Home Church - Showing Thanks Through Sharing

Well, the weather has taken a severely chilly turn in the last 48 hours here in the Burgh.  Doug needed the van since he was preaching from Wexford, so that left us to walk to the East End campus.  Well, that was the plan until I checked the weather forecast for Sunday the day before.  High teens with super cold wind chills.  Probably not the best weather to walk my 3 kids a mile to church.  So, last night I got to work throwing together a Home Church lesson.  Of course, I had to incorporate the Thanksgiving holiday, so I landed on Showing Thanks Through Sharing.  The boys were super excited to do Home Church again.   I would rather go to actual church, but in lieu of that, this was a fun activity for part of our morning.  We started with some songs.  I picked some about giving thanks and sang them with Penn on my lap.  Koen played guitar and Tavin played harmonica.  Let's just say, the neighbors will appreciate that our windows were closed.

Right after our singing time, the boys spotted a large tow truck parked in front of our house, so we took a break to watch and see what it was up to.  These 3 are pretty cute.

After the tow truck pulled away (Koen determined that it must have just been taking a break as he didn't pick up a car), we continued our Home Church plan and the boys got to watch a Hermie DVD about sharing.  Penn was super cranky, so I entertained him on the couch and he entertained me.

After the show, we headed into the kitchen for snack and craft time.  We reviewed the verse I introduced before song time.  Our theme for today, Hebrews 13:16.  The craft was that on the back of the verse the boys were supposed to draw something that it is hard for them to share, but that they could work on sharing better.  Koen chose to also decorate the verse.

Then it was time to bake some bread.  We had talked about how thankful we are for the things the Lord has blessed us with, even simple things like our clothes, toys, home and the food we eat.  I thought it would be helpful to do an activity where we could make something to share, so we baked pumpkin bread.  I forgot to take a picture, but it looked and smelled delicious and the boys did a great job not complaining about not digging in themselves.  Instead we blessed their babysitter, Miss Kylie, with it tonight.  Our final activity was storytime, which unfortunately we had to postpone until after lunch because of Penn Rye Cranky Pants.  Oh well.  For our storytime, we read "Thanksgiving Graces."  It is a great story about sharing and even relates it beautifully to Jesus' miracle of the 5 loaves and 2 fishes and the feeding of the five thousand, so we paused to read that as well.  

Well, that was Home Church.  Not eloquent and not perfectly timed for sure since it took half the morning to complete, but I hope it helped remind the boys that God has blessed us with so much and that we should remember to thank Him for all of it and be willing to share those blessings with others with grateful hearts.