LeeAnn G Taylor - Embracing the Mosaic Life

Trusting our broken pieces to the Ultimate Artist

  • About
    • About LeeAnn
    • Community
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Purposeful Living
    • Becoming Your Best Self
    • Advocating for Others
    • Marriage
    • Money & Possessions
    • Parenting
  • Perspective
    • Embracing Freedom
    • Recovering from Perfectionism
    • Releasing Control
    • Releasing Fear
    • Rest, Renewal & Reflection
    • Worship
  • Parenting With Purpose
  • Books
    • Books I’ve Read
    • My Writing

Parenting With Purpose at Easter

March 24, 2016 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

With Easter upon us in a few short days, I wanted to share a few ideas we’re using this year with our kids to make sure we’re focusing on Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the true meaning of Easter.

Parenting with Purpose at Easter

But first, here’s a glimpse into our reality right now with three kids ages 6 and under. This was our attempt at teaching them to share last weekend. I’ll let you guess how long that lasted…

kiddos drinking milkshakes

Sharing or not sharing, we still attempt to teach them, right?

It’s the same with Easter. While I know my kiddos won’t understand everything about Jesus’ death and resurrection while they’re still so young, I can still begin to teach them at an age appropriate level.

Now don’t get me wrong; we still enjoy our church’s Easter egg hunt too, complete with bounce houses and face painting because my 6 yr old thinks getting her face painted is truly the best thing ever and who am I to deprive her of that joy?

But it’s so important to us to make sure we’re planting the seeds of truth in their little hearts and minds during a time when the world around us already recognizes that there’s something special going on.

daffodils

 

We started this with Salem, our oldest, when she was tiny, just 2 years old, by reading the simple board book What is Easter? (thank you Noni!), a book that acknowledges the bunnies and eggs kids see during this time of year while at the same time introducing the concept that it’s really Jesus that we celebrate. This year it’ll help Kai, our 3 year old, remember that Easter isn’t just about candy and eggs.

toilet-paper

I’m trying something new with him this year too. It’s a simple activity called All Wrapped Up Like Jesus. Now, you need to know that I will never, ever, ever call myself a “crafty mom” but this is the kind of activity that only requires supplies you already have on hand. Okay, are you ready, fellow non-crafty moms? This activity’s supply list is….toilet paper. That’s it! Here’s the drill, and I promise, your young kids will love this “active” activity!

  1. Read Matthew 27:57-61.
  2. Take the toilet paper and wrap your child up in “grave clothes”. If you have more than one child, have your kids take turns playing the part of Jesus and wrapping one another up.
  3. After each child is wrapped up, have them try to break loose from the toilet paper. Talk about how Jesus’ followers must have felt when they found out that Jesus was alive.

My older daughter’s favorite Easter activity is to make Resurrection Rolls. These little treats are baking-challenged (that’s me!) mom approved…just 4 ingredients…crescent roll dough (from a can!), marshmallows, sugar and cinnamon. Resurrection Rolls

For this activity, start with reading the Easter story from the Bible. Our favorite Bible for preschoolers is the Jesus Storybook Bible. As you work through the steps of the activity, remind your child about what you just read.

  1. Spread out the crescent roll triangles individually on a baking sheet. These represent Jesus’ tomb.
  2. Next roll one marshmallow first in butter and then in the sugar/cinnamon mixture. This represents Jesus’ body being prepared for burial with oil and spices. If your child is like mine (not okay with cinnamon), then try using red sprinkles to represent blood.
  3. Place the spiced marshmallow in the center of the crescent roll, wrap it up, and press the edges together so the crescent roll seals. This represents the tomb being sealed with the stone.
  4. Bake the crescent rolls according to the directions on the package.
  5. After they cool a bit, let your child open up one of the rolls. The marshmallow is gone – Jesus is alive!

We also use some of the activities from the e-book A Sense of the Resurrection to help bring the sights, smells, and tastes of the Easter story to life. The author, Amanda White, has been a children’s pastor and is fabulous at breaking down complicated concepts into tangible activities that impress God’s Word on our kids’ hearts! She very generously has offered us a discount – use the code MOSAICLIFE for 20% off. This is also great curriculum to use in churches with kids at Easter!

Finally, one of our favorite traditions we started last year is to have what Amanda calls an “UnEaster Basket” or what we call a “Jesus Basket” instead of the traditional Easter basket.

I felt like this was the first time they really “got” the concept of Jesus paying for our sins. I know personally I learn better with object lessons and this one was impactful to my adult-heart too!

uneaster basket

 

I just love it when we can use what’s happening in our world around us to teach biblical principles to our kids and Easter is the perfect time for it!

Whatever you decide to do, I pray you are able to sow seeds of truth into your little ones’ hearts this Easter!

