Teaching Acceptance

You know, my daddy always said, "your name is the only thing you have."  I wasn't even quite sure what he meant, but I knew if it was important to him, then I better pay attention.  He made a huge impression on my teen years as he extrapolated and explained what it means to live with integrity.

So!  When I came across Kids of Integrity I thought...hmmm, this might be worth investigating!

The site is run my Canada's Focus on the Family and offers free family lesson plans on individual character traits (among other things)

Here is a screen shot of a few of the character traits to which you can find PDF lesson plans, all centered on Christ, scripture and family.

Screen Caption -there are MANY more character traits (30? or more?)

This came at just the right time.  Doesn't God always work that way?!  :)

They are at the age when everything gets so complicated if you don't have a strong godly character built from the foundation up.  They do.  Yet, it was...well, time for a refresher course of sorts...for them AND for me.

So, today, my 10 year old and 12 year old began a study of acceptance.  

Our Acceptance Activity

Above is our rendition of a recommendation in the kidsofintegrity.com "Acceptance" printout -finagled a bit.  The leaves are those who accept us just the way we are.  Sometimes we put them on our tree because we are praying that we will be more accepting of them.

And, the animals?  They are people in our lives who need our prayers, for salvation or otherwise. Or, they are creations of God but haven't realized that there is a whole new life in Christ OR we felt they needed our prayer.

It's an ongoing tree.  The overall concepts I pray they "got" are that we are all a little different (each leaf is unique) but God made us all special and for His purpose.  So, if He made us (he is the trunk), we should be accepting of others (I'm not talking about the all-encompassing catch-phrase "tolerant"....that's a whoolllee 'nother thang....)

God is the trunk and we are His leaves, even those people each kid began to realize that they might not accept completely.  (This is mostly a brother-sister lesson on acceptance of one another.)

Anyway, this was a completely simple activity and they gleaned so much!  Better yet.  Our neighbors kids came over today and questioned me and the kids about or refrigerator art!

Bonus!! Major bonus!

More to come!

And Happy New Year's!