Welcome to our Additional Resources for Elementary School.  These are websites, articles, and more that you can use to enhance your faith life at home.  While all sites have been previewed by our staff, none of these are affiliated with Hope Lutheran and while we will do our best to make sure that content is high quality this cannot be guaranteed!  use your own discretion when purchasing any resources listed here!

Additional Stepping Stones Resources

Articles to enhance Stepping Stones Events:
Kindergarten
5 Reasons to teach kids the Apostle's Creed:  In our Kindergarten Stepping Stones event on January 11, we will give you a resource to teach the creed to your children.  This is an article that suggests reasons for doing this
The Creeds:  This is a download of all three creeds that we recognize as a Lutheran Church.  Want a challenge?  teach your kids the Nicene Creed...or if you are really up for a challenge try the Athanasian creed!
First Grade
Blessing Your Family:  This article from Focus on the Family provides evidence for the importance of blessing your family, and additional ideas for blessing your family together.
Dr. Rich Melheim on Blessing:  This powerful video discusses the impact that sharing a blessing with your family can have, even in one's final hours.
The Power of Blessing your family:  This article discusses the power of blessing your children and even provides a list of sample blessings that can be said over your children.
Second Grade
Teaching the Ten commandments:  This article provides two ideas for how to teach your kids about the ten commandments.  
Ten Commandments Rap:  This is a silly video of a rap to help remember the ten commandments.  (Though it is a slightly different list of commandments than we teach...it is still fun)


Third Grade
Resources for Reading the Bible Together
Bible Basics from Vibrant Faith
Download a reading guide that follows Sunday School 2014
A Blog entry called, "Reading the bible with children"
An interesting article regarding how to handle "R rated" portions of the Bible with small children
A list of bible verses that are related to children

Fourth Grade
Vibrant Faith Prayers:  This is a great place to start.  It is a comprehensive list of activities that you can do at home to strengthen your prayer life at home with your family.
The prayers of Jesus:  This page provides a resource for the passages of Scripture were Jesus prayed.  This is a great place to follow up your stepping stones event with prayer ideas and scripture readings
Dr. Rich Melheim on Prayer:  Have you tried the Faith 5 yet?  Click here to watch a video fo Dr Rich talking about the power of prayer.
Teaching your child to pray:  This article from Ministry matters.com provides lots of ideas about how to teach your children to pray and how to pray together.
Lord's Prayer cartoon:  This you tube clip is a short song version of the Lord's Prayer.  While slightly childish for 4th graders, it's a fun way to learn the prayer.

Online Articles about Faith Formation with Elementary Students

General Parenting Help!
From Hot Spot to Holy Spot:  Creating Holy time instead of Screen time in the car

The number one reason teens keep the faith as young adults (Or...why you should take our word and start TODAY!)

Zero to Six:  Clicking this link will download a research study that was done focused on the growing use of technology by children ages 0-6.

Being a child, Becoming a Christian:  This is an extensive article that discusses the different stages of childhood and what is happening in the spiritual development of children at different ages.

R-Rated:  This article is a great way to help parents with questions about how to read the Bible, which has lots of "r-rated" stories in it, with small children.
7 lies Christian parents believe:  This article from Relevant magazine encourages parents not to buy into the lies that they don't know enough or aren't holy enough to pass on the faith to their kids.
These sites are directly connected to faith formation.  But they offer loads of helpful, practical advise for parents who are looking for help in general areas of parenting!  Every link here is an outside link so please be aware that while these are screened regularly, we cannot take any responsibility for the advise given here.  Good Luck in your parenting adventures!
Parent Further
Parent Further is a great resource for parenting advice. It is put out by Search Institute and while it is not specifically religious based, it offers lots of topics for parents of all ages!
Love and Logic:  Love and Logic is a great company that provides products to help parents create a routine that works for them.  Their key focus is logical consequences in discipline...but they cover a broad area.  While many of their material needs to be purchased there are quite a few helpful, and free articles on their site!

Parent Further:  Parent Further is a service of Search Institute that provides free parenting advise for parents of children and teenagers.  This is an extensive site that offers articles that are written by professionals and high quality in nature on a large variety of topics.
 
Parent's Magazine:  Parents website offers loads of ideas for fun activities, tips for parenting small children, what to look for and expect at certain ages and much more!

Thrive:  Thrive is a local organization that exists to help children succeed.  One of the great things they do is offer support for parents who are in over their heads on many fronts...from local classes to individual support.  

Do you have a great resource/idea that you use?  
Would you like to write an article about how you do faith formation at home?
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