Am I my Brother's Keeper?

Can you even BELIEVE that it's the middle of June and that the first day of Summer is officially this week?! Where has this year gone?! It's pathetic, but I think I say that EVERY year...but IT'S TRUE!

While we are done with Kindergarten and I have everything we need to start First grade, my husband asked that we wait because he doesn't want Little Britches to do school year round. Now I'm of the mind that there is NOTHING WRONG with it as long as you allow ample time for vacations and breaks and just being a kid. Which is why we are compromising...and not doing "school" but weekly Bible units and only doing them for morning lessons.

There is ample to teach when it comes to the Bible--and I have a great source that provides wonderful printable lesson booklets that are thematic with coloring pages and activity sheets. The best thing is that they were created when I was little and went out of print--but some wonderful people somewhere took them, scanned them and now they are available online for anyone to use!

Here is the link where they are grouped together by grade level--in this case level one is actually Kindergarten. We've use these for teaching Creation, Adam and Eve and Joseph so far with Little Britches. I tend to only print out the inner pages since the front and back are in color--but sometimes I print the back page--or at least retype it (if it's just words) so he can do the activity.

Here is how our week usually goes with teaching from these lessons--I'll use this past week as an example:

This week we did the booklet on Cain and Abel.

Monday:

* Introduce words that will come up in lesson (Cain, Abel, offering, murder, farmer, shepherd, brother)

* Read story from the lesson; ask the discussion questions at bottom of page

* Color first picture and do the activities on page 10 and 11

Tuesday:

* Review words from yesterday--write them out and discuss who/what they are

* Read story from the Bible; ask questions about what was read like "What is a fugitive or vagabond?", or "How many commandments did Cain break?", "Did God give Cain a chance to confess? What do you think God would have done if Cain had confessed?"

* Color picture of Cain and talk about what it meant to be a "tiller of the soil" during that time; do the dot-to-dot activity

* Use the Corn worksheet I made and have him add kernels to the cob

(You can download my printable I made for this HERE)

Wednesday:

*Review the main words; asking Little Britches to tell me what they mean

* Read the story from the Bible--this time have him fill in dialogue

* Ask him what would have happened if Cain had recognized his bad attitude BEFORE killing Abel...how would the story have been different? Review the commandments that were broken.

* Color picture of Abel and discuss what a shepherd is and draw connections to other shepherds we know about from the Bible (David, Jesus Christ, Parable of the Lost Sheep); ask what products we get from sheep. Practice drawing a lamb following the guide in the lesson

* Use the lamb worksheet I made and have him add cotton balls after coloring

(You can download the lamb worksheet HERE)

Thursday:

* Read the story from the Bible--have Little Britches tell the story with me

* Talk about the offerings each man made. How did they know what to bring? Who had taught them? Why was one right and the other wrong? Do we give offerings? Is there a way for us to give a "bad" offering?

* Color picture of the offerings

Friday:

* Have Little Britches tell me the story--help if needed

* Review the words from Monday for comprehension

* Discuss the connection between hatred and murder and what God's word says about them.

* Talk about what it means to "be your brother's keeper" and how it relates to our dealing with other people

* Color picture of Cain slaying Abel. We talked about what God meant when He said that the "voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me". Little Britches made his page VERY accurate. LOL!

* Discuss what happened to Cain after he had to leave his family and why God chose to "mark" him from being killed.

* Do the activity on the back of the lesson.

You will notice that nearly every lesson has a Bible Memory section. Sometimes it's a scripture--the first few lessons have the child memorizing the books of the Bible--a few for each lesson. It's up to you whether you want to use it or not. I'm waiting on the books of the Bible right now...but I always do the scriptures if they are listed.

As you can see, there is plenty to do, just by using these lessons over the course of a week. Sometimes the lesson matches perfectly with other activities that you can find online or with games or math. I have a host of them that I'm getting together for our lesson pack on Noah this week.

So if you are looking for something all-in-one to do over the summer, I totally recommend these lessons!