We started this story when we were at my Mom’s for the holidays. I thought we’d do a lot more school while we were visiting but alas, we only managed to squeeze in one day. We finally got around to finishing the book about a month later — it took us a long time to recover from jet lag and Christmas.
This was a very sweet story with a beautiful message… We can show our love for Jesus by serving others and treating them with love and kindness.
We began by learning about the Golden Rule. We made watercolor hearts. They loved watching how the watercolors spread on the paper. I even let them use my fancy Japanese watercolors which made it that much more exciting. I didn’t get a picture of the final product, but we cut them into heart shapes and wrote the golden rule on it.
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12
We talked about the power of music and how it can make you feel certain emotions. We listened and danced to classical music selections from Play Kids Music and they explained how it made them feel and why. They were definitely partial to the fast, loud, and exciting pieces. We also discovered how music can make unpleasant tasks a lot more fun… so we blasted music and tidied up the house.
So do not fear, for I am with you
Isaiah 41:10
In the story the little boy is frightened by the shadows on his wall at night. We discussed different kinds of fears we all face in life. Apparently Benjamin has no fear, but Clara stated she is afraid when she is outside in the dark without her mom or dad. We read Isaiah 41:10 and reviewed that we shouldn’t be afraid because Jesus is always with us.
“Although I cannot see him, I still can feel him near to understand and hold my hand and drive away my fear.”
Since the boy in the story mentions shadows, we had lots of fun reading about how shadows are made.
We did a shadow puppet show.
We traced, raced, and chased our shadows at the park…
We watched our shadows swing.
We combined teatime this week for The Snowy Day and If Jesus Came to My House. Benjamin decided we should serve snowball cookies, so we got baking. I have to say this Tupperware chopper was amazing for chopping all of those pecans!

We looked for all of the ways in the story the little boy shows hospitality to Jesus and decided to invite some special visitors for teatime.
We greeted them at the door and invited them in…
welcomed them to our table…
and offered them something to eat…
The kids did all of the decorating for teatime today. I loved the snowflakes as coasters. We enjoyed the snowball cookies and root beer and of course began teatime with My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson.
“And with my bricks I’d build for him a palace of his own, and he would be the little king and sit upon the throne”.
We made palaces for our guests.

I was glad I went ahead and finished this story. I wanted to make it more service centered, but living in a foreign country makes it difficult to find opportunities. I also wanted them to find toys to donate, but since it ends up sitting on our train table it didn’t seem too effective in getting the point across. Hopefully we can do more service projects after we move.