Fruit of the Spirit Fun!

My boys love to listen to those "Hide 'Em In Your Heart" songs by Steve Green, and one of their favorites is the "Fruits of the Spirit" song.    It's become one of their great party tricks - naming all 9 fruits of the Spirit.    Impressive!   

But as I listened to them belt out the song, I realized they pretty much didn't have a clue what they were talking about.  

Hmm... sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

So I got to work.  I have this awesome software program we used with Tom called Boardmaker, which is an amazing picture symbol program used to teach language to children with autism.  We (thankfully) don't have to use it much any more, but I thought it would be a GREAT way to explain what the fruits of the Spirit actually mean!

We talked about how, when we have Jesus on our heart, we show the fruits of the Spirit in our words and actions.   

We bought a tree from the teacher supply store, taped it to their bedroom door, and each week we're putting a new apple on the tree and focusing on that fruit of the spirit in their behavior with each other.  It seems to be sinking in.   

I even considered doing some kind of token system whenever they showed that week's behavior, or even writing the "fruitful" acts on individual leaves and filling up the tree with them, but alas, I'm a half-done Polly!  

Anyway, I thought I'd share it with y'all in case you wanted to do it with your kiddos!

I saved the 3 pages as pdf files, which can be downloaded here: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/kellyvalenta/lst?.dir=/Shared

Print, cut them out, and get started!