Using Drive Time

If you have children, you are in the car at some point. I often am driving my children to preschool, the library, the church, ballet, or other gatherings and activities. I use “drive time” as a time to teach and connect with my children. Here are some ideas to maximize your drive time:

1. Listen to an Audio Book- our library has picture books accompanied with the audio version, these are only ~15-20 minutes long if you listen to the book read twice. I let each child pick out a picture book/audio set at the library, then we take turns listening to them in the car. When we listen to their book they get to hold the picture book. If your children are older consider a longer audio book that or show, like Adventures in Odyssey.
2. Memorize Bible Verses- Everyone in our family loves Seeds Family Worship music. Seeds Family Worship takes bible verses and has put them into song form, this aids in memorization. Songs are much easier to memorize than just text. There are so many seeds of worship themes, you can pick one to accompany with a spiritual trait your family is working on. The great thing about the CDs is they come with 2 copies, 1 for you and 1 to share. We have 2 of their cds in our car that we rotate through.
3. Use drive time as prayer time. This can be done in so many ways. If your children are too young to pray, use it as a time to pray out loud, they will hear you and learn to pray by example as they grow. If your children are older, ask them how you can pray for them today. If your children are old enough to pray, ask them if they would like to pray. If your children are telling you about something in their day, whether a praise or a concern say “lets pray about this” or “lets praise God for this”. Suggest you praise and acknowledge who God is through prayer. You could keep a list of attributes or names of God to pray through with your children.
4. Play the High/Low game- This game is also great to play at meal time. Each person takes turns sharing a “high” (something they liked) from their day and a “low” (something they didn’t like). Use this time to build conversation. A great conversation builder: “tell me more”.

Writing Letters

Sometimes learning to write letters can be a bit tricky. If your kids are like mine they were able to identify and make letter sounds much earlier than they were able to write the letters. Some of this comes with fine motor development, some with just remembering all those shapes. Here are some ideas to help your little learn to write letters. These are also some FUN home school preschool activities!

Inexpensive Writing Practice

1. Salt Box/Salt Tray Letters
   • Fill a shallow tray or dish with salt, put the letter the child is working on in front of them, have the child trace the letter into the salt, then gently shake the dish to erase it
   • Rice would work as well
   • I like to coordinate this with our letter of the week or letters they already know the sound for, having them say the sound as they write it in the salt is bonus!
2. Sandpaper and Yarn Letters
   • Using sand paper, give your child lengths of yarn, have them use the yarn to make letters
   • This would work great when learning to spell their name
3. Spaghetti Letters
   • Cook up some spaghetti make letters out of the noodles
4. Snowy Letters
   • Use a stick or hand to make letters in the snow
5. Frosty Letters
   • Cold outside? Have your child blow on the window until it frosts, then they can write their letter on the window
     • afterward they can help you clean the window!
6. Tracing
   • Write the letter or letters on a piece of paper, have the child trace the letter with a highlighter

Other Letter Practice

I have several other tools I use for home school preschool that help improve letter writing and identification.

Passing Down Family Liturgy

I remember singing the doxology at family gatherings, I loved to listen to everyone sing the praise to God together. I often hear other biblical passages or spiritual writings that I wish I knew by heart. I decided that I wanted to also teach them to my children.

I started typing up the writings that I wanted to pass down. I then printed and laminated them and keep them on a ring so I can flip through them at meal time. Often times at dinner, instead of praying we will read one of these writings together, or just listen while one person reads. This also gives us an opportunity to talk about the rich spiritual theology in the writings.

Our collection will grow with time. So far we have:

• The doxology
• The Lord’s prayer (broken down in segments)
• The Niceen Creed
• A prayer of turning to God in Obedience
• How to Pray for someone to Follow Jesus
• Psalm 136 (this one is fun, the kids say “His Love Endures Forever” after every line)

This also works great in conjunction with teaching your children how to pray.

Teaching Your Children to Pray

Prayer is definitely a weakness of mine. I tend to be in communication here and there with the Creator, but to actually sit down and dwell in His presence and have intimate communication is not something I do frequently. As my children begin to follow Christ (two have decided to follow Christ), I endeavor to teach them how to pray, as I also continue to focus on improving this area of my life.

Here are some strategies I have started using in my home:

The Lord’s Prayer

As I shared in another post, one of the writings we read at dinner is the Lord’s prayer. The purpose isn’t just memorizing a section of scripture to repeat in some ritual, the purpose is to teach the parts of prayer. If you break down the Lord’s prayer it is rich with so much purpose behind each phrase. Sometimes we do just say the prayer, other times we say the idea behind each phrase and make up our own prayer, following Jesus’ example, and sometimes we just pick one part of the Lord’s prayer and pray over that area. Here is how we broke it down:

• “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name” – Praise God for who he is, acknowledge one of His many names
• “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” – Pray for God’s will in all areas of your life
• “Give us this day our daily bread” – identify your needs and ask God to provide for them
• “Forgive us our debts” – Ask God to forgive you for your sins  (identify specifics)
• “as we also forgive our debtors” – Ask God to help you to forgive others (identify specifics)
• “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” – Ask God to give you the strength and wisdom to avoid what is tempting you and overcome that temptation

Care for Those Who are Missing or Hurting

At every meal I ask the children “who is missing”, then I ask who wants to pray for that person. This teaches the children to care for others and notice when they are gone. Praying for the missing person teaches them that we can lift them up in prayer to The One who can watch over that person.

