Can I be honest? This week of INCREDIBLE LOVE has been hard for me. I’ve wanted to lash out at my kids, roll my eyes and breathe heavy aggravated sighs at almost everything they do. Today I had a few minutes before lunch and was planning on doing this activity with them but I was so incredibly tired of interacting with them, of correcting them and leading them.
How incredibly UN-loving am I being if I can’t even do a LOVE craft with them? So, I swallowed my pride (aggravation? sin?) and grabbed a Bible, my computer and the kids.
First I turned on Seeds’ Greatest Commandment
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.
So, if we want to be super, not only do we need to love God with all of us, we need to love others the same way we love ourselves. I asked the kids if they loved themselves. And I’m happy to report Lydia hugged herself and said, “I looove myself!” We talked about how we know we love ourselves because we eat food we like, read books we like and do the things that we want to do!
This was an easy thought to switch over to loving others. How can we love our friends and family like we love ourselves? To help us figure this out, we made this paper heart garland and wrote our “neighbors” on the hearts. As we made each heart and wrote each name we talked about how we could love that person (sharing with someone from church, obeying our teachers, etc).
Now. The garland. It’s easy peasy.
Grab some construction paper and cut it into 1″ strips. (I do hope you have a paper cutter!) Take two strips and staple it at the bottom.
Fold the top two ends to the middle to make a heart! But don’t staple it yet!
We’re going to stick the next two pieces of paper in.
Once the second heart has been made, staple both hearts together.
Continue this until it’s as long a you like! It was a great activity to do together–one could hold it, one could put the strips of paper in and the other could staple. Then everyone can write friends names on it!
The kids absolutely loved thinking of all their friends and writing their names down. And I’m glad I worked at loving my most important neighbors–my children and did this activity with them. It softened my hard heart and helped me show them an example of incredible love (well, as incredible as I can muster!).
We only got to do two INCREDIBLE LOVE activities this week, but tomorrow I’ve got a round-up of some other fun LOVE books, music, Scriptures, crafts and activity ideas. You’ll love it!
What a creative project! So glad that you were able to move beyond your Mommy moment to do this neat activity with your kids!
-Asia
Thank you for the beautiful, EASY, meaningful craft. I have been right there with you in the mommy struggle this week and appreciate your honesty.
However, the struggle did lead me straight to the scripture I want to memorize next for myself: “A gentle answer turns away wrath but harsh words stir up anger.” Proverbs 15:1.
Thank you for inspiring me. I feel so much more confident as a mother if I have a GREAT plan for the day (today we made butter) and your blog is a treasured resource.