1 Samuel 1:21-23

Now the man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and his vow. But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “Not until the child is weaned; then I will take him, that he may appear before the Lord and remain there forever.” And Elkanah her husband said to her, “Do what seems best to you; wait until you have weaned him. Only let the Lord establish His word.” So the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

Hannah knew the answer to the question.  In those days children were not weaned for 3 to 5 years. Wean means to ‘fully deal with’.  Hannah wouldn’t leave Samuel during those years, even to go to the temple, as she was aware of the time it would take to ‘fully deal’ with Samuel if she wanted him to ‘appear before the Lord and remain there forever’.

The preschool years are foundational:

• 2/3 of everything a child will ever learn, he learns before 1^st grade
• 85% of his personality and attitude toward life is formed in the first 5 years
• He begins even from the womb to be sensitive to spirit, mood, & attitudes
• Self-will must be broken by 2; it is very difficult to break later
• Needs to learn to trust by 18 months or it will be hard for him to trust as adult
• 12 attitudes he needs to develop during this stage of his life:
  Attentiveness
  obedience
  contentment
  neatness
  reverence
  forgiveness
  gratefulness
  faith
  truthfulness
  security
  meekness
  cautiousness

Wow – that is a lot to deal with!  But Elkanah gave the way to cover it all. He said to let the Lord establish His Word. Hannah was to spend the preschool years seeing that God’s Word was established in Samuel. Such is our example to follow.

Always remember that there is nothing you encounter as a parent that can not be positively affected by prayer and God’s Word – and especially praying God’s Word.

Examples:

In the breaking of the self-will pray and help your children begin to memorize these verses (‘I will’ scriptures will help their will to become His will):
Psalm 119:15  I will study your commandments,
Psalm 101:2  I will behave wisely in a perfect way.
Psalm 101:2  I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
Psalm 119:16  I will delight in your principles and not forget your word.
Psalm 101:3  I will set nothing wicked before my eyes;
Psalm 56:3  What time I am afraid, I will trust in God.

When teaching your children to trust remember:
Romans 10:17  Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God 
Help him find his security in God through His Word.

When your child is struggling with sharing, let him see you share and as you do, say that God says in the Bible:
1 Tim 6:18 Be ready to share

Don’t wait to start training your little one in the way he should go.  I encourage you to stay in the Word and look for ways to teach the Word as you go no matter what the age of your child:
Deuteronomy 6:6-9  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again.  Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere.
Mark 16:15

History:

‘In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!’  Why did he set sail?

“Christopher Columbus had a belief that God intended him to sail the Atlantic Ocean in order to spread Christianity. He said his prayers several times daily. Columbus wrote what he called a Book of Prophecies, which is a compilation of passages Columbus selected from the Bible which he believed were pertinent to his mission of discovery.  Columbus’s own writings prove that he believed that God revealed His plan for the world in the Bible, the infallible Word of God. Columbus believed that he was obeying the mission God staked out for his life when he set sail west across the Atlantic Ocean.“  Phyllis Schlafly Radio Script, October 14, 2002

Washington Irving writes of Christopher Columbus: “ Whenever he made any great discovery, he celebrated it by solemn thanks to God. The voice of prayer and melody of praise rose from his ships when they first beheld the New World, and his first action on landing was to prostrate himself upon the earth and return thanksgivings.”

The results of Columbus sailng the ocean blue was the discovery that the Earth was indeed round and the settlement of new lands.  This resulted in the further spreading of the Good News which led eventually to our hearing the Gospel of Jesus.

Activities:

Teach your children that today we celebrate the life of a brave explorer who loved Jesus and obeyed the Bible’s command to spread the gospel.

Play with a ball, preferably an inflated globe ball, and talk about the fact that Columbus discovered that the world was round.

Trace his journey on a globe from Spain to San Salvador Island.

Tape off a boat on the floor or make one out of a box and pretend to be Columbus discovering America.  Then get out and lay on the ground and thank God and sing as Columbus did.

Check out this site for more great ideas to celebrate Columbus Day with your children.

Daniel 2:21
And He changes the times and the seasons;

Celebrate each season, emphasizing God’s hand in it all.  Autumn is such a fun tme to enjoy God’s beautiful world with your children. Go outside and play in the leaves – build a leaf fort, bury each other in leaves, walk on the dry leaves and hear them crunch, see who can find the most perfect, colorful leaf.  Be sure to thank God for the leaves as you play. And don’t forget to sing!!!

Matthew 25:40
And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

At the age of nineteen, Katie Davis felt God leading her to move to Uganda to teach children.  That step of faith led her to start a nonprofit organization, and then to adopt 14 children who now call this 21 year old ‘Mama’.  She is bringing the love of Jesus to a whole village where she lives and is a shining example to us all of  how to love Jesus by sacrificial love and care for the ‘least of these’.  Read her story – Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

Romans 11:16 (Msg)
Behind and underneath all this there is a holy, God-planted, God-tended root. If the primary root of the tree is holy, there’s bound to be some holy fruit.

