Straight from IP!

I am happy to say that I am posting straight from IP! How exciting for us! We just love being here.

We have come up to spend the week doing a Vacation Bible School. Although my passion is to educate the deaf children, the most important part of that education is Jesus!!! So I am happy to spend the week doing just that.

I came across some new material that I would like to share with you. It's called Picture This! I have not been able to use it with my kids, but it looks like a lot of fun. Check it out. At the end of the year your child will have his/her own Bible notebook with visual reminders for each story in the Bible! Wonderful tool for the visual learner (aka our deaf kids!).

I also have been wanting to share with you about our trip to the ASDC conference at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf. It was awesome!! I met many neat people, including Rachel Coleman from Signing Time and the 2007/2008 Miss Deaf Texas. I listened to many great speakers and hope to highlight those one at a time in the near future. Stay tuned!

Bible Stories

One of the most important duties of a parent is to pass on our spiritual beliefs to our children. I want my children to love God with all their hearts. So how do we pass this on to our deaf children that miss out on so much verbage?

1. They are very good at asorbing information visually, so what are we telling them visually? Do they see us worshipping? Do they see us love and cherish them? Do they see us helping those in need? Do they see us honoring our authorities? My deaf daughter is the best at mimicing me and, sadly, she picks up on all my sinful habits. We need to be sure we do what we say!

2. A Bible notebook has been a fabulous idea at our house. Each of my children keep a Bible journal which we work on each morning after Breakfast. The younger ones draw pictures of whatever Bible story they are reading and copy a sentence from their Bible story books. My deaf daughter has been copying scripture for several years now. She doesn't know all that she is writing, but she is definately getting familiar with Bible reference.

3. We also enjoy acting, signing, and retelling of Bible stories. I get the video camera out and they enjoy acting out their favorite stories. Sometimes I read and sign a story - or sometimes I only sign the story. They all get a kick out of that.

4. We also take advantage of Bible coloring books. No Greater Joy has a new series of very detailed Bible coloring books that my kids have enjoyed. They also have a corresponding comic book Bible.

5. And my favorite is Deaf Missions Bible DVD's. They offer the whole Bible in ASL on DVD!! They have kids videos and a kids Bible study club! All awesome!