Customer Reviews

Fun Projects For Hands-On Character Building

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After weeks of discipline problems with my 6 year old daughter, a friend loaned me this book. If you are looking for ways to help build respectful, responsible, christian children; this book is a must! It seemed that the lectures just weren't working anymore - this book offered projects to learn by. I would recommend this book for Teachers, Day Cares, Sunday Schools, but most of all, Parents and Grandparents. I just ordered my own copy to keep for future reference for my 5 year old.

This book is mostly about what this family did. That gives me ideas, but I was expecting a more helpful resource of activities to do than just sharing what they did. I will still use some of them, though.

This is a book for people wishing to incorporate Bible verses into every aspect of their children's lives. This book has *some* fun project ideas that can be adapted to other religious traditions or used secularly, but I wish I had known how *overtly* Christian this book was before I had gotten it, because I think I would have passed. I don't mind mildly Christian content, but this book tends way toward the more extreme range of the scale.

Also, most of the "projects" in this book are more of the kind that the parents do FOR their kids to teach them, not so much things for the kids to do themselves. There are *some* activities to do together, like word games involving bible verses, but those aren't really my kind of thing. I was looking more for a book of ideas for crafts and other kinds of activities I could do together WITH my kids for fun, not suggestions that I make a star chart to encourage them to memorize bible verses.

Chapter Titles (because they're not listed in the reviews or book information anywhere):

Intro "And you shall"

Section 1 Building Obedience

Section 2 Building a Pure Heart

Section 3 Building a Hunger for Righteousness

Section 4 Building Self Acceptance

Section 5 Building a Forgiving Spirit

Section 6 Building Meekness

Section 7 Building a Strong Testimony

Conclusion A Few Words

Each chapter has a front page with a bible quotation that relates to the chapter's theme. The pages have extra wide margins full of the same handprint, needle & thread, tape, paintbrush, crafty border graphic that fills up the page visually and tends to hide the fact that there is very little actual text there. This book is only about 1/2 inch thick to begin with. Out of the 37 square inches of each page, a little over 20.5 square inches is border. The BORDER fills a little over 55% of each page. That's a lot of fluff, and the content that is there isn't much meatier.

Many of these things are very common sense or probably something that spiritual families already think to do with their kids, like read a daily proverb (or other scripture) and discuss it. Here are some sample "project" titles: "games" called obedience exercises and training sessions- didn't sound very "fun" to me, just basic parenting disipline techniques; making an "obedience book" for your child of stick figure drawings to talk about each of their obedience issues that will earn spankings, each with their own associated bible verse- hmmm "fun"? I guess it's better than actually *getting* a spanking; an Obedience Quiz; "scripture saturation" - a bible themed decor for every room in the house; curtains, wall plaques, pillow shams, table cloths, dresser scarves, throw pillows, quilts, lamp shades, magazine rack, milk can, flash cards- all with embroidered/stenciled/painted bible verses (I think I got the idea after the first dozen items: you can put a bible verse on anything if it sits still long enough, but the lists just kept going); bible tapes- have your kids listen to them at bedtime; scripture wheel; daily proverb; scriptural music; family night bible quiz; cloth bible book; king Solomon theme birthday party; the 'where in the bible...' game; bribe your kids into looking forward to Sundays with a "Sunday Box"; bible times scrap book; bible jigsaw puzzles... etc, etc.

Now, if you're in to Christianity as your religion, don't get all excited that this is really a great book. You've just read pretty much the first three chapters. Many of these "ideas" are just the title and a paragraph or two about it. None of the bible verse items listed above contain any kind of craft patterns or even an illustration or image of the project. They have vague suggestions for sample verses, directions of a really basic sort, and are repetitive in nature. They pretty much are just "use paint or fabric crayons to write bible verses on a tablecloth" then "use paint or fabric crayons to write bible verses on a lampshade." Go in to any quality educational toy store, or any Christian oriented kids store and look around for all kinds of ideas of things you can make for your kids.

Items like "Scriptural Music" are simply a paragraph saying it's a good idea to have your kids listen to scriptural music instead of secular music. Well, if I were in to that, I'd say "Duh!" and think "I didn't need to buy this book to know that."

Here is a sample direct quote (complete project item) for:

"Refrigerator Magnet Pictures

Again, glue a picture of a family member on plywood. Cut an oval or circle out of the plywood, finish with 3 coats of Mod podge, and sand the edges of the plywood for smoothness. Glue a magnetic strip on the back."

The "again" refers to the immediately preceding paragraph for Family Paper Dolls, which talks about using enlarged family photographs glued to thin plywood to make more durable "paper" dolls for play. That's a pretty cool idea, actually, but no need to buy the book, that's pretty much all there is to it.

For an idea of the general outlook and philosophy of the authors, here is another (abridged) direct quote for:

"Museum Ministry

Our kids came up with this idea on their own. Collect a home museum of interesting or unusual artifacts. ... Invite friends to come on a certain day or even an open schedule and view the exhibits. Let the kids serve punch and cookies, etc. For unsaved neighborhood friends, Gospel tracts may be in order; Bible story comic books, if you can find them, may be even better."

If this sounds like your idea of fun, then you might actually enjoy this book. Personally, I find it a bit offensive.

If you are completely at a loss as to where to begin to incorporate scripture or biblical values of any kind into your kids' lives, I suppose this book would be a good place to start, but many of the "ideas" are simply lists: of things to do with only limited additional instruction, of other books to find more detailed information, or simply one or two paragraphs describing what someone they knew or they, themselves, did. However, the majority of these projects also don't sound very fun, unless you consider Bible Flash Cards to be fun, then this might be the book for you.