Alphabet Scriptures-Day One

Ever since Natalie was crawling, I've been turning over ideas in my mind on ways to incorporate learning into our everyday activities. At the same time, Keith and I have talked about how important it is to us that Natalie learns about Jesus. After all, our biggest goal for her in Heaven, not Harvard.

So when I saw the idea of doing ABC Scriptures from a blog link on Pinterest, I was hooked. It was the perfect blend for us. I could expose Natalie to meaningful, simple Bible verses while also exposing her to ABCs and lots of preschool concepts. A perfect match for all the ideas floating around in my head and what I truly want for her heart.

The hardest part then, was choosing Bible verses that were simple, short, and meaningful for her little life at this point. Keith and I have no false ideas that Natalie will be reciting the verses back to us. (It would help if she could talk first!) But we do recognize that Natalie is like a little sponge right now and she learns and remembers nearly everything we teach her. Some letters were super easy. And I stole many of the verses from the amazing blog that I got the idea from in the first place. But some letters had us stumped. Like X. Once we had that figured out, Natalie and I spent the large part of a morning walking to the library and checking out a bunch of books for letters A, B, and C to get us started. Then I spent a couple evenings/naptimes looking up fun, simple, toddler appropriate activities to do together.  We now had a plan for 3 weeks for the first 3 letters.

Last night, while Natalie was cuddling with Daddy watching sports, I put up a make-shift bulletin board to display all our creations each week on her closet door in her room. I also posted this weeks verse and stuck up a couple of die-cast letter A's on the board to get it started. It still looks pretty bare and plain, but Natalie was excited. Before going to bed, I displayed our "A" books on the TV stand and put all the magnetic letter A's I could find on a cookie sheet for her to play with during breakfast. (Which she looked at, said "Yeah!!" and then didn't touch. =)

We started out simple today. We pointed out the letters on her board and then I asked her if she wanted to use her new art supplies. I had bought some bingo markers from the dollar store and she had found them this morning before we were ready, so I knew starting with an activity that used them would be really exciting for her. (Picture small clapping hands and running feet when I told her to go get them.) Our "A" verse is: "A gentle answer turns anger away." Proverbs 15:1

Here's what we did:

The first one we did was a capital A. At this point, she was a little overexcited about the bingo markers and just started going to town on the paper.

By lowercase A her intensity went down a notch and she actually put the dots inside the circles.

I know, I know. It's a pretty ground-breaking activity.

But she had a blast.

And I was surprised at how much learning was incorporated into such a simple craft. We read (and sang) our "A" verse, we pointed out letter "A's" in the verse, I had her ask for each bingo marker by color (she signs half of them and attempts to say the other half), and she learned to unscrew the caps by herself (a great fine motor task!)

Then we hung them up on her bulletin board and she smiled for pictures. She was so proud! Definitely a success for day one!