I recently purchased a workbook from our local homeschool resource store, Kingdom Builder Books. It is published by Doorposts, and is a character building book for raising boys. The book is titled, “Plants Grown Up: Projects for Sons on the Road to Manhood.” The book is FULL of activities, lessons and projects, focusing on many different character values.
I decided to let the boys choose what they wanted to learn. They chose: Self Control – Taming the Tongue. <Sigh…this is going to be a lesson for ME, too! 🙂 > We read a lot of scripture about the topic, and did a couple of the activities. Here is the recap of one of them:
For 24 hours, we were to keep track of the kind/unkind things we say to each other. Every time we said something kind, a bean (actually, we used hazelnut), is placed in a bowl or jar. The same goes for when we said something unkind. At the end of the 24 hours, we looked to see how full each jar was.
The boys went a little wild with saying “I love you” over and over, so we changed it to saying something the was encouraging to someone else. It was a good lesson inholding ourselves and each other accountable in how we speak.
‘A’s memory verse: Psalm 34:13 “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.”
‘R’s memory verse: Psalm 141:3 “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; Keep watch over the door of my lips”
My memory verse: James 1:26 “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.”