making collages all spark connections in the brain.  Having these experiences will help your child be more successful in school.  Summer time gives us many creative project ideas which may be tied to the season.

You may help your child get the most benefit from creating art by:

·         Encouraging him or her to enjoy the process of making art.  The most important part of the creative process is that the child should interpret what the project should look like.  Your child will be more apt to explore his creative desires if we accept his finished project without any criticism.

·         Providing materials.  It’s great if your child has access to crayons, paints and paper.  Household items such as fabric scraps and catalogs or magazines are also fun to use when making art.

·         Say something specific about your child’s artwork.  “You used a lot of yellow and blue in your picture.”  Your comment could also sound like, “It’s great how you incorporated Santa’s reindeer into your picture,” or “The sculpture of the penguin has a nice long beak and big feet.”

·         Hanging his or her creation on your refrigerator, setting a sculpture out on a counter or giving the results of an art project to a favorite relative will make your child feel appreciated.  By displaying the artistic creation your child will feel a sense of accomplishment and pride.

By encouraging your child to be creative he or she will benefit by increased brain activity and a higher level of self-esteem.  Your attention to a project which he or she is proud of will help to spark his or her sense of ownership and will encourage him or her to experiment with his or her creative side to a greater degree.  Don’t forget the most important thing: Have fun creating art with your child!

Mid-Summer Math

Speaking of Education

Mid-Summer Math

During the summer many of us load our children into the car and go on vacation.  The trip in the car gives you a great chance to work on your child’s math skills and keep them occupied all at the same time! 

• Work on their math computation skills.  Fill a plastic bag with pennies and give them out as your children answer math questions correctly.  If they answer incorrectly, you may want to take a penny back from your child.  If you have children on different levels, you may alternate the difficulty of the questions with the children.  Beyond asking questions such as ‘6+4= what,” you can make longer math sentences filled with addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.
• Work on clock math.  Ask your children questions based upon the question, “when are we going to get there?”  The question would be phrased similar to, “It is 5:49, what time will it be in 27 minutes?” You may want to give out pennies for correct answers during the clock math “game.”
• Work on graphing.  While playing the license plate game, graph the results.  A favorite type for the license plate game would be a bar graph.  You may choose to graph the results by player – you can play too, or by state.
• Build their basic algebraic skills.  Talk about the ratio of miles per hour, miles per minute and how to compute gas mileage.  On some maps the exits are indicated by “mile markers” so you can teach your children how to figure out the answer to “how long will it take,” based upon the rate of speed you are traveling.

The math games will help to teach your children that math is fun and it is all around us.  As you travel the games will help keep your children occupied as they earn “spending money” for the next rest stop.

Cruising the Lake!

Last week my husband and I went on a pontoon boat ride around the lake. When we drove around the end of a cove, there was a pair of beautiful swans. As we moved closer, I noticed that there was a lot of seaweed just below the surface of the lake. It was such an inviting scene with the swans swimming along the edge of the lake, back and forth through the lily pads, but because of the seaweed, it was not where we should be; the motor would eventually become clogged and possibly damaged. This scene is similar in our walk with Christ. Sometimes we are distracted by a pretty thing or engaging activity and deviate from our course, only to find that we are in danger of getting "our motor clogged with seaweed."


Please join me in prayer this week asking for God’s guidance so as we navigate our walk with Christ that we will not become distracted.
Proverbs 3:5-6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

God's Reach!

It is amazing how far God can reach to bring His children to Him.  In the book The Faith of Condoleezza Rice she relates an incident where she had moved to California to teach at Stamford and hadn’t yet found a church to attend.  She was in Lucky’s grocery store on a Sunday morning when a gentleman walked up to her and told her he was purchasing food for his church picnic.  When he noticed she had long slender fingers, and no wedding band, he asked if she played the piano, because his church needed a pianist.  She agreed to help out and was amazed that God would reach out and touch her life when she was in Lucky’s Supermarket!

Please join me in praying that as God reaches out to us, we will recognize his call.  Romans 11:29, "For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable."

Have a blessed day!

Memorial Day

When I began thinking about the meaning of Memorial Day, I realized that the meaning has become all too real for many families across the country who have lost loved ones in service to our country. Please join me in praying for our service men and women and their families. Please pray that they might follow Christ as we read in Matthew 4:19a, “Come, follow me” and that they will take a stand for Christ as we read in Ephesians 6:11, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

Thinking about and praying for our service men and women has become very real to me this past year. My son Jonathan (above) received a ROTC scholarship for college and graduated last May. He is currently serving in the Army as a Second Lieutenant in South Korea. I think about him and all of the other members of the armed forces on a daily basis. As I continued to think about our service men and women and Memorial Day, I came across a letter written by Georgette Frank whose son Lance Cpl. Philip Frank, 20, was killed in Fallujah by sniper fire on April 8, 2004. I thought I should share this essay she wrote on the real meaning of Memorial Day.

