Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Unit 4B: NT Women

1/6/08

widow of Nain

sit-ups

maze &

word-find

Luke 7:

11-17

1/13/08

woman with

issue of blood

picking

pockets

photo

frames

Mark 5:

25-35

1/20/08

woman caught

in adultery

throwing

words

writing in

soil (clay)

John 8:

2-11

1/27/08

anointing Jesus

pouring

into jars

painting

glass jars

Mark

14:1-9

2/3/08

Mary Magdalene

& risen Christ

recognizing

"master"

craft-stick

butterflies

John 20

(various)

2/10/08

Chinese New Year

free talk & play

--

--

--

2/17/08

woman at the well

drinking

living water

cross

bookmarks

Heb. 4:

15-16

2/24/08

Syrophoenician

woman

grabbing

at crumbs

t.p. roll

dogs

I Pet. 5:

6-7

3/2/08

Mary & Martha

table setting

race

napkin

folding

Luke

10:38-42

3/9/08

mother of

sons of Zebedee

servants at

R. & L. hands

latex glove

balloon

faces

Matt. 20:

24-28

3/16/08

widow's mite

throwing gifts

into treasury

treasure

banks

God's

grading

system

3/23/08

Pilate's wife

matching

"dream"

pictures

ribbon &

clothespin

crosses

Phil. 2:

6-11

3/30/08

Damons' farewell

--

--

--

The Bible studies for the first five weeks of this unit were lifted pretty much straight from the IVP Bible study "Jesus Cares for Women," which is the best evangelistic study book I've EVER seen. Actually that was what inspired this whole unit 4A-B!

I knew our non-thrower-non-kneeler was going to have trouble doing the "find your way to Jesus" maze for the first week. He has a lot of perceptual issues. So what I did with his maze was to build up all the areas around the one correct path, with about ¼ inch of extra paper. So all he had to do was to get his pencil at the start and keep going in whatever direction he didn't bump into a wall. Eventually he did get there, but it was still hard for him! All the other kids did well. The word-find, which I found on the internet, I threw in just to see how the kids would do with them, since most of them have learned the English alphabet at school. It was too hard for some of them, though—but the parents, who had never seen such a puzzle before, were quite fascinated and more than happy to complete the puzzles for them!

For the resurrection game, we held up a large sheet and each child was supposed to find his own mother/caregiver by feeling all the adults through the sheet. But one tall boy kept cheating and pulling the sheet down to look. I guess we needed taller people to hold the sheet up!

The table setting race was a really great game. The kids would take one piece of paper at a time with the name of a place-setting on it (plate, cup, fork, spoon, knife, napkin & bud vase) & then go put it on their assigned placemat. Fun and educational at the same time!

Well…the last Sunday of March was our farewell party, and so two days later we took off for our home assignment. A young man from the mother church, Kevin Hui, who had been interning with us for the past year, has been in charge while we were gone. He has been doing a great job. Attendance is stable and even up! And he has helped our Christian parents to get more involved in leading the activities. That is truly exciting; I hope I don't cause things to go backwards after our return.

Recently Kevin sent us a list of the parables of Jesus they have been learning over these three months. As soon as I find out what the game or craft was for each session (we agreed that they could choose just one to have each week rather than both, since creating those are the most time-consuming), I will post that chart.


 

Friday, June 13, 2008

Pause unit 4 for Christmas & the New Year

12/16/07

Elizabeth

and Mary

jumping

for joy

origami angel

ornaments

Luke 1:

76-79

12/23/07

Magi

??

Christmas

stockings

Jer. 29:

11-13

12/30/07

10 Lepers

(thankfulness)

race on

knees

foil pie plate

tambourines

Ps. 92:

1-4


We had our sixty-year-old grandmother play the part of the pregnant Elizabeth. She brought the house down! But she absolutely refused to let me take her picture; I was SO disappointed!

The game that week was planned by our intern, Kevin--it was a little confusing to me as to how it was played, so I'm leaving this space blank. Game ideas always welcome

I found some cute pre-printed origami angels on Tammy Yee's website, but instead of adding her angel heads, I had prepared pictures of everyone (everyone's heads)—I took digital photos of our newcomers as soon as they arrived, and got them printed out during the game time. So each person got to attach his/her own head & then a halo, to the angel body. Then we put them all up on a large green poster-paper Christmas tree! Our kids almost never take their crafts home anyway. And they loved having them up on the tree.

For the game the week we talked about being thankful for the past year, I had embroidered the ten lepers' story a bit to say that the one thankful leper "ran to Jesus and fell on his knees." So for our game, we reversed that and ran on our knees to "Jesus" & then got up "healed" & ran back to the team. But running on your knees can be uncomfortable, so I basted thick foam pads on two pairs of legwarmers. Each runner then had to take them off at the end of his/her turn and the next person on the team had to put them on. Much hilarity!