LeeAnn


Setting Scripture to Music :: Seeds Family Worship

October 7, 2015 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

As a busy working mom, with so many tasks, responsibilities, projects and ideas swirling around in my head on any given day, memorizing scripture is difficult for me. 

Memorizing much of anything has never been my strong suit but since I’m committed to planting God’s truths in my heart and in the hearts of my children, finding a way to keep God’s word front and center in our lives is so important.

Did you know our brains are wired to remember words set to music better than just text on a page?

The Wall Street Journal explains in an article describing brain function that “information set to music is among the easiest to remember.” If you think about it, one of the first things we teach our young children is their alphabet with the A-B-C song.

child playing guitar

If you followed along with my Parenting with Purpose series last year you’ll remember my love for scripture set to music, (including ways to get it for free). While memorizing really is tough for me, when scripture is set to music word-for-word, it’s so much easier to recall it when I need it most.

In our home, Seeds Family Worship is a definite favorite! There is nothing that compares with hearing your kids in the backseat of the van singing “The Word of God is living and active” and “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers!”

Love scripture? Love music? Don’t miss this FREE @seedsworship album available this week!

Click To Tweet

Seeds Family Worship is celebrating the launch of their brand new website and THIS WEEK ONLY they are offering a FREE download of the entire Seeds of Courage album. That’s 12 songs straight from scripture. 

My personal favorite (and one I need to listen to OFTEN) is #2, Do Not Be Anxious (Philippians 4:6-7), because really, don’t we ALL need this reminder?

So…what are you waiting for? Go grab your free Seeds Family Worship album. I promise it’s music both you and your kids will love!

Signature

 

P.S. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the new Seeds Family Worship page. You’ll see this green bar at the bottom – enter your email and you’ll get the free download!

free album

Parenting With Purpose: Creating a God-Centered Home

October 1, 2015 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

 

Home Chef Groceries Delivered $30 Credit Discount

Last year I joined in with hundreds of other writers online in The Nester’s 31 Day Writing Challenge. I really loved sharing this series on Parenting With Purpose: Creating a God-Centered Home, as I have a heart for intentionally impressing God’s Word upon the hearts of our children.

This year, I’m back at it again! I just love-love-love connecting you with tools and resources to help make your job as intentional Christian moms just a tad bit easier. I can’t wait to share some of what I’ve compiled with you.

Parenting With Purpose - Creating a God-Centered Home

If you missed the series last year, you can find all of last year’s posts here – 2014 – Parenting With Purpose: Creating a God-Centered Home. 

Parenting With Purpose: Creating a God Centered Home

There are a 5 things I’d like you to know about me, my family, and our topic for the month:

  1. My kids are 6, 3, and 9 months old. We have a house full of “littles”.
  2. This means I haven’t gone through all the stages of parenting and still have lots to learn!
  3. I struggle daily to sort out the conflicting messages of what parenting “should” look in our home.
  4. I’m learning the importance of seeking God personally first before I seek to impart godly wisdom to my children.
  5. There are hundreds of tools and ideas available as you seek to create a God-centered home. I’ll be sharing just a few of them, so this won’t be an exhaustive list!

What To Expect:

You can expect posts focused on:

  • practical parenting tools & resources for creating a God-centered home
  • parenting-focused scriptures
  • reviews of Christian parenting books, CDs, and DVDs
  • printable resources to use right away with your children
  • inspiration & insight from other Christian parents {guest posts}

What Not To Expect:

  • perfect or prescribed solutions
  • judgements about specific methods of parenting

How You Will Benefit:

Learning often happens best in community!

By following along with the series & participating as you’re able in the comments section or the private Facebook group, you’ll:

  • gain fresh perspectives on opportunities to create God-focused moments in your home
  • learn about a treasure trove of resources to draw from
  • enjoy interaction with other Christian parents & grandparents with similar goals

Ways to Stay Connected:

If you’re not already receiving blog posts by email, you can sign up to have the posts delivered right to your inbox so you don’t have to remember to click over to the blog each day. 

blog sign up

If you like to follow along in a blog feed-reader, you can connect with me on BlogLovin’.

You can also connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

If you’d like to dig deeper into the topic each day, join the private Facebook group to connect with other moms and grandmothers who are also passionate about creating a God-centered home.

If you have a friend who would also be interested in this series, please use the social sharing buttons below to invite them to join us on the journey! You can also pin the series button to Pinterest to refer to later as you grow in your parenting.

Parenting With Purpose - Creating a God-Centered Home

Do you have a favorite resource you want to make sure I don’t miss? Contact me!

Dear Frazzled Mom, You Are Not Alone!

