Free Family Inductive Bible Study Guide for Advent

Photo Credit

The files for Eleanor Zweigle's 2018 Family Inductive Bible Study Guide for Advent are available for download here. Advent begins tomorrow, and this family study is a wonderful way to focus on Christ during the Christmas season. Homeschoolers may also use it for Bible study. There are coloring pages for young children, but the guide can be used by the entire family. It is a great way to learn or brush up on the inductive Bible study method.

Resurrection Day Activities

Photo Credit: Rob Elliott

As followers of Christ, our family believes that it is valuable to spend some extra time to celebrate Resurrection Sunday. We try to live for Jesus every day, remembering His sacrifice and victory, but this gives us a chance to refocus and meditate anew on His love and saving grace.

There are many wonderful family activities on the web for this time of year.

Holy Experience has a few family Easter activities that I would like to do this year:

• Easter Garden
• Easter Tree (how to make one, devotionals and artwork - parents should check the image for Day 1 before showing your children)
• Box of Repentance

My post from last year includes several links to Resurrection Day activities:

• Resurrection Day Links (I made sure the links were working and updated some)

Easy Fun School has a Passover unit study that looks great:

• Celebrating Easter: A Passover Unit Study

Biblical Holidays has information on Passover and instructions for a Messianic Passover Seder:

• Passover Overview
• Messiah in Passover
• Messianic Passover Seder
• Passover Recipes

 Enjoy this season of celebration and hope with your family!

Resurrection Day Links

It's a bit late for this, but I have seen so many great ideas for celebrating Resurrection Day that I wanted to be sure to post some of them.

I love the Names of Jesus Garland at The Homespun Heart. Hat tip to Keeper of the Home for the link. I adapted this to use as a children's ministry craft. You can read about that here if you are interested.

Holy Experience shares instructions for making an Easter Garden. Although we should have had this ready for Palm Sunday according to the directions, we're making one today or tomorrow (haven't found plants yet) because it is such a beautiful and visual way of "remembering of the grief of old beginning, the dazzling wondering of new beginnings." If you haven't visited this blog before, be sure to stop by just for a taste of the writing!

Make your own Resurrection Eggs. I use these in our children's ministry every year. We hide them and everyone takes turns opening his/her egg, sharing the contents and reading the Scripture. It is a fun, interactive way to share the Scriptures relating to Jesus' death and resurrection.

We have also made Resurrection Rolls before. We make these on Saturday evening, but we leave them in the oven overnight, "sealing" it with tape. We "unseal" the oven in the morning and pull out the rolls after I have warmed the rolls up a bit. The first time we made them, the kids couldn't believe that the "tombs" were empty the next day! We are going to try making our own marshmallows for this instead of buying them.

The Archaeological Study Bible's Easter Story Site includes notes, images and information about several historical aspects of the Resurrection.

Try a 5-day Easter Unit Study.

Hold That Thought offers printable Easter-related Scriptures and quotes to make into a Scripture card ring. They also provide instructions and a template for children to make their own Story of Easter, scrapbook style.

Enjoy!

Celebrating Christ with a Jesse Tree

Making a Jesse Tree as a family during the Advent season over the last three years really helped our family to focus on Jesus during the holidays. In fact, the first year we did a Jesse tree was the first year that we had a fairly relaxed holiday season, and that was with four children, ages 6, 8, 10 and 11. I think that purposefully taking the focus off ourselves and our own little family had a lot to do with that.

Last year, we discovered the inductive method Advent study that I posted about and attempted to do that and the Jesse tree. That was a bit too much. We managed to do the Jesse tree and our usual Advent readings, but we didn't do much with the study.

We sat down as a family a few weeks ago to plan out the holidays a bit, and the kids asked if we could skip the Jesse tree this year and do the Advent study instead. We'll miss it, but we agreed. New traditions are good too!

If you are interested in learning about the Jesse tree and possibly using one this season, it starts this Friday, November 28. The links from my past Jesse tree posts are still active and updated for this year, so I will re-post those.

This site has simple printable ornaments in two sizes and Jesse Tree readings here. I printed the ornaments out on card stock and had my daughters cut them out, hole-punch them, and tie ribbon around each one. I already had a miniature Christmas tree, so I decided to use that rather than make one. The "Advent Reflections" document (updated each year) includes a short Scripture reading, a synopsis of the actual Bible story mentioned, and the Bible verses to read the whole story. When we are busy, we just do the short reading and synopsis. When we have more time, we read the entire story from the Bible.

Here are some other Jesse Tree links if anyone is interested:

Making a Jesse Tree
(this one looks really cute for younger children)

The Jesse Tree
(this is an article with background information, directions for making a Jesse Tree and a chart of Scripture readings)

The Jesse Tree at Domestic-Church.com

Enjoy!

Free Inductive Method Advent Study

Photo Credit

We did a free Advent study last year with the kids that uses the inductive method, and I actually remembered to look for it again this year before Advent begins! Actually, Kathryn (our youngest) requested it, so I should not take the credit. :-) The study was written by Eleanor Zweigle and is available at A Family Inductive Bible Study Guide for Advent.

This study is a wonderful way to help keep your focus on Jesus and to introduce the inductive Bible study method to children.

Enjoy!

Regarding Amish Friendship Bread

Yummy stuff, but it is quite an endeavor to keep up with Amish Friendship Bread! As my aunt said when I told her I was baking some of this bread a few weeks ago, "Ah... it's a mixed blessing." I've never been successful at keeping up with this for long. In fact, it has been years since I have had some starter. I was wondering if you could freeze the starter or adapt the recipe at all, so I did a trusty Google search and quickly found some recipes and information, at allrecipes.com. Here are the recipes I found:

• Amish Friendship Bread Starter (guess it's not much of a secret anymore, thanks to the Internet)
• Amish Friendship Bread I
• Amish Friendship Bread II
• Amish Friendship Bread III
• Amish Friendship Chocolate Bread (I didn't see this one before!)

The editor's note for the starter recipe states that you can freeze the starter in 1-cup portions. You have to thaw it for at least 3 hours before using it. The comments for these recipes are very helpful too. I was able to play around with the recipe that I was given and use up all of the starter. I did make four new bags of starter that I froze. BTW, my instructions didn't say not to freeze it! Please, no negative comments on this controversial topic!

HomeschoolBlogger Comments
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Mar. 29, 2008 - Untitled Comment

Posted by lahbluebonnet

Oh I LOVE amish friendship bread. I got my starter when I taught public school. Then my supply just grew and grew. So I took bread and lots of batches to Sunday School class to share. lol I don't have that recipe anymore.
Blessings,
Laurie

Mar. 29, 2008 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Sawickis

Andrea~

I have to tell you that my dogs love Amish bread starter because not more than 2 hours after you gave me some I found the bag on the floor in the family room completely empty.

I'd love more when you have some.

*Kristie*