September 2014

How to Thrive in a New Routine

Like frozen treats on a 100-degree day, summer is melting away. That means it’s time to get back into old routines and start some new ones.

Experts say routines offer kids stability and help them develop self-discipline. Knowing what to expect—and what’s expected—can make fam-ily interactions smoother, too.

Follow these tips to make the most of September’s opportunities to hit the “reset” button:

Have a family meeting before the school year begins. Review sched-ules and brainstorm new approaches to easier mornings, healthier eating, more productive studying, and so on.

Focus on just one or two goals at a time, rather than tackling everything at once. When a new habit is in place, then move on to the next goal.

Prepare for changes to your daily routine by practicing before school begins. Create simple checklists as visual reminders for getting ready.

Empower kids to make decisions. Encourage them (in age-appropriate ways) to adapt routines whenever un-expected situations arise.

Build spiritual practices into your family’s daily routine. This allows faith development to occur while children are growing in other ways during the new school year. See the next page for a variety of ideas you can try.

POWERSOURCE ASK GOD:

1. To ease the back-to-school

transition for your family.

2. To protect your children as they

tackle new subjects and face

new challenges.

3. To help your children use their

new routines to share Jesus with

other people.

Growing Kids

In Christ!

parenting

CHRISTIAN kids

TEACHABLE MOMENTS

Backward Olympics Gather your family outdoors and conduct some silly “Scipmylo” games (that’s “Olympics” spelled backward!). For exam-ple: Take turns trying to say the alphabet backward. Run a relay race or obstacle course backward. Toss water balloons to a partner while facing away from him or her. At the end of the games, gather to-gether and ask: What change did you experience in these games? What was the most chal-lenging for you, and why? How was this experience like the changes you experience in life? Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Then ask: How does God help you handle change? How can God help you with the new school year ahead? Close in prayer: Dear God, thanks for being our constant, unchanging help during all of life’s changes. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Add Jesus Into Your Routines

When busy schedules resume, Jesus is often left out of the mix. Even if we attend church more regularly in fall and our children move up a grade level in Sunday school, faith formation frequently takes a back seat during the action-packed weekdays. A few simple ideas for keeping Jesus at the forefront can pay big “faith dividends” for your children and your entire family. Give these tips a try this fall—and use them to spark ideas of your own:

Feed your family spiritually. When you set the breakfast table the night before school, include kid-friendly de-votional materials. Children who like to read or look at pictures while eating can do so—or can be read to briefly. Make use of travel time. On the way to school, take turns saying a prayer for the day ahead. On the way home, use the time to share highlights of the day and any “God sightings” family members had. Schedule a regular faith booster. Incorporate a midweek faith activity into your family schedule. Many churches offer midweek programs for families. Other clubs may be available in your neighborhood. If you’re time-strapped, simply set aside time one day per week to talk about faith-related issues and to pray together. Explore children’s strengths, tal-ents, and gifts. A new school year offers a variety of excellent opportuni-ties for kids to try new things. Different sports and activities let children dis-cover what they enjoy and how God made them. Point out what develop-ing talents and traits you observe in your kids. And encourage them to glorify God in everything they do (see Colossians 3:17).

“I am the Lord, and I do not change.”—Malachi 3:6

Expand your family’s faith out-reach. Use new routines to help build children’s faith-sharing skills. With older kids, role-play how to talk about Jesus with their friends. En-courage your kids to invite their friends to church and Sunday school. Welcome new friends into your home, showing them Christian hospi-tality and love. Move on up! As children move up to new Sunday school classes this fall, help their faith blossom with individu-al challenges. For example, older kids can spend 10 minutes a day reading through a particular book of the Bible. Younger children can learn about a simple Scripture passage each week. Keep talking—to each other and to God. Real, deep conversations can suffer when families get busy. So carve out time to reconnect, whether it’s at the end of each day or at the beginning of each weekend. Share your joys and struggles, and take time to pray for one another. Also make prayer a regular part of mealtime and bedtime routines. This reminds children that God is an al-ways-present, unchanging help eve-ry day and in all situations.

MEDIA MADNESS

MOVIE Title: The Maze Runner Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery Rating: PG-13 Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter Synopsis: A boy named Thomas wakes up remembering only his name. Trapped in The Glade with other teen-age survivalists, Thomas must use clues to piece together his past. Our Take: This film, based on James Dashner’s popular 2009 book, contin-ues the dystopian trend made popular by The Hunger Games. Because of the theme and some sci-fi violence, exer-cise caution—especially with younger children.

