Our favorite Bibles and devotionals for kids

A couple months ago some of you asked what Bible we were using when we made our resurrection rolls so I thought I'd share some of our favorite kids Bibles and devotionals. 

These 4 of our favorites. 

Long Story Short by Marty Machowski

The Gospel Story Bible by Marty Machowski

Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd-Jones

The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

*We also like The Beginners Bible by Kelly Pulley for younger kids (under 6)

The Jesus Storybook Bible and their devotional "Thoughts to Make your Heart Sing" are my personal favorites.

At least for our kids ages right now (6, 4, 3, 15 months)

Let's take a look at The Jesus Storybook Bible first.  

The pictures (by artist Jago) and the creativity in the layout of the pages is fabulous. 

I love how some of them are vertical and the perspective is unique. 

And it is really engaging and easy to read (or listen to). 

It is simple yet profound, funny and most importantly it always brings everything back to Jesus.

The publisher says that it is for kids 4 and up but our 2 year old loves reading it too. 

 We keep ours in the kids bedroom and read it to them before bed at night.

Here's a little shpeel I grabbed from their website. 

The Jesus Storybook Bible tells the Story beneath all the stories in the Bible. At the center of the Story is a baby, the child upon whom everything will depend. Every story whispers his name. A Bible like no other, The Jesus Storybook Bible invites children to join in the greatest of all adventures, to discover for themselves that Jesus is at the center of God’s great story of salvation—and at the center of their Story too.

Next up is the devotional "Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing".

I love that each devotion is relatively short (most are one page) but that they are still really good.

And thought provolking. 

We read it during breakfast and then spend some time discussing it. 

It has great info and prompts good discussion. 

The Gospel Story Bible and The Long Story Short are also a great Bible and devotional pair.    

The pages of The Gospel Story Bible are bright and the content is more in depth, detailed and lengthy. 

I love the Let's Talk about it section at the end of each story.

It helps gets you and your kids thinking about what they read and it allows you as the parent to help make sure they really "got it". 

Here's a peek at what the publisher says about the book,

"It is easy to forget Jesus in the midst of frantic schedules, family squabbles, and conflicting priorities. But the truth is that he is the hero of every story, including these ordinary ones. This is why Marty Machowski puts God's plan of salvation in Christ on continuous display in The Gospel Story Bible. The easy-to-read storybook introduces your family to many captivating people, places, and events from the Bible's Old and New Testaments, showing how each one ultimately points to Jesus. As you share these Bible Stories together, you and your family will meet Jesus and learn a new, life-changing way of recognizing Christ as the hero of every story."

Long Story Short is a great devotional. 

It shows how every story in the Old Testament points forward to God's story of salvation through Jesus Christ. 

And it has a little something to talk about with the kids five days of the week.

The publisher recommends it for ages preschool through high school.  

Oh and I should mention that it goes best with the Gospel Story Bible. 

*They also have a devotional called Old Story New that is about the New Testament 

Hopefully you guys found that helpful.

I know there are some great kids Bibles out there.

What are some of your favorites? 

jumping beans

 We got the kids a little/big (8 ft) trampoline for Christmas. 

Let me tell you, it was the best investment ever.

 The kids spend most of the day outside bouncing like little jumping beans.

They get their wiggles out, exercise and have fun.

And I get a peaceful house. 

happy kids and happy mama.

It's the perfect size for our crew ( kids ages 1-6). 

It's big enough 2-3 of them can go on it at a time but it's small enough that they can climb in and out of it themselves (even our 2 year old).

I'd say that if your kids like to do flips or crazy stunts you may want a bigger one, but our kids aren't into that stuff yet.

Plus it doubles as a baby play pin. 

Just stick some toys in and zip er up. 

What are some of your kids favorite toys? 

Together Box

 I love finding new (awesome) products and I love being able to share them with you guys. 

Last week we got to test out a Together Box.
You guys... it was so cool!
Together Box takes the hassle out of planning and preparing activities/experiments so you can get straight to the fun stuff.
And it fosters fun, family time.
Definitely a win win. 

Plus who doesn't love getting happy mail delivered to your door?

How about every month? 

Yes please. 

 "TogetherBox was created to make family together time easy. When you sign up, everything you need to have hours of family fun will land on your doorstep every month. You’ll spend less time researching, stressing and gathering supplies and more time spending quality time with your family."

Yes...all of that came in the box. 

You seriously get everything you need to do the activities (more than once), even stuff you probably already have at home.  

"Each box will come with 3-4 carefully crafted activities, experiments and games around a surprise theme. All activities are designed to appeal to a large age group so your whole family can enjoy their time together."

Genius! Who else is thinking...why didn't I think of that?!!
Our box happened to be the "Balloon box".

The kids had so much fun doing the different experiments and activities with the balloons. 
Every day they would beg me to "do something new out of the box."Our  first experiment was making balloon rockets. 


Then we split up into teams to see whose rocket was faster the boys or the girls.


The next day we made a balloon water fountain.


It was so cool to watch the water get pumped out of the bottle by the balloon.

cooooool

We also drew on balloons that were blown up and then observed how the drawing changed once we deflated the balloons. 

I'm not going to lie, it totally made me feel like a home school mom. 

In the best possible way. 

And the kids thought it was so neat to see how their big drawings shrunk into teeny tiny ones. 

We had so much fun with our Together Box. 

I loved being able to craft and do fun things with the kids without having to think of an idea or look for the supplies to actually do it.

It was so easy. 

And most importantly fun. 

