Classroom Theme

I'm on an idea hunt, people, so supply me! What do you think my classroom decoration theme should be for this coming school year? Last year was an Hispanic Fiesta! Very bright and colorful - I loved it and so did my kids! The Dollar Tree usually has good, cheap stuff for decorating, but their summer party theme is a Tiki Party. I do not want a tiki classroom. I love books and would love to have something to do with that, but don't want to bog my classroom down with pictures of old dead people whose books are mostly above my kid's reading level. Hmmm . . . just writing this down has got me thinking . . . I could make books my theme . . . have a bulletin board featuring the book of the month . . . find book visuals (I think Dollar Tree has little paper ones in different colors) and hang them from the ceiling . . . make visuals of characters from books on our reading level and put them around the room with quotations from those books . . . hmmm . . . sounds like a lot of legwork and visual making . . . so tell me what you think! I need feedback. If you have a different decorating scheme, share that too!!

How Long Could You Go Without Sinning?

First of all, this is purely hypothetical, based upon some rough math. But it's got me thinking!

Genesis 5:3 says Adam was 130 years old when his son Seth was born. According to what Eve says in 4:25, Cain had already murdered Abel when Seth was born. So . . . if Seth was born shortly after the offerings/murder, and if Cain and Abel were around 30 years old when they offered their gifts to God, and if Cain and Abel had been born shortly after Adam and Eve were thrust out from the garden of Eden . . . then hypothetically (remember, purely hypothetically - notice the "if's"), then Adam and Eve might have lived for as many as 100 years before ever making a choice to sin. Even if we are conservative in our surmisings, 50, 75 years is still an amazing stretch of time! How much time has passed since you last sinned?

What an example of faith we have here set for us in Adam and Eve, a man and woman who chose, year after year, decade after decade, to believe God and trust Him! We struggle for the faith to resist sin from moment to moment. Let us no longer look to Adam and Eve as an excuse for our sin, but as an example for our faith, and an example of God's wonderful graciousness!

A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

"Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
"Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.
"Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul."

~ Psalm 103:20-22

May's Bulletin Board

It's late, I know, but it was one of my favorites this year so I had to share.

We were covering the scientific system of classification so I stole an idea from the K4 class and had my kids trace their foot and hands and create their own butterfly. The label read something like this:

Kingdom: Our Christian School

Phylum: Elementary

Class: 5th & 6th grades

Family: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera (butterfly/moth)

In this system, the genus and species names are combined to create the scientific name of a specific animal or plant. These are always Latin or Greek. I tried to find my kids' names in Latin or Greek, but some of them just don't exist (most of them don't exist - very creative parents named my kids). So I made them up - ridiculously. For example, my name might have been changed to Racelus Claetoraeus. Slightly pathetic, but they loved it and so did I!