MUSIC Title: Brave Author: Moriah Peters Synopsis: This 21-year-old Christian singer began writing songs at age 13. Although initially self-conscious about her voice, Peters was determined to serve God through a music career. Because of her wholesome image, she didn’t make it far on American Idol. Our Take: On her second album, Pe-ters sings about relying on God during times of fear and social persecution. The “Footprints in the Sand” poem in-spired her single “You Carry Me,” which Peters calls “a reminder to look back on the difficult times God has brought us through.” That’s a powerful message for young listeners—and for families.

Games, Sites & Apps

Tomodachi Life In this Nintendo 3DS life-simulation game, a player watches Mii char-acters interact. It’s been compared to Animal Crossing but doesn’t have a typical game-like structure. Rated E for Everybody

Art Games kids.albrightknox.org/loader.html This interactive art-based site lets kids cre-ate masterpieces of their own. They can de-sign cards, paint in a “studio,” and play sever-al art-related games. Recommended for ages 4 to 12.

SpeakaZoo With this free app, chil-dren can take care of 20 original creatures in four habitats. The animals actually “talk” to chil-dren, who can interact with them on screen. Recommended for ages 4 to 6.

CULTURE & TRENDS

Effects of Helicopter Parenting—Long-term studies are now weigh-ing in on this overly involved par-enting style. Despite parents’ good intentions, kids often suffer when their parents constantly intervene. When parental involvement is ex-cessive, experts say, it hinders children from developing neces-sary skills, strengths, and coping strategies. (vitals.nbcnews.com)

QUICK STATS “What Age Restrictions?”—78% of parents think it’s acceptable for a child to violate minimum-age re-strictions for online sites and ser-vices. And 76% of parents say their child joined Facebook when he or she was younger than 13, the site’s minimum-age requirement. (firstmonday.org) Obesity Denial—New government statistics reveal that 42% of chil-dren classified as obese consider themselves to be the right weight. Another study shows their parents are often in the dark, too. Almost 30% of parents who hear from a doctor that their child is obese or overweight don’t perceive the weight to be a health problem. (npr.org; washingtonpost.com)

This page is designed to help educate parents and isn’t meant to endorse any movie, music, or product. Our goal is to help

you make informed decisions about what your children watch, read, listen to, and play.

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY

1

Labor Day

2 3 4 5 6

7 Grandparents

Day

8

9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

First Day of

Fall

24 25 26 27 **Married People’s

Night Out**

28 29 30

September

At 902 Church, we believe having fun in your

marriage is serious. In other words, we want you to

have some serious fun. And that is what this Big Night

Out event is all about—you and your spouse having

some serious fun.

Join us for sweet treats, fun, laughter, and a great

time with other Married People. Saturday, September

27th, 7:00-8:30pm. Childcare provided.

Week by Week

MEMORY VERSE

“God is with you wherever

you go.” Joshua 1:9, NLT

KEY QUESTION

Who’s got it?

BASIC TRUTH

God loves me.

BOTTOM LINE

God’s got it.

Sept 7 | 1 KINGS 18:1-39

Elijah prays to the one true

God, to prove to the king,

who has a fake idol, that God

is the only one who can

answer prayers.

Sept 14 | EXODUS 3

God speaks to Moses through

a burning bush.

Sept 21 | EXODUS 13:21-22

God uses fire and clouds to

show Moses and the Israelites

the right way to go.

Sept 28 | DANIEL 3:10-13

Shadrach, Meshach, and

Abednego are thrown into

fire when they won’t bow and

pray to a statue. God proves

that He has the power to al-

ways be with us when He

saves them from the fire.

First Look: Birth—5 years old

Hello, First Look Friends!

How often do we throw out the words, “I’ve got it”?

More often than we’ve actually got it, I would think. You know

who’s actually “got it”? God. God’s got it. He is everywhere

and has power over everything. That’s what we want our

preschoolers to learn this month. No matter what’s going on,

God’s got it.

