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.