A New Take on Jellybeans!

When you think of jellybeans, am sure that what pops into your head is what had been popping into mine over the last few years: brightly colored, sugar laden, bean shaped candies that are very sweet...as well as fun to eat. Usually, jellybeans are associated with Spring, and in particular, Easter, when they fill our Easter baskets along with some yummy chocolate treats.

Well, the boys have a new idea for jellybeans...not the candies themselves but the word,  jellybeans....

Little Bro has taken this word to be his code word for when he needs some help from me or from Big Bro. He got the idea to use this word as a code word for help from Big Bro...
If Little Bro needs help, he says jellybeans and then, Big Bro knows what the code word means and helps him...

Little Bro needed my help today with a tricky snap...so he filled me in about their unique code word and I helped him.
It made both boys happy that I was up for using jellybeans as the code word for help.

Now, when Little Bro says  jellybeans, Big Bro and I know that he needs help with something and so, we go and see what he is doing and what he needs some help with doing.

Last year, had seen a neat, prayerful poem about the meaning behind the different colors of jellybeans by Charlene Dickenson and thought that that would be a great activity to do with our homeschool co-op as part of some Easter activities. Thought that many of my blog readers might enjoy using her poem with young children in preparation for Easter.  Here is a link to the Jelly Bean Poem in case any of you want to use this as part of your Easter activities.

Last year, when children from our co-op used this poem, they copied it and drew nice, colorful Easter pictures to go with their copywork.

This year, we will again use Charlene's jellybeans poem but instead of doing drawings, thought that it would be fun for the boys to make felt wall hangings. Purchased all of the colors of felt to go with this poem and have put it out as shelf work this week for the boys to choose.

Also purchased additional felt colors in case the boys want more colors to represent other concepts within our Faith.

We will also discuss tonight as a family during dinnertime about how they came up with the term jellybeans as a code word for help, as well as brainstorming what some of the additional felt colors might be good at representing, so that Daddy will be in the loop with the code word, too...

Asking for help and relying on the people in your life and more importantly, relying on God, to help you when you need help, is the key tenet of a Christian Faith.

A Jellybeans moment for Little Bro, as he needed some help from Big Bro with this electricity exhibit at our local museum...

Using the term jellybeans as the code word for help ties in with our family's Christian Faith as jellybeans are easy symbols for children to visualize Faith...

Faith in God and Faith in family.