They’ll learn God has the power to answer prayer

through the story of Elijah and the fire. They’ll hear the story of

Moses and the burning bush and learn that God has the power

to speak to them. We’ll continue with Moses and tell the story of

the pillars of clouds and fire to show our preschoolers that God

has the power to show us the right way to go. And finally, we’ll

close the month with the super amazing story of Shadrach,

Meshach, and Abednego where preschoolers will learn that

God is so powerful that He can always be with them. Always.

And, because He’s always there, He’s always got it!

Cuddle up with your child and pray. “Dear God, I

pray You will give [name of child] and me the courage

to do what is right, even when we’re scared and it’s

hard to do. Thank You for always being with us and

never leaving us. Help us to remember that when things

get hard, You’re right there with us. We love You, God.

In Jesus name, amen.”

252 Basics

Kindergarten—5th grade

Have you ever walked through your local grocery store and no-

ticed the potential just sitting on the shelves? You can head down one

aisle and discover spices from around the world. Over in the produce

stands, you can find the ripest apples, cartons of blueberries, maybe

even some obscure Dragon Fruit. Not to mention all of the staples on

another aisle: flour, sugar, eggs, and milk.

Incredible ingredients that will sit there and go bad unless

someone takes them home and creates something delicious. You can

speculate all day about the potential in that grocery store, but until

there is some type of response to what you believe can really happen,

it's just potential. In other words, with the right kind of response, faith in a

process I can't fully understand, and a big mess of dishes, those

ingredients could turn into warm, sticky-sweet, apple cobbler goodness.

But if those ingredients just sit there, even though they have incredible

potential, the flour will just stay powdery and tasteless. The butter will

soften. And those apples will turn brown. In fact, if you do nothing, they

will lose their potential and turn into something that just makes your trash

smell bad.

Think about someone's life, with all of the God-given, God-

created ingredients. You have time, talents, opportunities, words, and

resources. The point is, we can choose to either respond to what God

has given us or we can ignore it. One of the most powerful things

leaders and parents can do is to inspire their children to trust that God

can do amazing things through the abilities He's given them. Kids should

grow up knowing that their faith in God's ability to do that, can

profoundly affect how they view and respond to their unique potential.

That's why we're taking September to look more closely at what the

Bible has to say about responsibility. We define responsibility as: Showing you can be trusted by what you say and do.

God has created everyone with potential: talents, time, resources,

opportunities. And we can either respond to God with our abilities in a

way that honors Him, or we can waste what He has given. Think about

the word responsibility. It really breaks down into how you respond with

your abilities. And we want children to not only understand how to re-

spond to the ability that God's given them, but also how to respond to

God's ability to work through them to change the world around them.

Our memory verse this month is Luke 16:10a, “Whoever can be

trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” (NIV) When

we show responsibility with the little things, there’s a good chance

we’ll have opportunity for greater responsibility in the future.

In Week 1, we head back to the

garden of Eden where God created

Adam and Eve and gave them their

First Job. Through passages in Genesis

1 and 2, we’ll see how they were put in

charge of the entire world. They took

responsibility and began to cultivate

the earth.

Our Bottom Line is: Show you can be

trusted by taking care of what God

has made. The first job God gave to

Adam and Eve was a task that we can

continue today.

In Week 2, we’ll look at 1 Kings

19:16-21 and 2 Kings 2:1-15. Elijah was

nearing the end of his work as God’s

prophet. God chose Elisha to carry on

the work. But first, Elisha had some

things to learn.

Our Bottom Line is: Show you can be

trusted to lead by learning how to

follow. We all want to lead, but we

need to learn from our leaders before

we can be in charge.

In Week 3, we’ll hear from one of

Jesus’ parables in Matthew 21:28-32. In

the Parable of the Two Sons, a father

asked his sons to do some work. One

said “yes” but didn’t follow through

with his actions. The other said “no” at

first, but ended up completing the job

anyway. We’ll discover that it’s

important to do what you say you will.

Our Bottom Line is: Show you can be

trusted by what you do. You can’t just

say you’ll do something; you actually

have to do it.

In Week 4, we’ll look at another of

Jesus’ parables found in Matthew 25:14

-29a. In the Parable of the Talents, a

business owner went on a trip and put

three guys in charge of some money.

Each one did something different, but

only two of them were found faithful

and given more responsibility.

Our Bottom Line is: Show you can be

trusted with more by taking care of

what you have. If you want more

responsibility, show that you can be

responsible with what you already

have.