A Different Kind of Day

Since Jeff's mother is coming to visit in two days and we'll be out of town doing some traveling with her, we're not "officially" doing homeschool this week. But this morning--rather than doing nothing--we had a fun time doing some extras: reading a book about Christopher Columbus in honor of Columbus Day (and talking about how on Columbus Day 6 years ago, Jeff and I made an amazing discovery of our own--that was the day we first learned I was pregnant with Josiah!!!), reading three chapters from Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny by Jan Karon, using a LeapPad phonics book (Tad Can Tap) for Josiah to practice his reading, Josiah doing 4 mazes, and beginning a new prayer journal for Josiah to practice his writing.

I don't remember who said this or when I first heard it, but a bit of wisdom that has stuck with me for a number of years is that a simple way of helping your children's' faith to grow is to let/help them keep a prayer journal. As they bring their requests to God and see Him answer, their faith (and their parents' faith!) grows as a result. Recently in various situations, Josiah has said to me, "We should pray about that, Mommy." So the lights went on in my head, and I realized that he's old enough to have his own prayer journal. It's not something that I feel any compulsion to have him write in every day--just when a certain prayer request comes from his heart.

Last week, we were talking about premature babies and the right length of time for babies to be inside their mommy before they're born, etc...and Josiah wanted us to pray about our baby not being born too early. So his first entry in his prayer journal says "For Baby to come out at the right time."
The second entry was this morning when Josiah was going to watch a movie (All about Cowboys for Kids--borrowed from the library--and successful in inspiring Josiah to want to be a cowboy when he grows up!); but our DVD player (part of our computer) is unreliable, to say the least. So we prayed about it, and it worked fine. Josiah wrote in his prayer journal "For the DVD player to work" and then "A: [for answer] Yes, it did!"
The last activity of the morning occurred after Grandma showed up and swooped the boys off to "help" her hang up laundry, which then turned into picking up acorns. In the picture below, Josiah is holding something that isn't a gun, but probably looks enough like a gun to make his little boy heart happy. :) It's actually a pick-up stick that my mom uses to pick up things off the ground while still saving her back. Josiah thinks it's such fun to use it!