September 3, 2015 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

Today I’m sharing a guest post from my sister, Meghan. She is a work-from-home mom living in Franklin, TN with her husband and three kids, ages 1, 3, and 5, and two black labs. She spends her time serving at her church, putting back together things her son has taken apart, remodeling her fixer-upper home, and giving up on trying to keep shoes on her kids.

frazzled mom

Dear Frazzled Mom, (…from one Frazzled Mom to another…)

For those of you feeling a little down today or like you just can’t get things right, let me give you a little grace and humor by basking in my failures today.

Picked up RK (3) from pre-school today and her teacher informed me that:

1. her pants were on backwards (because she dressed herself this morning) and

2. she didn’t have any panties underneath said backwards pants (because she dressed herself this morning…and her drawer was empty b/c the clean panties are in a basket on the floor).

Evidently, she provided all the teachers with a good laugh today b/c her pants were a little big, so there was a lot of plumbers crack today in class. Bless.

After pick-up, I realize my gas light is on and I have exactly enough gas to get to Costco to fill up. Pull into Costco as it rolls to “0 miles” on my tank. Yay! Until I realize I have my Costco card, my drivers license, my checkbook, but not my wallet with the only form of payment Costco accepts (cards).

How does that even happen??

I don’t have enough gas to get back home or even to another gas station. I don’t have cash to pay someone.

So today I was “that person” who got to humbly ask the person next to me if I could use his credit card to put $10 in my tank and I would write him a check for $10 because I had no gas in my tank. He looked at me like I was crazy, I acknowledged that yes, it was a crazy request, but I didn’t know what else to do.

He mumbled something about things like this happening at the Wal-Mart gas station…not Costco. Then graciously accepted my check for $10 while I tried to avoid the stares of the other 6 people who overheard the conversation. I seriously considered showing him a screenshot of my bank account so he would believe me when I told him the check was good.

Oh. my. goodness. What has happened to my brain? And y’all. This is not an isolated incident. Things like the first example (not the second…that one’s a little extreme) happen all the time.

So if you ever think that the rest of your friends have it all together and you don’t, think twice, my friends. It’s a facade.

Let’s be real with each other, admit our failures, and extend grace to one another. It makes it easier to laugh instead of cry when we have to bum $10 worth of gas off a stranger to get home.

family pic

Encouraging Back to School Bible Verses {Free Printable}

August 22, 2015 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

Home Chef Groceries Delivered $30 Credit Discount

It’s back to school time!

We’ve managed to accomplish all the usual back-to-school activities:

✔ new tennis shoes (summer = worn out shoes!)
✔ new clothes (yep, kids grow in 3 months)
✔ school supplies
✔ Open House
✔ ice cream with the grandparents to mark the occasion

crayons

It’s back to school time! Time to spruce up our morning routines.

Now we’re working on our morning routine since in our family, mornings are our “around the table times”. Hubby works afternoons and evenings  during the week as a pastoral life coach, so eating dinner around the table together usually only happens on the weekends when we aren’t out exploring or traveling.

Parenting With Purpose

Each year has seasons, and for us, the back-to-school season is a great time to refocus on intentional parenting with purpose.

Now that our “big kids” are a little older (6 and 3), this year’s morning routine after our kids wake up will include asking them to:

✔ get dressed independently
✔ put lunch in backpack & backpack by the door
✔ sit at the breakfast table with the family (sometimes sitting is the hardest part for them)
✔ write something you’re thankful for in our family gratitude journal
✔ work on scripture memory as a family

It’s simple on purpose since our kids are young.

Your Morning Routine

Your morning routine will look different in your home, but I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to think about what kind of morning would be your ideal morning. Then work backwards to put systems and routines in place to make that happen.

Let’s be real. If you have a beautifully planned schedule for your mornings and you have littles, middles, or even big big kids, your mornings probably won’t go 100% like you plan. But as the saying goes, failing to plan = planning to fail.

So this school year, let’s be intentional in determining the type of environment we’d like to create for our family and take some action to make it happen. Then remember to give yourself and your kiddos grace when it doesn’t work perfectly.

To help you get started, I’ve created two downloadable printables with encouraging back-to-school Bible verses. Please feel free to share with anyone you think would benefit from these as a jumpstart to intentional, God-centered mornings.

Blessings,

Signature

 

 

 

encouraging bible verses for back to school

Click the image to download a printable version.

 

encouraging bible verses for back to school

Click the image to download a printable version.


Need a little help getting meals on the table now that school’s starting back up again? Try out my “secret weapon” — HomeChef!

They deliver pre-prepped ingredients and easy-to-follow recipe cards (with pictures…so helpful!) for meals I’ve picked from their weekly selection right to my door! Want to see if it is your “secret weapon” too? You can try it out with a free $30 credit!