Dear Friends,

In the past I would look forward to Memorial Day. It represented the beginning of the summer season at the Jersey Shore and a three-day weekend.

Then we lost our Phil in Iraq.

Memorial Day has now become a day of reflection and remembrance. It is a day to remember all of our Fallen Heroes from all of the wars. It is a day to think about the families that will forever grieve for their lost loved one. It is a day to be thankful to those who have served and made the ultimate sacrifice. They fought and died to win the freedom and democracy that we Americans cherish so dearly. They also fought and died to bring that same freedom and democracy to the people of other countries as well.

As the family of a Fallen Hero, we are so proud of our loved ones who knowingly put themselves in harm's way so that they could make a difference in the lives of others.

I would like to share an excerpt from a sermon by John Hagee:

"I want you to close your eyes and picture in your mind the soldier at Valley Forge, as he holds his musket in his bloody hand.

"He stands barefoot in the snow, starved from lack of food, wounded from months of battle and emotionally scarred for the eternity away from his family surrounded by nothing but death and carnage of war. He stands though, with fire in his eyes and victory on his breath. He looks at us now in anger and disgust and tells us this. ...

"I gave you a birthright of freedom born in the Constitution and now your children graduate too illiterate to read it. I fought in the snow barefoot to give you the freedom to vote and you stay at home because it rains. I left my family destitute to give you the freedom of speech, and you remain silent on critical issues, because it might be bad for business. I orphaned my children to give you a government to serve you and it has stolen democracy from the people.

"It's the soldier, not the poet, who gives you the freedom of speech.

"It's the soldier, not the campus organizer, who allows you to demonstrate.

"It's the soldier, who salutes the flag, serves the flag, whose coffin is draped with the flag that allows the protester to burn the flag!

"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen."

Take a moment this Memorial Day to share the pride that we, the families of the Fallen Heroes, feel.

Georgette

Amazing Clouds!

A couple of weeks ago I was driving to school heading into a storm. The sky looked as though it had been hand painted with various watercolor shades of a beautiful slate gray color. I could almost imagine seeing the hand of God with a paintbrush, painting the clouds across the sky. It was such a beautiful sight and knowing that the clouds were poised to release torrential rains any minute that I thought about God and His majestic ways setting the clouds in the sky. I thought about how God uses beautiful, ominous clouds to provide rain to nourish the earth. It made me think of Psalm 147:8, He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.

 Today is the last day of school for the Class of 2012! We will miss them. Please pray for our students as our seniors go to Washington D.C. and our juniors go to Gettysburg next week. Our sophomores and freshmen will participate in service projects around the greater Lansing area next week

A Distinct Pleasure!

Last week I had the distinct pleasure to work with five of our graduating seniors as they created, wrote and recorded several radio advertisements for Smile FM. They were pleasant, kind to each other and wonderful to work with. One of our parents, Becky, helped us record the advertisements. After working with us for over an hour, she sent me the following message: "Also, let me just say what pleasure it was to work with Miah, Austin, Heidi, Erin and Stephen, my goodness but they are impressive all the way around :). I think you had the poster children for LCS right here – we should have shot video! They are shining examples and it was a pleasure working with them."

I would like to share with you some of their thoughts about LCS:

• Lansing Christian School has allowed me to step out of my comfort zone and develop my walk with Christ, with the encouragement of my peers and teachers.
• The friends I’ve made here I will have forever. Thanks to Lansing Christian School I have grown in Christ, and have a faith to call my own.
• As an athlete, I have learned that sports at Lansing Christian School are more than on and of the court; they equip you for life!
• Coming from a public school, Lansing Christian provides a welcome and loving environment unlike any other school I have previously attended.
• LCS has given me a spiritual foundation. Love is the nurturer here, we are continually challenged to grow in chapels and Bible classes.
• Teachers at Lansing Christian School are here because they love teaching kids. That is clear. They help you to not only excel in the classroom, but in life.

Please join me in praying for our terrific seniors as they graduate and step up to their next challenge. Our students have grown into wonderful Christian young men and women! It was so inspiring to work with our students that it reminded me of Colossians 1:10, So that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.