Jazzy Jewels

"Jesus is more valuable than anything else."

For our lesson on jewels, we talked about how expensive and valuable various gemstones are, and we also thought of other things that we considered valuable. After talking about our ideas, we discussed how Jesus is much more valuable than they are.

Philippians 3:8
"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ."

Matthew 16:26
"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Our jewel badge with our words to remember written on it.

For an art activity, the kids made their own jewelry from yarn, pieces of play dough, noodles, drinking straws, and aluminum foil.

The finished necklaces

We read "A Cache of Jewels" by Ruth Heller. (FYI: it did contain one reference to witches)

A couple nonfiction books that I used along with this lesson were "Gems and Minerals" by Susan Harris, and a book from the Childcraft collection (it's kind of like an encyclopedia for kids) that I got for free at a rummage sale this summer. This particular volume in the set was "World and Space" and it had a section on precious stones that we read.

We also read "Dave's Down-to-Earth Rock Shop" by Stuart J. Murphy. It did have a couple references to certain rocks being millions of years old, but I just omitted those parts. Although the book wasn't specifically about jewels or gems, what I liked about it was that in the story, the characters were sorting their rocks in various ways, just like we did last week with our rocks. It would have been nice to have read this book at that time, but it hadn't come in at the library yet. It was still a good review for us now, though.

We made our lowercase "j" into a sparkling jewel.

Here is the progress of our growing crystals.

We'll be doing a Thanksgiving lesson tomorrow, then we'll be headed out of town on Wednesday for our Thanksgiving celebration with extended family. I pray that you all have a blessed Thanksgiving Day!