Home Chef Groceries Delivered $30 Credit Discount


Use the social share buttons below to share these free printable back to school Bible verses with your friends. Many blessings for another wonderful school year!

A Trick for Toddler Tantrums

February 25, 2015 By LeeAnn G. Taylor

toddler tantrums 2

I have to be honest.

Parenting is hard work and I’m going to go out on a limb and say I’m not winning the “Mother of the Year” award any time soon. Remember, I’m letting go of perfectionism, so pursuing an award for the best mother ever just isn’t on my bucket list.

Sometimes good enough is good enough.

And although most first time mothers wish they did, we all know hospitals don’t send you home with a user’s manual when they roll you out to your car in a wheelchair holding your new bundle of joy. Newborns, with their squishy little faces and darling coos, grow into willful toddlers and, at least for me, at times it feels like an alien has taken up residence in our home!

My sweet, sweet baby boy has turned into a little man with his own thoughts and opinions about almost everything. His current favorite phrase when he’s frustrated is “NO, I DON’T WANT TO, MOMMY!” and he says it complete with an angry face and a stomping foot.

It’s epic. And not in a good way.

At times I’m tempted to get frustrated right back at him but instead, I’ve found a solution that works every time. Or sometimes. Or once out of every three times I try. {Ahem.}

Reading a book!

Truly, grabbing my frustrated little man, taking him out of his currently frustrating environment, and plopping ourselves on the couch with a fuzzy blanket and a good book is usually a great solution to the mayhem that occurs when his little toddler self is having trouble controlling his own emotions.

This week we received a new book in the mail, so of course this book made it to the calm-down-couch pile of books. {Part of the fun of blogging is receiving books to read and review and this was one of those times}.

The Berenstain Bears’ Please & Thank You Book

I grew up with the Berenstain Bears teaching me all manner of socially appropriate behavior through great quality children’s books. Reading was and still is one of my favorite things to do any time I have a few extra minutes (or hours!).

Please & Thank You Book

I was excited to crack open this cute little board book and see what new adventures Mama Bear, Papa, Brother, Sister, and Honey had in store for me. Small in size, the thick-paged board book is perfect for little hands still learning to turn the pages.

And what better topic for me to read to my strong-willed toddler than a book about manners? In The Berenstain Bears’ Please & Thank You Book Brother, Sister, and Honey yell “I want a cookie!” and Mama Bear is shocked at their poor manners!

In the span of 20 short pages, Mama Bear walks her cubs through a reminder of when to use the magic words – please, thank you, and you’re welcome – and rewards them for doing so with some of her scrumptious cookies and milk.

My “big” kids (ages 2 and 5) listened intently to the book and the littlest asked to read it over and over again, like little ones tend to do! It’s a great book for me to read during our “cool down” times after tantrums as a simple reminder of appropriate behavior and manners.

If you’d like your own copy to use during the inevitable toddler-tantrum moments, you’re in luck!

To win a copy of The Berenstain Bears’ Please & Thank You Book, choose one (or several) of the entry methods below.

Ways to Enter this Giveaway:

  • Leave a comment on this post.
  • Visit The Mosaic Life Facebook page. And *like* it if you like it. 🙂
  • Sign up to receive blog posts by email.

I’ll choose a winner on Tuesday, March 3rd. This would be a great addition to a child’s Easter basket this year!

“Disclosure (in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”): Many thanks to the Propeller Consulting, LLC for providing this prize for giveaway.  Choice of winners and opinions are 100% my own and NOT influenced by monetary compensation.  I did receive a sample of the product in exchange for this review and post. Only one entrant per mailing address, per giveaway.  If you have won the same prize on another blog, you are not eligible to win it again.  Winner is subject to eligibility verification. US and Canada readers/addresses only. Winner must respond within 48 hours or another winner will be chosen.”
This post contains affiliate links {full disclosure}. If you click through an affiliate link to make a purchase, we receive a small percentage of the sale at no extra charge to you. Proceeds help pay for this site and support our recently adopted Compassion International child, Eva, from Columbia.
Next Page »

Blog Topics

Recent Posts

  • Happy New Year!
  • 10 Ways to Teach Your Kids About Easter (at Home — COVID-19 Edition)
  • You Have the Power…it’s IN You!
  • Sequin Sparkle and Change Bible Review
  • She Reads Truth Bible: Review
  • Love Does for Kids: Book Review & Giveaway
  • Ellie Claire Art Journals: Cultivating Creativity
  • The Study Bible for Women: CSB Version | A Review
  • Family Honor Plate & Table Thyme Discussion Cards Review
  • Gift Guide: Essentials for Moms Expecting Twins

Disclosure Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Beautiful Pro Theme - Site Design by Mosaic Media