Encouraging Each Other

Another part of prayer is encouraging each other in prayer. Every morning at breakfast I ask my children how I can pray for them today. My daughter is in Kindergarten now and asks that I pray for her safety at school. Sometimes she will ask for other things as well. My middle child usually copies whatever her sister says, sometimes he asks that we also pray for the dog. I give every child a chance to pray over their request in addition to me praying. valuable

Delight in Your Children

The Treasure Tree is one of our favorite books. The children and I will sit and read through the whole book (takes about an hour). It is so fun to learn about the different personalities God has created in us and how we can use our personality to work together to accomplish a goal. It is also a great tool for learning to accept others!

Favorite Winter Books

These are some of our favorite winter picture books:

12 Days of Christmas and Epiphany

Now that baby Jesus had been born, tomorrow starts the journey of the wise men. In our home they will be traveling 12 Days and we will celebrate their arrival on epiphany.

During each day of their journey we will also learn more about Christ through the 12 names of Jesus ornaments and the book, What Nick and Holly Found in Grandpa’s Attic. This will be our 12 Days of Christmas this year.

Each day at supper (with daddy), we will read one page from our book and hang the corresponding ornament on our table top tree. I love this burlap wrapped tree, I hardly

Handing out Christmas Presents

There are so many ways to open gifts on Christmas morning. Times of gift giving can be a great opportunity to teach your children about love and gratefulness. It can also be a time to feed greed and a materialistic desire if you are not careful.

In our home we usually hand out Christmas gifts by the “giver”. Each person giving the gifts hands the gift they are giving to the recipient, then they watch them open it. We all take turns doing this. Focusing on the giver, rather than the recipient, aids in teaching the joy of giving. Our children have always loved this and usually delight in watching the gift they are giving be opened.

Tea Time

Once when my daughter was out of control and trying to get her way, she starting sobbing in tears saying “you never spend any time with me”. Well, I stay home, I spend ALL KINDS of time with her! But my heart was softened by this plea while she was trying to escape bedtime, so I suggested we have tea time. Since then Tea Time has evolved many ways, and it is something we both cherish regularly.

We started out with a weekly “Tuesday Tea Time”. I try to keep a list of ideas of things to do, either generated by my daughter or that I just think she might like. Our first week I made shortbread cookies with strawberries and whipped cream. We cut some fresh flowers, got out special place mats, tea cups, and the tea set. My daughter was IN HEAVEN! She was prim and proper and LOVED every second of our “tea time”.  I tried to stimulate conversation, but just being there, together, enjoying tea time was enough for her.

To her this is her mommy time, her time that I am just with her and no one else is bothering me and I have nothing else to do. To her this is a time of special treats and delicate dishes. To her this is a beautiful moment, a wonderful memory. To me this is a time I get to love my daughter, a time I get to treasure her and see who she is, a time I can learn and grow closer to her, and a time I can disciple her.

I plan to keep tea time going forever. The frequency and date and activities may change, but we will always set aside time to drink tea and enjoy each other. As my daughter grows this is a great time already set aside for discipleship. We can talk about the bible, sex, boys, friends etc. without it being “weird” by having a special time just for the conversation. The time is already scheduled in and common.

Here are several activities we have done at tea time:

• Baked together
• Tea time picnic
• Coloring
• Learning to “draw” together
• Visit a cemetery (tea in hand)– she was having questions about death, it was a lovely walk
• Visit a local Dahlia Garden (tea in hand)
• Read a book about sex
• Eat special treats

Since starting tea time, my husband has decided he is missing out. So I had to create a master schedule where the boys have their own special day with daddy and tea time is on an alternate week. This changes tea time from weekly to once or twice a month. We now all have our special one on one time.

Children’s Five Minute Devotional

One of my favorite times to teach my children is meal time. At meal time I have a captive audience–well at least as captive as a preschoolers and toddlers can be. When my children were very young I often struggled with what to talk about during meal time, reading a book or a devotional or memorizing scripture has given meal time some structure and fun memories while teaching my children some christian values.

We have recently began a book that has been sitting on our shelf for a while, “Five-Minute Devotions for Children: Celebrating God’s World as a Family by Pamela Kennedy“. 

This devotional is PERFECT for my 5 year old, my 3 1/2 year old loves it as well, but doesn’t always understand the concepts. I think it would be great for ages 4-10. I still feel like my younger 2 boys are soaking in some truths and we are laying a foundation of Godly conversations.

I love that the book is spiral bound, it allows me to fold it over so the kids can see the picture and I can easily read the text. There are a few other devotionals in the series, this is the only one we have tried. I love that this one is focused on different animals in the world, the kids love learning about the animals. Throughout the day we bring up reminders of the animals, for example, you are acting like a “wildcat”.  Following the text there are a 4ish questions on the picture page, a couple relate to the animal and a couple draw out how the animal relates to our actions and why it is important to God. There is also a verse to go along with each animal/lesson.

If you have a younger audience I have a few other recommendations on my resources page.