It was Special Helper Sunday! Our usual Primary Pianist was out of town, so Sister Clark sat with the Super Class while Sister Combs played the piano in Sharing Time. Then, when we arrived at the classroom, Brother and Sister Echeverria had decorated the chairs with cars! They stayed to help with the teaching and cookie-eating, and did a great job with both. The primary topic of discussion during our stop light sugar cookie snack break was, "What is our lesson about today??" Post-cookie, the children turned over the cars and discovered that each one had a word, sticker, or object on the back. We took turns doing the activities represented by the symbols, and learned about many different laws and how they keep us safe and happy. We learned that a Pharisee tried to confuse Jesus by asking him if it was important to pay taxes. Jesus showed the Pharisee the portrait on the front of the coin and told him to give Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and give God what is God's. We learned that this means we should obey the laws of our country as well as Heavenly Father's laws. Note: We used a different picture to go with this story in our class. . .but the subject matter is the same! We finished by coloring one of two pictures: a fireman dog, to remind us to be kind to animals and obey the law, or a pair of flowers, to remind us not to litter, so the plants can grow. Actually, most of the children colored both. We are grateful for the laws that protect us every day, and for the ward members that helped our class today!
0 Comments
This week, we celebrated the Return of the M&M Blondies. Everyone loves them!
We talked about why we use flashlights, and then discussed what would happen if we put it inside a box. Obviously, that would be silly, because we wouldn't be able to see the light! In Jesus's time, there were no flashlights, so they used candles when it was dark outside. He taught that, just as we should not put a candle under a bushel, we should let our light shine by being a good example to those around us. We made bushels, decorated with fancy patterns from our vivid imaginations, and took candles to remind ourselves to be good examples. Most of the children decided to tape their candles to the bottom of the bushel, birthday-cake style, so that everyone would see them shining. Each candle had a number on the back, so we took turns choosing a story, activity, or song related to being a good example. Everyone seems to have forgotten how to sing "Choose the Right Way", which we practiced a lot at the beginning of the year, so it may be time to re-learn that one. It was a busy, fun day, and the children were happy to have a simple little craft to take home! When we came into our new classroom today, there were a few sheep standing around! As we ate chocolate-chip cookies, everyone discussed what the sheep might have to do with the lesson. Would we be talking about the Boy Who Cried Wolf? the Parable of the Lost Sheep? chocolate-chip cookies? We also spent some time becoming acquainted with our two visitors: Matthew, who was in town for his cousin's baptism, and Sister Combs, in town for her nephew's baptism. It was a lot of fun to have two Sister Combses! We learned about shepherds--how they dressed in Biblical times and what their job entails. The children knew that the shepherd protects the sheep from wild animals, but they thought it was funny that the shepherd can tell all of his sheep apart and that the sheep recognize the shepherd's voice. We talked about the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Several of the children knew this one already and were happy to share the details of the story. Then we went looking for all the lost sheep scattered around the classroom. Most of them had been found already, but the last few were well-hidden, and the very last one was really tricky! The children were excited and happy when they had found all the sheep. We compared this to how the shepherd felt when he found the one missing sheep. We learned that Jesus is the Good Shepherd: he knows and loves each one of us, and we know that when we follow him we are safe. It was funny to think of ourselves as sheep! We also learned that Jesus wants us to help him feed his sheep and talked about how we can do that: we can show love and do kind things for each other. We had a lamb coloring page for each member of the class with his name on it. It was fun to guess whose sheep would be next in the pile, and nobody predicted that there would be two Sister Combs sheep! Everyone agreed, though, that even grown-ups need love and help. We ended up with some very fancy rainbow sheep and a group of happy children. What could be better?
We began our lesson by playing two rounds of "Teacher Says", which the kids understood as soon as they figured out that it was the same as Simon Says. It was really funny when people forgot to listen for "Teacher Says"! It was a good way to work out some post-Sharing Time wiggles and introduce the lesson's message of following our Leader.
We learned about a boy named Sam, who walked through deep snow with his father. He was having trouble with the snowdrifts until his dad taught him to walk in Dad's footsteps. The kids liked the story, but the picture led to the following conversation: Reed: Is that boy really Sam? Sister Combs: Well. . .they gave me the picture to use with the story, so. . .I think so. Reed: I don't think so. I think it was just some boy. Zach: I think his name is really. . .Joseph! Yes, definitely Joseph. Sometimes in our class, we are very old and sophisticated, and sometimes we are young and silly. Today we seemed to be both at the same time. We learned about Jesus calling Peter, James, and John to be his disciples. They enjoyed the story about catching lots of fish, but had some funny explanations of why they hadn't caught any fish all night, but then all of a sudden they had too many. A few children thought that the fish had just woken up, and another suggested that the fish really wanted to see Jesus, so they came out of the water to have a better look! We eventually decided that Jesus loved the people and helped them. The children were glad that the men decided to follow Jesus, but were disappointed that the Bible does not tell us what happened to all of those fish! We learned that we should show our love for Jesus by keeping the commandments. We also talked about how Jesus wants us to love everybody, not just our family and friends. To review these concepts, we went fishing! Each fish had a scenario attached, and the children brainstormed how they would react in the situations. We are all experts at being loving and choosing the right, so this part was pretty easy, but it was definitely fun to use the "fishing pole". The plan was to finish the day by coloring happy fish, but everyone preferred to decorate and play with the cardstock fish from our fishing activity instead! They drew beautiful polka dots and stripes and had a great time being creative. Only one or two children took a happy fish page, so we can color the rest another time. |
AboutA loosely organized collection of happy things. Archives
August 2020
Categories
All
Copy the link above to add Cupcakes and Cherry Blossoms to your RSS Feed of choice!
|