Want another crafty activity to demo how “dirt” from daily life can get stuck on our Pure Hearts? This helps balance the Pure Heart Science Demo in case your kid ends up thinking that negative stuff isn’t a concern…

I decided to try this out after the Science Demo left my youngest son with a casual attitude about some of the bad words and attitudes that had spilled out of his mouth one day. We paused to consider how it was blocking the radiance of his Pure Heart. I asked him to do a Pure Heart Start. And, in a typical six-year-old boy kinda way, he nonchalantly stated:

“But, I can just wash the dirt out of my glass. It’s not hard at all.”

So, I thought this would help demonstrate that cleansing isn’t always a snap. Maybe I should have added pebbles to the dirt-in-the-glass demo instead…hahahaha.

Anyhow, we tried this, at first using a dark pice of felt to get stuff “stuck” to the mirror. But it didn’t work so well, so we adapted it as follows. Worked like a charm!

Purity Papaya Mirror Activity

Goal: See how easily a Purity Papaya can pick up “dirt” and how hard it is to pick it off.

Materials:

• Aluminum foil
• Cardstock
• Glue stick
• Pencil shavings from a battery-operated pencil sharpener (or other fine shavings/bits of something – like crushed leaves or graham crackers for example)
• Optional: cotton balls and bowl of water

Instructions:

1. Invite your child to cut out an oblong piece of aluminum foil to roughly resemble a papaya.
2. Have her glue stick it onto a sheet of paper and color or cut and paste some green leaves of the papaya plant around it if you like. You can easily find pictures of papaya leaves online.
3. Invite your child to use glue stick to cover the surface of the foil papaya.
4. Once it’s really sticky, see how much “dirt” (pencil shavings, crushed leaves or graham crackers) your child can pick up on that glue by sprinkling it all over.
5. Now ask her to pick those pieces off. Hard, isn’t it?
6. Discuss how keeping our thoughts and actions pure and kind keeps our hearts pure, kind, and radiant.

Variations:

• Provide a cotton ball and bowl of water so your child can try cleaning the “dirt” off of the Papaya to cleanse it. Make the analogy that water is like special tools like prayer and meditation that can help keep negative thoughts, emotions, and actions from sticking to our hearts. (This is similar to the Pure Heart Art activity.)
• Pure Hands Activity – Discuss how pure and kind actions differ from those that are not. Put masking tape, sticky side out over your child’s hand and then have her rub her hands on something fuzzy so pick up lots of lint. Now challenge her to see how easily she can remove the fuzz. It’s hard, isn’t it? Discuss how keeping our thoughts and actions pure and kind keeps our hearts pure, kind, and radiant. (Based on an activity in Nurturing Spirituality in Children by Peggy Joy Jenkins.)

A bonus to the Pure Heart Mirror activity for us was that it prompted a first-ever for my six-year-old:

He cut his fingernails all on his own without being asked! When he went to wash hands after the activity, he found the “dirt” was too hard to clean from his long fingernails. Score!

Did your child make a Purity Papaya Mirror? How’d it go? Do you have pictures to share, suggestions, or other ideas?