But don't just take my word for it.

Go check out Together Box for yourself. 

Buy one for your family and gift one to a friend. 

And then do the happy dance because Together box is generously giving Lu Bird Baby readers $10 off your first purchase with the coupon code "bird".

Cherrios Christmas trees

Yesterday we made craft number two...

Cherrio Christmas trees. 

 All you need are

-Cherrios

-paper

-ribbon

-glue

First I pre cut a christmas tree shape and star out of cardstock for each of the kids and trimmed off a few pieces of ribbon from my stash.

 Then I let the kids glue the star to the top of the tree and the ribbon on as decoration.

And lastly we glued Cherrios onto the trees as "ornaments". 

I put dots of glue down for the kids to make it a little (less) messy. 

My kids l.o.v.e. glue. 

And there you have it. 

Another fun and easy Christmas craft to do with the kids. 

Happy crafting!

Q tip painting (snowman)

Yay! It's Thanksgiving break!  

A week off school (and school drop off/pick up) deserves celebrating.

I asked Kenzie what she wanted to do during the week off.

her answer....

crafts. 

Lots of crafts. 

So I told her we could do one every day. 

Today we made a snowman painting using Q tips.

Super easy and it was all stuff we already had at home. 

Just Q tips, paint and paper.

I drew the outline of the snowman and his hat onto the paper lightly with a crayon and they did the rest. 

Even Maddie and Wesley were able to do it. 

I love how all of ours turned out unique. 

I'm trying to find the perfect place to display them. 

And since I'm going for the Mom of the year award today we also painted finger nails...Christmas theme (of course). 

Do your kids have the whole week off school too?

4 kids...one room

We did it. 

We put all 4 kids in the same room. 

I wrote this on Instagram (kristinsellars if you want to follow) their first night together...

"We are either absolutely genius or totally crazy". 

The room switch was prompted by some recent break ins in our neighborhood (we live in one of the safest cities in America...go figure!). 

The girls had been sharing a room downstairs and after everything happened it made me super nervous having them down there alone so we decided to move them all into the upstairs bedroom.

We sold both sets of our old bunk beds and got a new triple bunk (bunk beds with a trundle under). 

The kids were/are sooooooo excited to all be together. 

They pretty much think it is the greatest thing ever. 

And surprisingly it has been going great!

Actually it has been way easier then I could have imagined (thank you Jesus).

My kids have pretty much always shared rooms so they are used to being together.

I think when you have 2 kids sharing a room it's not much different having 3 or 4 or in there. 

So many of you were curious about our bedtime rules so I thought I'd share them with you...

-no one is allowed out of their bed (this is the biggest one!)

-when you get up in the morning you are not allowed to wake anyone else up! You need to walk as quietly out of your room as possible and go downstairs or come find Mommy and Daddy. 

-sometimes if they are having a hard time falling asleep or we can hear them being rowdy we don't let them talk either but lately this hasn't been a problem. 

-Also if anyone wakes up before 6:00 a.m. I always put them back in their bed and tell them it's still night time :) That's not a rule...just a Mommy secret. It totally works around here.  

Some other helpful sleeping tips...

-get a sound machine...this has been a life saver for our family! 

-blackout curtains are a must! Trust me.

-We put our kids to bed at 7:00 on school nights and by 8:00 on weekends. I think it's so important for Mommy and Daddy's to have some kid free time. Well at least it is for this Mommy and Daddy. 

 The plus side to having all the kids in the same room is that we get to turn the downstairs bedroom into a playroom/sewing room. 

I already scored this desk off Craigslist for $20. 

Thank you very much. 

My sewing machine is so happy to have a permanent home again. 

And we are all so excited to have a playroom. 

Our project this weekend is to get everything set up and organized.
Wish us luck!

Nature Scavenger Hunt

We are slowly checking off more items on our Summer Fun List. 

A couple days ago we went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt. 

I wrote "Find something Red....find something yellow, etc." on the paper and then colored each of the colors with a crayon since my kids can't read yet. 

We took a bag along with us and I filled it with lots of different flower petals, leaves, etc. for each of the colors on our paper. 

The kids had a great time exploring our neighborhood and searching for all the different colors!

It's so fun to see the same things we always see with new eyes. 

Then when we got home I drew a rainbow on a piece of paper using the proper color crayon for each strip of the rainbow. We had more colors than were really in the rainbow so we got creative with pink and black clouds and brown birds. 

Then I let the kids glue their scavenged goods to the proper spots on the rainbow.

I was surprised at how easily they were able to do it. 

I pretty much just monitored the glue usage and they did the rest. 

I love a good, easy and fun craft! 

Have you been doing any fun crafts this summer? 

Memory Boxes

I'm sentimental.

I love pictures and keepsakes.

Unfortunately I'm horrible about scrapbooking or even getting pictures into albums. period.

I write in the kids memory books once every 6 months...maybe. 

And now that they are getting older the baby books are kind of over with anyways. 

The other day I found these photo boxes at Michaels so I decided to pick one up for each kid. 

They are the perfect spot to put all of the kids special things I want to save for them, notes I have written to them (which I am trying to do a few times a year), handprints they have made at preschool, and pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

And speaking of pictures...

It seems like Snapfish and Shutterfly are always emailing me coupons for free pictures. I finally started to use them and have been printing pictures for each of the kids to put in their boxes. That way they will have some of their special memories to take with them when they are older. 

I'm so excited to have found a system that actually works for me!

How do you guys perserve memories for your kids?
I'd love to hear!