What we eat affects our future children.

We are well aware that we affect our children through our DNA  in their physical characteristics such as color of hair and eyes, but did you know that the way we eat before our children are conceived will affect their health?  Dr. John Christopher in his book, Herbal Home Health Care states “The time we start preparing for an anti-disease susceptibility is many months before conception. If, however, that is too late and the child is here and sick at this time, we will have to work on the present cause, but this effort could be eliminated if we had started a few generations back.”

For more on this check out this article that points out what we do to our bodies can somehow leave an imprint on our genetic material and be passed along to the next generation.

How we live our lives affects our future children.

It’s interesting that what has been discovered in the scientific realm of how choices made nutritionally affect future generations is also what God has said in His Word concerning how we relate to Him.  Deuteronomy 5:9 You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

Catherine Marshall speaks about this in her book, Something More. She writes, ” just as we can inherit either a fortune or debts, so in the spiritual realm we can inherit either spiritual blessings or those liabilities (unabashedly called ‘sins’ in scripture) that hinder our development into mature persons.”

Chuck Swindoll in his book, You and Your Child refers to this as “grandad’s bent” and points out that the bents in our lives toward particular sins must be broken for the good of the children that will come after us. Deuteronomy 5:29 “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be will with them, and with their children for ever!

Since the nutritional and spiritual choices made will directly affect the children that are yet conceived, then each choice should be carefully thought through, if not for your own good, but for the good of your future children.  Live life as a ‘God-planted, God-tended root which will result in some holy (pure, virtuous) fruit.’

Children learn best when they hear and see what is being taught.  Read the Bible story ahead of time and be ready to tell it in your own words with much enthusiasm, acting it out as much as possible.  Use visuals to illustrate the Bible story.  Then try to end with a practical application for their lives and a verse to memorize.  A song is always good to help remember the teaching as well; put the verse or something in the story to a familiar tune.

Here’s a suggestion for telling 1 Samuel 16:1-13, the story of the shepherd boy David being anointed as king.

Story:

Tell about Samuel looking for a new king as you walk around searching & looking at each child.  Before you start telling the story, give one child a stuffed lamb.  When you come to that child say that David was just a kind, young boy watching sheep when Samuel found him.

Samuel had looked at all of David’s older brothers who were much stronger, but God told Samuel that the Lord doesn’t make decisions the way people do by outward appearance; the Lord looks at a person’s thoughts and intentions.

God helped Samuel know that David was the chosen king, not because of what he looked like on the outside, but because of what he was like on the inside.  Samuel then anointed David with oil.  Anointing with oil was a way of showing that a person was set apart to be used by God.

Visual: Ahead of time, draw David on the front of a piece of construction paper.  Then draw the crown and scenery if you like on the back (hold paper to light to make sure you draw the crown in the right place).  Tape David to a plate (don’t show the back of paper)  Anoint David with oil using a cotton ball to apply oil.  The crown magically appears when the paper is covered in oil. Say that God saw more than what Samuel saw when he looked at David; God saw that David had a good heart to be the new king.

Practical application: David was chosen and anointed to be king because he had a good heart.  Emphasis that our actions are more important than our appearance.  God has something special for each of us to do just as He had for David to do.  We must keep our hearts kind and good so we can do what God wants us to do.

Memory verse: 1 Samuel 16:7 … man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

I have treasured the words of His mouth
More than my necessary food.
Job 23:12

In Matthew 6:1-18 Jesus talked of three duties of every Christian.  He gave instructions for giving, praying, and fasting.  In each case He said ‘when’ you give, ‘when’ you pray, ‘when you fast’ indicating these were duties not options.  I must confess that I taught my children to give and to pray, but never realized fasting was not just an option.

Fasting is a vital practice for every Christian. The discipline of fasting breaks you out of the world’s routine and causes your relationship with Jesus to go deeper.  And we should teach our children that we can give up a favorite food or activity from time to time to show God our love for Him. There are many Bible stories you can tell them of people fasting.  The most familiar is the story of Jesus fasting and the devil tempting Him. Here’s a fun video illustrating the story.

The following is an excellent video that explains fasting to children.

We as parents can set the example of disciplining our bodies as recorded in 1 Corinthians 9:27.  Ezra called the parents to a fast for their littles ones in Ezra 8:21-23.  We can powerfully affect our children by praying and fasting for them.

For a thorough explanation of fasting read Fasting: Opening the door to a deeper, more intimate, more powerful relationship with God by Jentzen Franklin.

So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height,
for the people had a mind to work.
Nehemiah. 4:6

Labor Day is a day set aside to pay tribute to working men and women. It has been celebrated as a national holiday in the since 1894. You can read the history of this holiday here.

