Juggling Joy with J Week

At first, I thought J week was going to be a hard one to do.  I had a hard time figuring out how to teach them to differentiate between the G sound and the J sound that sounded alike.  The English Language is very difficult, but we just worked at it for awhile.  I think they got the idea at least. :)

We cut out and colored the flag of Japan and talked about Japan and our cousins in Missouri that spent time in Japan for a few years.  We talked about how they all slept in the same room and my kids thought this was a great custom and wished we did this in America. :)  It was nice we had spent some time with Sage, Lucas, Kai, and Tio this summer and fall so they could put names and faces with places.  They were very excited about this part of the lesson.

Ava made some Jewelry necklaces out of beads and string.  She always loves to use her beads and this was just another reason to use them.

We also spent time discussing words and feelings like Jealousy and how it can get the best of you and make you do mean things.  To reiterate our point, we watched the animated story of Joseph and the coat of many colors.  This was a great story to show the kids the meaning of jealousy and what it can do.  We also read the story of Joseph and acted it out. 

Some of the foods we ate were jelly toast, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice, and juice pops.  We also colored pictures of jets and read a book on jets.  Then we colored and cut out pics of jars of jelly. This was a great way to practice their scissor skills.  A few other activities we did were telling jokes, reading a goofy joke book from daddy, jumping jacks, jumping on one foot, and jumping for Jesus.  We talked about Jesus and who he was and what he did for us.

One of my favorite things we did was an activity we found online.  We took a paper bag and cut it into a vest with holes for the head and arms.  Then we decorated our JUNGLE vest and took turns traveling the jungle and searching for made up animals.  This was more fun than I thought it would be and the kids were SOOO funny as they were fighting over who got to wear the jungle vest.  We found Jaguars and jungle monkeys.  Fun game.

Here is a picture of Christian while wearing the JUNGLE vest.  He was soo proud.

They made their own JAVA for their party while daddy and I were drinking our java.  This was just another thing they got a huge kick out of.

For our service, we cut jars out of paper and cut out jelly beans from colored construction paper and then we glued the jelly beans in the jar.  We took a Jar of Jelly Bean to our friend Jodi, who had just had a baby.  We also sent a Jar of Jelly beans to our compassion girl, Jessica Grace.  I think this picture is hilarious as you can see their personalities in this one.  She has been crossing her eyes and making that goofy smile for every picture and Christian smiles till his eyes go closed.