Lend An Ear: The Fruit of the Spirit

Two years ago, when my son was 4 years old, we learned Galatians 5:22-23 as Thanksgiving Day approached. Each day we learned one fruit of the spirit, and then added another, and another, until he had memorized the 9 Fruits of the Spirit. Then on Thanksgiving Day, he was able to recite the verse for his grandparents.

To help Jake visualize the Fruits of the Spirit, I used a cornucopia with some pretend fruit. Each day we added a new fruit to the cornucopia and then ate that fruit as our snack for the day. For example, the apple represented love so we put an apple in the cornucopia. The next day we added an orange to represent joy and repeated, "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy." The next day we added the strawberry and said, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace." We kept adding until we had all the fruits in the cornucopia.

The memorization on this verse has been a staple in our disciple plan. For every act of obedience or disobedience, it leads back to a fruit of the spirit and I am able to use it when I correct my children.

Scenarios:
Jake is frustrated with his sister and calls her stupid. I can correct him by reminding him of kindness. The fruit of the spirit is kindness and what you said to your sister was not kind; God wants us to show kindness. What can you do next time to be kind?
or
Jake is whining about wanting a snack. I can correct him by reminding him of patience. The fruit of the spirit is patience and you are not showing patience right now. How can you show me that you are being patient instead of whining?
or
Jake is told to make his bed and goes upstairs and forgets. I can correct him by reminding him of faithfulness. The fruit of the spirit is faithfulness and that means you will do what you said you would do. I know that sometimes we forget things, but we need to try hard to show faithfulness since it is a fruit of the spirit.

You can take any behavior and bring it back to the fruit of the spirit.

So, since this is so valuable to our family's values, and the twins are 4 years old, I decided to teach them Galatians 5: 22-23. Now, I love the girls a ton, but their gift is not memorization. For Jake, he had the verse memorized in a few days (we skipped ahead) but for the girls I knew I needed to reinforce it a little more.

So....we brought out the cornucopia and also added a few other tricks to help them memorize the verses. We added a coloring sheet to our learning poster. This poster has the letter of week, their Awanna verse, and other things we are learning throughout the week. We put the coloring sheet on our learning poster and color one fruit each day as learn it. After we review the fruit already in the cornucopia, we add a new fruit, and then recite the verse again andcolor it on our poster.

We have colored, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness so far. Then at night we reinforce the fruit of the spirit again. I put the coloring sheet onto a iron-on transfer and made a pillow case. Using a fabric marker, we color the new fruit of the day and recite the verse a few more times. Then the girls choose something they are thankful for. Below is Brooke's pillow and she is thankful for Mommy, Daddy, Kate, Jake, the G means grandma, the P means Papa, Jake (again), Tex, on the top is the entire Bowen family, and everybody.

The girls are doing great with the verses and I expect them to have it memorized and able to recite on Thanksgiving Day!

We love to dance and sing the Fruit of the Spirit song from the CD entitled 20 Bible Verses Every Child Should Know