Our Bodies and the Plan of Salvation and Easter

I felt good about myself for making our study of our bodies coincide with Easter, but truthfully, it was mostly just a coincidence.

The one thing we didn't do as well as I would have liked, is learning the song, "He sent His Son" from the primary songbook. I did try to teach it to them, and we worked on it two different times, but they were difficult days and difficult times and although I learned the song a little better and now they are a little more familiar with it, they can't sing it on their own. I suppose there is no reason to stop learning the song just because Easter is over.

Our basic outline for the week was as follows. Our discussions and scripture readings and activities coincided with the topic for the day.

Our week went like this:
Monday - Spirit world and before we are born - without a body, just a spirit.
Tuesday - Story of Adam and Eve.We are born and our body and spirit come together. While alive we need to get baptized and go to the temple.
Wednesday: We die. Our bodies and spirits separate and our bodies are buried in the earth while our spirits go to heaven.
Thursday - We will someday be resurrected, just as Jesus was. Our bodies and spirits will come back together forever and we will live in Heaven with our families and Heavenly Father and Jesus.

Because I generally think people are more interested in photos anyway, I've just posted a gazillion and I am going to make comments underneath them. Here goes...

 We read from the children's stories from the Old Testament book. Joshua really loves this story. It is curious to me, the things he find particularly interesting. This is one of them.

 Here is the song we kind of learned. I would like to add more singing. (more singing, more reading, more math... we'll just see how things go and what I can do.)

 We made little "plan of salvation" books. We used squares of paper and I wrote the text and the children drew the illustrations. The story begins before we are born and ends after we are resurrected. We put our finished pages in little photo albums and they wanted pictures of Christ (and Joseph Smith) taped on them - and there are a few inside the books too. These were just missionary hand out cards they found, but they were all Easter themed and very appropriate.  Anyway, this above photo is Joshua drawing himself when he was a baby sitting in a car seat.

 Who knows what Abigail is drawing. On the day we talked about death and she was supposed to draw something about her dying and being buried, she drew a monkey playing with a toy that would kill it. I don't know how to comment on that.

 Here is are little Adam and Eve lesson and learning about how we get our bodies. The kids liked the fact that we had to wait a long time in Heaven just as spirits until it was our turn. And that there are more spirits just waiting up there until Heavenly Father is ready to send them down. They thought it was interesting too that there is a spirit up there somewhere that will one day be sent down to our family when we have another baby, but we all just have to wait until Heavenly Father is ready to send the spirit down. I think that's interesting too.

 The first page says "In Heaven I didn't have a body" Joshua drew 5 spirits upside down in Heaven - those are clouds. One of those spirits is named Mr. Bogart. I have no idea who Mr. Bogart is but he is on another page in Joshua's book too. The second page says "I was just a spirit". I like Joshua's drawings. He often adds fingers and toes - but no ears.

 "Someday I will die. My spirit will leave my body"  The only graves that Joshua really ever sees are of my grandparents, who have their names right next to each other on the same stone. So to Joshua, it made sense to draw two headstones, one for him and one for Abigail, right next to each other.  The second illustration is awesome. Can you tell that the spirits are leaving the bodies?

 "It will be very sad, but it's ok"  Joshua drew one of those "happy face, frowny faces" you learn about in Nursery - the kind that when you turn it upside down, it's no longer sad, but happy.

 This is Abigail's. It says "I can do many things with my body" and she drew, on the right, a man eating food and taking a walk to his bed, which is on the left. She pointed out to me the bed and his pillow. It's kind of hard to make out now when she isn't around.

 This is the illustration of the monkey playing with that lethal toy.

Ok - before I jump to the last photos of today and yesterday, I feel like I have to say, we really did spend a ton of time talking about the plan of salvation. I just don't have photos of our discussions. I feel like the kids learned a lot, and what they already knew has been solidified. On our day when we talked about death, they were very reverent. I think kids know that it is a solemn topic but an important one. Anyway, so most of the next photos aren't very spiritual or religious really. While decorated the sugar cookie Easter Eggs we did talk about how the egg represents new life and Jesus' resurrection and our eventual resurrection as well.

 And again, painting eggs isn't very spiritual, but it is a tradition and we love it.

 I couldn't find the $1 egg dye kit so I had to spend $2 for this kit. It came with gold paint that you could use to make golden eggs. Ours were only partly golden. But I liked how they turned out anyway.

 Even Grammy painted a few with us.

 Random out of order photo of our Easter Egg Cookies.

 And when Derek came home from his bike ride, he painted an egg too!

 Random out of order photo of Abigail eating a cookie. She uses an interested technique with her decorating and frosting spreading.

 Here are our finished eggs.

 Easter baskets the next morning. I know the Easter Bunny is totally ridiculous and I know Joshua knows there is no such thing - I don't know about Abigail - but it is hard for me to do away with this tradition. I read from someone they put religious items in their baskets. I like that idea.

 Eating a peep for breakfast.

 After church we went to the Heber City Cemetery to visit Grandma and Grandpa and we talked about all the bodies that weren't yet resurrected, but they would be. I love visiting cemeteries. I think they are good places to be. I hope that isn't too morbid. I think they are peaceful and spiritual.

 This has nothing to do with anything we learned about. Here are the men Easter evening about to race plastic ducks.

 On your mark! Get set! GO!!

And then we raced tractors. Thanks Grammy for such a fun Easter. We really did have a wonderful time. No time tonight for spell checking. Please just ignore my typos.