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Posts Tagged ‘Kids’

Sunday Morning Viewing in the Vicarage

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 28 May, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Our kids don’t watch much telly. In fact, we don’t even have a TV licence, though we have a whole cabinet of dvds. They watch it in the mornings at the weekends, and in the holidays (and sometimes play PS2 now instead).

On Sunday mornings, they watch something Christian before church. So far, the viewing has been mainly VeggieTales (we love those show tunes) and Colin (very funny with good music). I think we pretty much have complete sets of both of them.

The kids have watched those dvds tons, so we were pleased to find a new series of Christian dvds recently. It’s called Torchlighter ‘Heroes of the Faith’ and the dvds are cartoon stories of various Christians through the ages.

Inspiring Sunday morning viewing

Inspiring Sunday morning viewing

We bought ‘The Gladys Aylward Story‘ a couple of weeks ago. It made me weep as I watched. The kids loved it so much they watched it twice in one sitting.

We’ve ordered four more as a set, with the stories of Eric Liddell, John Bunyan, Jim Elliot and William Tyndale. I’m looking forward to seeing them, though I shall make sure the tissues are handy.

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Bank Holiday Monday Monsters

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , on 26 May, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We had a mellow Bank Holiday Monday. The Vicar mowed the lawn and papered a wall. I washed everything I could lay my hands on and mopped some floors. The big kids and the Vicar went to the park and fed the ducks. There was Lego play and art production inspired by the PS2 (you have to get inspiration where you can find it).

This is the Engineer’s masterpiece (I edited out his name in this blog’s spirit of semi-anonimity):

Monster Engineer, whose favourite meal is fish.

Monster Engineer, whose favourite meal is fish.

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The Vicar’s Wife’s Patent Toothbrushing Method for Children

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 12 May, 2009| 2 Comments »

I am a bad mother. It’s true. The Queen and the Joker both have fillings.

Every parent knows that brushing the children’s teeth is an excruciating experience for everyone. I loathe it and confess to having been a slacker (hence the fillings). My inner city dentist, used to the bad diets of local children, told me to stop giving them pop and sweeties but I am a bit of a food Nazi and the kids hardly ever had them anyway. So it must have been my bad brushing.

Actually, you should only have a pea-sized amount of toothpaste.

Actually, you should only have a pea-sized amount of toothpaste.

But since I started my new brushing technique the fillings have stopped. Phew.

What we do is count elephants. This is because:

  1. It makes me smile and reminds me of the Vicar’s favourite movie (where someone counts elephants to time the processing of a photograph).
  2. If you count ‘one elephant’ it lasts pretty much one second.
  3. The kids think it’s fun and it can also be done in French (or other language) or you can use dinosaurs too.

What I do is go around the mouth counting twenty elephants seven times – twenty elephants along each side of the mouth, top and bottom, with the mouth open. Then twenty elephants each side and front with the teeth together. This makes a total of 140 elephants, which is the dentists’ recommended two minutes with a bit extra to compensate for grumpy children.

It seems to be working for us, and can also be transferred to the kids as they start to brush for themselves. ‘Have you counted the elephants’ I ask the Queen when she brushes her own teeth…

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Seeds Family Worship

Posted in Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , on 28 April, 2009| 5 Comments »

Christian music has a reputation for being a bit rubbish, and kids’ Christian music even more so. However, our kids are great fans of Colin Buchanan (the Australian not the bishop). His music is fun, biblical and we can bear to listen to it in the car more than once. [NB Colin is on tour in the UK this summer, but rather sadly not anywhere very near the West Midlands.]

The trouble with Colin is that we have all his stuff now. So I was really pleased to come across this great YouTube clip from Seeds Family Worship:

[HT:Justin Taylor]

I’ve just ordered all five of their cds, which are priced at $12.98 each,  but you get two for the price of one. Shipping’s not cheap ($16.95 for international airmail) but we’ve ended up buying ten cds (five to give away) for just over £5 each.

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Grammar – working it out

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , on 13 February, 2009| 1 Comment »

I’ve just realised why my children do things

on accident.

It’s because they didn’t do them on purpose.

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Generations

Posted in Church, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on 10 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »

generations

The Joker was six the other Sunday. We’d already planned a party for him at a local soft play park, which happened after school on Monday. So what about celebrations on his actual birthday?

To tell the truth, we’d not completely factored in his birthday when planning our last few Sundays in this parish. So we’d invited three church members to lunch. They were an octogenarian chap and a couple who are both retired.

I hope you’re not surprised to learn that we had a delightful Sunday afternoon. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer are used to having all sorts of folk over for lunch, so they didn’t notice that the people around the table were older than their grandparents.

Before lunch they’d enjoyed showing their baby pictures to our friends and the Joker had been demonstrating his new birthday toys in the living room. Thankfully, not the pogo stick. We all particularly enjoyed his sharing of new jokes from his Basil Brush joke book.

I can’t think of many of my friends or contemporaries who regularly share meals with those of a different generation other than grandparents or other family members. So it is one of the great joys of being part of a church family that we have friends of different generations.

I was recently told that the promotion of intergenerational relationships is a current trend in community development. The Big Lottery Fund is certainly supporting it.

I wonder if the government would just consider encouraging people to join a church family instead?

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Crazy Feet

Posted in Kids, tagged , , , on 3 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Joker loves the movie ‘Kung Fu Panda’. So here he is doing the big fat panda’s ‘Crazy Feet’ routine. Enjoy….

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A Strange Thing

Posted in Family, Food, Kids, tagged , , , , , on 27 January, 2009| 2 Comments »

The Joker started crying at tea tonight because I gave some of his extra broccoli to his brother.

Some yummy broccoli

My children are unusual (the Curate says I can’t call them ‘strange’).

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