Superheroes, Part 1

I've been thinking about this unit for awhile.  Isaiah has been really focused on fighting "bad guys" and has taken an interest in superheroes.  He really loved The Incredibles when he watched it recently, and I saw this GREAT How to Be a Superhero unit from Impress Your Kids, which is based on I Timothy 4:12, so I decided to dive into a superhero theme for a unit.  Honestly, I have put a lot of work into this one!  I get really excited about something that I think will connect to one of my kids' interests, and I love planning, so sometimes I kind of lose track of the time involved!  It has been a lot of fun!  We are still working on it (for the third week), but I'm just now getting around to posting things from our first week.

Isaiah could hardly wait to get started!  We went a little ghetto on attaching his crest that I had made because we don't have any safety pins, but he insisted on wearing it to my husband's office where we eat lunch most days.

As I mentioned, a big part of the motivation for the unit came from Impress Your Kids.  We started by making crests, as she suggested, to introduce the unit.  I used a hot-glue gun with some sparkly glue sticks I had been given to attach a letter to their crests.  I actually ended up attaching them to capes for the boys (and a friend).

Isaiah also requested "an Incredibles' badge," so I made one up out of felt for him.

In the unit, Amanda focuses on each of the aspects of being "an example for the believers," and the first one was "Super Speech."  That is one we could use a little focus on in our house!  Amanda does such a great job explaining the activities, so just check them out on her site, but this first one was an experiment from Matthew 12:34, "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks."  It went really well with the boys, and they really got into it!  In fact, one of the most encouraging moments for me came when I started to talk to them the next day about our experiment we had done, and Zeke (who just turned 2) said, "Drink?"  It was the first of a few moments that showed me he is making connections, even at this young age, to what we are trying to learn, and even if he isn't understanding the real point yet, things are sticking in his mind, and that just seemed really exciting to me!

Isaiah has been determined to make a movie about the super hero he made up in his mind--Super Melman.  The name is from the character from the movie Madagascar, which is probably the least likely character to base a super hero around, but he has always loved giraffes, and for some reason, he's landed his mind, on Super Melman.  He frequently makes up stories about him and his super powers and his battles.  The main bad guys he has focused on are "Bad Guy Dragon," "Bad Guy Backson" (from a Winnie the Pooh movie), and "Bad Guy T.Rex."  As part of our superhero obstacle course, I wanted to have him throw bean bags at a target of bad guys, which I thought he would really enjoy, give him a little motor skill practice, AND be a bit therapeutic, as he scares a bit easily and can actually get a little fixated on these "bad guys" he thinks of.  So, he was really excited to color them and then take aim!

The second activity for Super Speech was a memory activity for Ephesians 4:29.  The boys had a friend over that day, and they all got REALLY excited about the long paper for the verse!

They had lots of fun dropping it down from the top of our multi-floor staircase!

I actually think their excitement about the paper and having a friend over overshadowed any focus on the verse, but they had fun, and we said it a bunch of times, so you can't be upset about that!

I set up a little superhero obstacle course for the boys, and they and their friends had a lot of fun with that!

The third activity for Super Speech was "Build Others Up," which included a great block tower idea.

Zeke is kind of young to jump in on this by speaking affirmations, but he did enjoy adding to the tower and gave some sweet pats and huge, and when we talked about using our words to build others up, he kept saying, "Blocks?"  (Another thing sticking at some level!)  Isaiah mostly just kept telling us that he loved us, which was sweet.  I did take turns putting on blocks and telling the boys things that I love about them, which was really fun for me, and I think a sweet time for them!

Isaiah wanted to revisit the obstacle course pretty much every day.

We also started an alphabet book of superheroes, which was Isaiah's idea.  We'll be wrapping up the last letters this week, so I'll post more on that later.

More superheroes to come!