3 Simple Ways to Worship God with Your Toddler

We've been doing family devotions at home with Anna since she was about 12 months old, and I wish we had started sooner!

Not only does our 3-step approach allow God time to minister to my heart and my husband's heart when we were otherwise skipping over family devotional time, but it lays a foundation for our daughter to know God's love for her.

Family Devotions at Home with a Toddler

There's not much to it. The best part? It takes 5-10 minutes and can be achieved in three easy steps:

1. Sing a song of praise
2. Read a bible verse out loud
3. Say a prayer

Sing a song of praise

We are lucky that my husband plays guitar. In fact, his talent for music is, what I believe, a blessing from God, but he has gone years without playing it. The act of doing this with our daughter has brought his guitar out of its case on a daily basis.

Matt and I will pick a song for the week and sing it every day with Anna. Sometimes, it's a favorite hymn. Sometimes, it's as simple as Jesus Loves Me.

The point is that we are worshiping together, and God loves that, no matter how simple the song.

If you don't play an instrument, play a recording of the song and sing along!

I recommend doing this step first as most toddlers can't resist a good song and opportunity to get the wiggles out.

0

Curated: Sarah Blank Studios

In 2007, I was half way through college, trying to make a long distance relationship work, and volunteering in an inner-city elementary school using creative writing techniques to help prep 4th graders for standardized testing.

In 2007, Etsy was just two years old and that's when I discovered Sarah Blank and her blog, and well, I've been following her ever since because her art, her words, her lifestyle were little glimpses of who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live. I was loving college, but I wanted something more wild, more free, more simplified.

via Sarah Blank Studios

And now, six years later, I'm still wishing I was Sarah Blank. I've carried this little print (pictured at the top of this post) with me from apartment to apartment, house to house since the year I bought it, and it serves as a small reminder of all the littlest dreams still somewhere beneath the life I'm living.

But it's also a reminder of who I was six years ago, and in the same moment it speaks of my desire for travel and to live in a cottage by the sea, it also tunes in to the wall it hung on before all the others.

via Etsy

If you like rainy days and brown paper packages, antique lace and folklore, adventures and lockets, then Sarah Blank's art should adorn every wall in your house. In addition to her lovely art, her blog is a collection of wanderings, trinkets, snapshots of her inspirations, and glimpses of her current projects. Visit her Shop here | Visit her Blog here

4

Greetings, Fall. We Missed You.

Fall is among us, friends. I cannot begin to explain the thrill of wind blowing, the dog barking, and a husband working hard to make our yard pretty. 

Last night, I came home to Chester, springing about the place as most dogs do when the weather turns just the slightest bit of crisp. All that dog needs is the ability to patrol a stretch of ground, unleashed, and a good stick to chew. 

Matt was sweeping off the deck, burning scraps from our yard trimmings a few weeks ago, and tidying up the standing space below the deck.  The previous homeowners left a ton of stuff (which we have gladly adopted like ladders and yard tools and Matt's personal favorite, a table saw) but when we added our own things, we started to push some of the other items outside....which led to our backyard looking more like a junk yard than anything else.

Now with a cleaner outdoor space, I feel like the backyard is slowly becoming more manageable. We have lots of projects we want to accomplish. We want to clear out all the garden boxes which are a complete mess, and hopefully not kill the fig tree we purchased a few weeks ago. 

I love the creeping, flowering vines throughout the property, and sometimes, I like the fact that I don't know if a plant was intentional or not. It makes the yard feel like a fairy garden, unknown and mysterious. I'm pretty much in the dark about nearly every plant out there. Even if I know the name of it, I haven't the slightest clue how to care for it. It seems that every week, there's a surprise. A pretty flower blooms out of nowhere, or a plant I thought was a weed produces the prettiest little berries, or whoa...where did that magnolia tree come from?

Now, things are neatly placed under the deck. Matt plans to get some hooks to install on the wall to hang the ladders and other tools so we have even more floor space under there. He also cleared away the monster tomato bushes growing from the Earth Boxes my mother gifted us. The bushes weren't yielding enough fruit to make them worth keeping. Once cleared away,  I couldn't believe how big the deck looked. All we need now is a table for the autumn dinner parties I've been dreaming up.

And the dreaming that I've been allowing myself to do is a small indicator of the healing that is beginning to take place within me after the burglary we experienced at the beginning of the month. It's these little things that remind me I have a life to live, a family to love, and a future to cultivate. 

2