Mother Goose Week at iKids

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Parenting lessons from McDonalds

You Deserve A Break Today
Look for the Golden Arches!
McDonald’s is your kind of place
You deserve a break today
We do it all for you
Nobody makes your day like McDonald’s can
It’s a good time for the great taste of McDonald’s
It’s Mac Tonight
What you want is what you get
Have you had your break today?
Did somebody say McDonald’s?
Put A Smile On
I’m lovin’ it

My first job was giving birthday parties and tours at McDonalds when I was fifteen years old. By the time I retired from the Golden Arches (at the ripe old age of 17) I was working for a McDonald's franchise owner in the Marketing Department for his five stores. Many things have changed over the years for McDonald's (slogans)and myself (career path). But you know what hasn’t? The hamburgers. Did you know that the basic McDonald’s hamburger hasn’t changed much since the 1950s. It is easy to see that the McDonald’s formula, the one from way back in the beginning, hasn’t changed much. The bun, the burger, the pickle, the onions, the ketchup, the mustard. It was all there. And it still looks exactly the same. I find comfort in consistency, don't you?
Let’s relate that to parenting. The parenting techniques and buzzwords/slogans have changed over the years but Godly parenting has not. At the end of the day parenting begins and ends with relationships.
1. It is about your relationship with God
2. Your children’s relationship to God
3. Then your relationships with each other.
Don’t forget if your relationship with God is right and you are teaching your children to have a relationship with God then relationships with each other will fall into place. God never changes. There is comfort in His consistency.
And that is certainly something McDonald’s gets and we as Christians should get.
Even though McDonald’s certainly listens to the needs and wants of its patrons and tries to come up with new and exciting and innovative eating ideas for its restaurants, you can walk into (or drive thru) any McDonald’s restaurant in any city, in any town, or even country and get the same hamburger. Just like you could back in the 50's and the 60's and the 70's.
Relate that to your parenting. As a parent you listen to the needs, wants and requests of your children but always point them back to your mutual relationships with God and check what you are doing against his word.
*For more information visit crosspointechurch.tv
**To take a trip down McDonald's memory lane go to http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mcd_history.html

Green Week

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St. Patrick's Day

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MORE IS CAUGHT THAN TAUGHT!

In parenting or working with children we need to model the message. Pastor Brian always reminds us that attitudes are more easily caught than taught. Kids pay more attention to what you do than what you say. The potential for modeling what you want your kids to learn exists in every moment even though sometimes you may wish that there was an off switch or pause button. Kids are always watching and taking it all in; the good with the bad. I found a quote by Joyce Maynard that admonishes parents on the same principle. "It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."
God has given us the charge of raising His little ones, and we need to carry that out faithfully. It's time to take careful inventory of our lives. 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." Our lives are the textbooks that children are reading and learning from. Determine in your heart today to walk your talk and BE the message that you want your children to hear.

*I would also like to invite you to our upcoming free community carnival and new four week series Parenting starting on Easter Sunday.
http://www.crosspointechurch.tv/easter.html

Insect Week with Mrs. Skagen

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Parenting Puzzles or Puzzled Parents?

In parenting does it feel like you are putting together a puzzle with no picture to guide you? I think this is a great illustration of what parents go through daily and with each individual child. You do your best day after day and put together pieces. Some days you find matches and feel like you are getting somewhere then the next day you find out the pieces won't go together no matter how hard you push. So what's a parent to do? You know that in parenting you are putting together your child's life puzzle by every interaction and every act committed or omitted. Have you read the latest parenting magazines and bought the leading best seller on perfect parenting? There is alot of advice out there and many no fail parenting techniqes but which one will lead to a healthy, well adjusted (not puzzled by life) child.
Don't wring your hands together in despair. Not one parent that has ever walked the planet has been the perfect parent 100% of the time. What makes you a great parent is the unconditional love you give to your child; setting the example of God's unconditional love for us. 1 John 4:19 "We love him, because he first loved us." God's unconditional love for us gives us the ability to pass that on to our children. Now what? You ask what is the formula for getting all the pieces together and to be a successful parent?

Putting the pieces together is easier than it seems. As a Christian your main objective should be to find and follow God. As a Christian parent your main objective is to teach your children to find and follow God. If you do this all of the rest of the pieces will fall into place. If the kids are obeying God, they are obeying you and the list goes on and on. The best example you can set is to follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 22:37-38 when He was asked what the most important commandment was. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment."

*For more information go to our website at iKidsYL.org or crosspointechurch.tv

Dr. Suess Week part 3

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Dr. Suess Week Part 2

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Cats in Hats, Grinches, Snitches, Sneetches and other Creachas

Place: iKids Preschool
Time: Dr. Suess Week
Lessons Learned: Humbleness and Patience

This week I learned a valuable lesson from Dr. Suess and a group of preschoolers. I've had this wonderful book for a couple of years now, The Gospel According to Dr. Suess by James W. Kemp. I have used it in teacher's devotionals and with older elementary and junior high kids but I think the preschoolers really took the lessons to a whole new level of understanding. The verse comes to mind Colossians 1:27 "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory". Sometimes, adults complicate spiritual truths. Jesus, himself even said that we need to have the faith of a child to come to Him. Time to check my Faith-Ometer.

Two of the lessons that I will share with you dealt with selfishness, pride and fairness. Right up a preschool aged child's alley. They are selfish by nature and are obsessed with things being fair. Little did I know that they would teach me more than I taught them. One object lesson done on Monday highlighted selfishness with Dr.Suess' book, Yertle the Turtle. I behaved in a very selfish manner and waited for the kids to call me on it but they never did. I gave in and talked to them about how selfish I was and how my selfish behavior was hurtful to those around me and to myself in the long run. The kids then started raising their hands and gave me examples from the Bible of people who behaved selfishly. Pretty deep for preschoolers to draw those correlations.

Later in the week I did a lesson based on The Sneetches. I chose three kids who were wearing the same color shirt as mine and gave them star stickers and special priveleges. The goal of the object lesson was to keep going until a child finally said NO FAIR. Obviously Mr. Kemp has never met an iKid. I kept adding on the special priveleges while the other children just watched and waited. I even went so far to give the three kids bean bag chairs in front of Dr. Suess cartoons and brought them drinks and snacks. Still nothing, I finally gave up and asked, "Do you like the way that I am acting?" and a little girl said, "We are just waiting to see what God wants us to learn."

Wow, do I do that in my own life? Can I patiently wait for God to reveal the truth He wants me to learn? The kids had faith in God and me enough to trust that the lesson would be revealed and it would be good for them even if they didn't understand it right now. Do I trust that all things will work together for good?
Romans 8:28 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." This doesn't mean that everything is always going to go my way but it does mean that if my purpose is to be about God's purpose for my life that I can trust in Him to work things out according to His plan.

For more information about iKids go to www.iKidsYL.org or our sponsoring church www.crosspointechurch.tv