Sunday School Treat & Musical Instruments

I apologize for the long blogging break. For some reason I was unable to upload anything to blogger last week. We have short periods where the internet is sluggish for us. So now we play catch-up!
A week ago we had our Sunday School Treat. Ezra is in Miss Bonnie and Miss Jennie's class along with many of his friends. He loves all of the other kids and talks about them frequently at home. He also has fun telling us what they talk about in class each Sunday. It's so wonderful to know that he's really listening and taking it all in.
The kids were supposed to learn John 10:27-30, "There Were 12 Disciples" song, "the Books of the Bible" song, and the 12 sons of Jacob. Ezra got through John 10:27-30, "There were 12 Disciples" and a few of the sons of Jacob. He did lots of practicing and took it quite seriously. I was planning to post a video, but we can't seem to get the video from the camera to the computer....so, use your imagination. He didn't have stage fright. Not an ounce of it, shucks. Imagine our high-energy boy making big alligator jaws and doing somersaults and touching his toes and making faces. Yep, it was fun. However, he wasn't the only one and so we laughed until tears ran down our faces and tried not to be too embarrassed. It was a lot of fun to watch. Also, John 10:30 says "I and my Father are one"...Ezra's rendition was "My daddy and I are one".

Look at all those cute faces. I was having trouble getting the whole class in the frame from where I was sitting, so our one and only cute little Miss A is missing from most of the pictures.

JMJ 4 says his verses.

Ezra saying John 10:27-30

J.D.

Look at those hands going while he sings. Somehow Ezra ended up with the microphone in his hands for the "Books of the Bible" song, which he didn't know any of.

The older kids' class each chose aspects of King David's life to talk about. They memorized a lot of verses and were very impressive. Here is JMJ 1 doing his thing.

Caroline sacked out on the floor halfway through. She woke up just in time for the treat bags to be passed out.

And here is JMJ 2 with a cute little smile.

We really enjoyed the SS treat this year--perhaps because we finally got to watch our own little man perform.

Now then, onto the musical instruments. I have all sorts of fun spring projects ready to go for the kids. But, with snow falling (and some days accumulating) I just don't have the heart to get started on the cute little flowers and butterflies. Last week we decided to work on musical instruments. This is an easy project and anyone can do it. We collected toilet paper tubes, sour cream Tupperware, baby food snack containers, etc. for a few weeks. Then we got those out along with some noisy foods such as: black beans, unpopped popcorn and rice. We also had some rubber bands on hand. This time of year is a great time to make "noise makers" aka: instruments, because Easter eggs are available. They are also cheap. I bought a package of sparkly pastel ones at Target for 75 cents.

We spent an hour filling the eggs and containers with the popcorn, beans and rice. I used duct tape to seal all the containers so that they couldn't open. We also used rubber bands, duct tape and plastic containers to make our own "guitars". Long narrow containers work best for these.

The older your kids are, the better this project is for the learning side of things. You can discuss vibrations and low vs. high and all that jazz. The younger your kids are, the easier they are to please. An Easter egg filled with rice is enough to entertain them : ) After the instruments are made, turn on a kid cd and jam to the beat.

All the necessary tools.

Shake those shakers!

Ezra plucking his guitar. It was real high tech : ) As a bonus--the noise is barely audible.