Friday, January 15, 2010

Fruit of The Spirit Tree...

At the Beth Moore conference my friend Wynne and I attended, something was said that just really ministered to me. In one of the prayers, someone said "may the fruits of the spirit be evident in my everyday rhythms of life."

I just loved it, that IS my heart's desire!! I am hoping to do Beth's Fruit of the Spirit study this summer, but wanted to go ahead and start learning now. I got this idea from a Christian website I read and just added a bit to it. Here is our Fruit of the Spirit Tree I put up in the laundry room.

What is it? Fruits that I cut out, labeled with attributes of "living in the spirit", and laminated. The tree came from Mardell's and was in the back with all of the school and craft supplies.

For right now, Kaitlyn and I are using it to learn our colors and fruits. Soon, I want to start introducing a fruit for us to learn. Since our scripture verse this month is "The joy of the Lord is my strength" we are learning about joy.


Eventually when she is able to comprehend, I want to use this as a rewards/discipline tool. When Kaitlyn does something that is loving or joyful-she will get to put a fruit on the tree. And...when she doesn't do something that is loving or joyful, she will have to take a fruit down.


My heart aches for Kaitlyn to someday have a relationship with My Savior, so the more that I can instill in her now, the better :)

Happy Friday!

3 comments:

Wynne Elder said...

you are awesome sommer. such a great idea! I hope this post will help encourage other mommys to do the same - teaching your kids from a young age is so important & I thank you for being a good example!

Sharee Forman said...

Hey Sommer,
Just wanted you to know I made that creamy bacon tortallini (however you spell it) and it was WONDERFUL!! So yummy, thank you for sharing, we love it! :)

The Rowe Crew said...

Hi there! My friend, Sharee, was just telling me about your Fruit of the Spirit tree and I'm just loving it!! We acutally have one at our house too, but I have been terrible at implementing it lately, so thanks for your inspiration ;). I also saw your verse for the month...such a great idea too. I don't know if you've read this or not, but The Well-Versed Family by Caroline Boykin is a wonderful book about scripture memorization for kiddos. She spoke at my MOPS meeting and I've read the book and have been amazed at how quickly my daughter has memorized so much scripture when I started using some of her ideas.
Your Kaitlyn is just precious and I'm so excited to read more of our neat ideas!!
Jessica