Labor day is a good time to memorize this verse and talk about having a mind to work.  Read the story of Nehemiah in your Bible and tell it in your own words – 0r – find it in a children’s Bible and read it to your children.  The walls of Jerusalem had been destroyed and Nehemiah led the people to rebuild them.  They had a mind to work.

• Build a wall together out of pillows and share the story.
• Talk about having a mind to work.  Think of ways your children can ‘work’.  Find suggestions here.
• Memorize Nehemiah 4:6 “…the people had a mind to work.”
• Thank God for the work that Dad does and the work that Mom does.
• Lead your children to be thankful to those they encounter doing their work.

How we deal with our children is a signal of our fellowship with God!!  Pretty bold statement, huh?

Take a look at this video from Friends and Heroes (www.friendsandheroes.com)  They produce animated adventure stories which tell Bible stories for children. They also produce curriculum for churches, schools, and homeschool to help establish God’s Word in children.

The world is on fire – we can’t just hope our children won’t get burned – we have to rescue them – we have to train them in the Way they should go!!!!!!

(This is another lesson from Here a Little, There a Little, a compilation of Bible activities I created to use with my preschool children. It was designed to spend a week memorizing the verse and reinforcing it through Bible lessons and activities.)

Security

(Structuring my life around what is eternal and cannot be destroyed or taken away)
God can never be taken away from you!!

Bible Verse: Joshua 1:9 I command you be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Bible Stories:

Joshua 1 God told Joshua he was to lead his people into the land that God had promised them.  He told Joshua to be strong and not to be afraid.  He said to go where He told him to but not to be afraid because He would go with him everywhere He told him to go.  Joshua obeyed God and God kept His promise to Joshua to be with Him.

Daniel 3:12-26 The King Nebuchadnezzar told everyone to worship a statue rather than the one true God.  Three men named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego loved God and said they would only worship and pray to Him.  The king put them in a fiery furnace to kill them.  But God was there; He didn’t let them burn.  The king looked in the furnace and saw 4 men instead of 3 men in the furnace.  It was Jesus in there with them!  God is with you wherever you go!! (see picture above)

Exodus 3:1-12 One day Moses was watching his sheep and he saw a bush burning.  When he went over to the bush, he heard God talking to him.  God told Moses He wanted him to go help people because they were being treated badly.  Moses was afraid to go, but God told him not to be concerned about going to talk to the mean king because He said, “Certainly, I will be with you.”

Jeremiah 1:1-10 God told Jeremiah that He had chosen him to be one of his preachers.  Jeremiah said, “But God, I can’t speak for I am a child”  But God told him, “Don’t be afraid for I will give you the words to say and I will be with you to help you out of any problem”

Matthew 1:23   Psalm 46:1 God loves us so much that He wants to help us in times of trouble.  He wants to be with us all the time.  He sent us Jesus to live with us here.  Jesus has another name.  He is called Emmanuel.  Do you know what Emmanuel means?  It means ‘God with us’!  I’m so glad that God is with us wherever we go!!!

Prayer: Help us remember that You are always with us to keep us safe.

Activities for younger preschooler:

Talk about God being with him while in the bedroom, living room, etc. as you go from room to room

Make up a song with the verse to the tune of  “Mary Had a Little Lamb”  Here’s an example – God is With You Wherever You Go

Share the verse in a dark room

Share the verse outside in the sunshine or during a rain storm

Share verse in the car as you are traveling somewhere

Activities for older preschoolers:

Go outside at night and talk about God being with you in the day time and in the night time

Illustrate the Bible story from Daniel about the Fiery Furnace – make a fire out of red, orange, and yellow construction paper.  Cut out 4 men.  Put 3 in as you tell the story, then add the 4^th at the end.

Go outside in the morning and talk about how God will always be with us just as the sun will always come up every morning.  Draw a picture of the sun.

Paste pictures of different places he goes – write Bible verse on paper. (See picture on a related post). Everything you do this
week be sure to include the thought of the presence of God – as playing say, “God, I’m glad you are here with us.”  As going to the grocery store say, “God, thank you that you are going with us to the store.”

Find pictures of children in other lands to color and talk about God is with them just as He is with
us here  – Look at globe or maps and share verse

Songs:

Three Good Men by Bill Gaither  This is from the album Especially for Children of All Ages.
I have only found it in vinyl - Especially for Children…of all ages

God is With You Wherever You Go

Books:

Find these stories in a children’s Bible.  If you don’t have one, check here or here for some good ones.
Arch Books has a book about many, many Bible stories.  Begin building your library with these colorfully illustrated paperbacks:

Journey to the Promised Land: Exodus 15:23-Joshua 4:24 for children (PassAlong Arch books)

The Fiery Furnace