Faith-filled Fun: What is it & Why I started it!
Have you ever had someone ask you and your kids “So what did you do today?” or “Do anything fun this week?” and you couldn’t really think of an answer? This has happened to me on more than one occasion and every time the mom guilt instantly kicks in. I’d find myself realizing that we hadn’t really done anything noteworthy all day or all week and thinking “Am I a bad mom because I don’t plan more things for my kids?”. I’d see all these other moms on social media, taking their kids to activity after activity (soccer, dance, gymnastics, t-ball, etc.), going on daily outings to the park, and making new colorful sensory bins for their kids to play with each morning and I’d feel pretty crummy about myself.
The constant pressure to always be entertaining and teaching our kids, keeping them active and involved, always eating the healthiest of snacks, and on top of that, if you’re a Christian mom like myself, working with them to build a strong foundation for their faith, it can be incredibly overwhelming! So much so, that more often than not I’d be so paralyzed by the possibilities of what to do with my kids that we’d end up doing nothing instead. Now I want to preface this blog by saying that doing nothing “Pinterest-worthy” with your kids all week is TOTALLY OK and normal! If your kids are healthy, happy, and well cared for then you’re doing a stellar job as a parent and you don’t need to spend money on outings, or craft supplies, or plan elaborate activities and picture-perfect snacks for your kids to be a “good parent”! I believe balance is the key to most things, so instead of being overwhelmed by a sea of ideas and options, how simple would it be to have a Bible-based curriculum with matching activities already planned out and organized for you to follow at your own pace each week?
What is Faith-filled Fun
Well, if you are looking for an easy-to-follow faith-filled curriculum to model your week around or grab some ideas from, without being totally overwhelmed, that is what I have made it my mission to provide! Faith-filled Fun is a blog dedicated to providing parents of young children with the tools needed to incorporate faith-based fun into their homes daily. I like to think of it this way if life were a summer camp, your kids are the campers, you are their fun camp counselor and I am your program director. Each week I will be dropping “Weekly Faith-filled Fun Plans“. These blog posts will follow a different creative theme each week, include a bible story or lesson to focus on, memory verses, snack ideas, craft ideas, discussion questions to have with your kids, example prayers to pray with them and over them, and each lesson will be simple, and easy to tailor to your particular children and schedule.
How to use Weekly Faith-filled Fun Plans
You could do an entire “fun plan” in one day with your kids OR take bits and pieces from the plan and do them after school each day to sprinkle in some fun over your week, it is completely up to you! If you’ve got lots of time and energy you can even string together multiple “fun plans” to create your very own VBS or “cousin camp” like I did this summer with my kids, and that was actually where Faith-filled Fun was born.
How Faith-filled Fun Was Born: An Answered Prayer
Backtrack to July of 2022, I lost my job in social media marketing and had absolutely no idea what was next for me. Here I was 29 years old, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and nannying to make ends meet again. Feeling lost I began to realize that even when I still had my job, it wasn’t something that I was passionate about. So I began to pray, pray to God every single day for “renewed passion and purpose for my life”. I pleaded with God to help me find something I was passionate about again, something that I knew aligned with His plans and purpose for my life. Even though it took a year and I didn’t realize it at the time, God was working something in me.
Nannying allowed me to stay home and raise my 2 wonderful kids, something I never thought I’d have the freedom to do, and made me realize how much I love working with children. After years of searching, we found our home church and a community of believers who have become some of our closest friends and impacted both my husband and me in many ways, growing our faith stronger than ever. Volunteering at our church’s VBS over the last 2 years sparked the old “camp counselor” in me and made me realize that that version of myself, working with kids in a camp-like environment is my favorite version of myself. It was then that I ultimately realized that THAT is my passion; sharing the gospel with kids through fun!
Then this summer I remembered something I had seen some friends do with their kids years back that I had wanted to do with my children once they got old enough….a “cousin camp”. So I spent a week creating lesson plans, researching craft ideas, fun snacks, memory verses, and activities to do with the kids. Not only was that the best week of the summer for my kids, but that week before cousin camp, planning everything, ignited something in me. I finally realized my prayers for a “renewed passion and purpose” were being answered. After posting some TikTok videos highlighting each of our days of cousin camp I was flooded with comments from people saying “Can you come do this for my kids?”, “I wish I could do this with my little ones!”, “Can I send my kids over to your house” and I began to think, what if there was a way to make the idea behind cousin camp easy and attainable for other parents. And thus, Faith-filled Fun was born.
I am so excited for this next adventure and have so many “Weekly Faith-filled Fun Plans” already in the works. So I hope you’ll follow along with me and that this blog would encourage you too to incorporate some more faith-filled fun into your homes in a simple and easy way!