I mentioned in the last post that one of our boys didn't know how to throw or to cut with scissors. We found out when he was playing one of the Magi that he didn't know how to kneel down either! Oops! In trying to help him get down, I ended up dropping him flat on his face. Some physical therapist I am, ha! I really wish I could have time with this boy outside of Sunday mornings to do more stuff one-on-one with him. (By the way, we let him WALK with the legwarmers on the next week!)

We JUST learned a couple of days ago that this boy, Man Chun, lost his excellent paid caregiver last week due to visa problems. Now he has a new "auntie" who doesn't speak Cantonese! Which means she cannot communicate with him verbally. What a setback for the poor kid. Just in time for summer vacation, too.

Doubly disappointing is the fact that the former auntie had said she wanted to become a believer, but was hesitating for fear of not being able to take the pressure from family to continue worshipping the ancestral gods. Now she will be away from any known Christian influence. So we are sad for her as well as for Man Chun.

We return to Macau on the 4th of July—just three more weeks! I am so looking forward to seeing everyone again. We've been hearing great reports about how well things have been going. But maybe more about that AFTER I catch up the backlog here. Just one more unit to go!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Unit 4A: OT women

9/23/07

Rahab & the

fall of Jericho

Wall-bashing

Trumpets

(or lanterns)

I Tim 1:

12-15

9/30/07

Ruth

Gleaning rice

(chopsticks)

Ruth & Naomi

coloring page

Isaiah

54:4-6

10/7/07

Deborah

ping-pong

ball war

palm tree

Gal. 3:

26-29

10/14/07

Hannah

eating until

provoked

"Samuel's"

shirt (gift for

Melissa)

Luke

18:1-7

10/21/07

Melissa's

farewell

(Acts 20)

capturing

Melissa

(London bridge)

farewell

card

--

10/28/07

Abigail

filling baskets

(throwing fruit)

sheep

shearing

I Pet. 2:

18-23

11/4/07

Elisha & the

widow's oil

confetti relay

oil jars

Jn. 6:

5-13

11/11/07

Elisha & the

Shunamite

woman

prophet in the

corner pocket

craft houses

Gal. 6:

9-10

11/18/07

Esther

(guest leader)

??

??

??

11/25/07

GC outdoor

service/picnic

--

--

--

12/2/07

Athaliah,

Jehoshebeath,

& Joash

hide & seek

with baby doll

crowns

II Chr.

24:1-2,

15-18

12/9/07

Proverbs 31

woman

loaded tray

relay

yarn pictures

Rom 3:

19-24


The sheep shearing for Abigail's craft was one of my all-time favorites. Took me ages to make enough hairy sheep.

That was the week we discovered that one of our boys could neither throw (he's since learned! Way to go!) or use scissors. I'm very careful now about crafts that require cutting. I try to keep it to short, straight cuts that are easy to help him with.

Obviously our curriculum can't be replicated 100% because future groups will not have a volunteer leader happening to end her term of service right when we needed to make "a shirt for Samuel." And the way the timing worked out so we could switch to NT at Christmas—two years in a row now—was dictated at least as much by outside factors (e.g. poor attendance) as careful planning. I'm hoping that after we get more believers who begin to invite their friends, we can start the curriculum over with those parents doing most of the work using the materials available, while I work on new stuff for a different population such as multiply handicapped kids rather than our physically active autistic boys. I don't know how the dates will work out a second time through! God, it's up to You!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Transition—Into the Promised Land

9/16/07

The first attempt

to enter

Running the

gauntlet

Marshmallow

giants

Deut.

8:2-5


 

For this story we sent the "12" spies into the land ("sneaking" past all the adults who were standing on stools to seem like giants, out to the balcony). They came back with a huge basket of fruit slung on a pole, which was a big surprise to the adults! We then had the complaining & the refusal to enter. Well, then we skipped the next 40 years, and had them entering the land for real the next Sunday. That started our next unit already, so this is all for this post!

Unit 3B—the Ten Commandments

Date

Bible story

Game

Craft

Bible study

6/17/07

No other gods:

II Chr. 34

"old Maid"

Fathers' Day

cards

Matt.

22:35-40

6/24/07

No idols:

Daniel 3

Balloon air guns

(unseen power)

Balloon

string balls

Dan. 6

7/1/07

Indoor picnic with

American visitors

   

7/8/07

Using God's name

rightly: Acts 8:4-24

Transporting

paralytics

"God loves

me" mirrors

Acts

19:13-17

7/15/07

Sabbath: Genesis 1

+ Luke 13:10-17

Six tasks, one

gift to open

Wrapping gifts

(used in game)

Matt.

11:28-30

7/22/07

Honoring Parents—

Prodigal Son

Musical hats—

tea ceremony

Prodigal son's

money bag

Eph.

6:1-4

7/29/07

Killing—

Joab and Abner

"Duck Duck

Gray Duck"

Congrats card

for new baby

Matt. 5:

21-22a, 43-45

8/5/07

Adultery—

David and Bathsheba

3-legged races

(2 become 1)

Wedding

paper dolls

Mal.

2:13-16

8/12/07

Stealing—

II Kings 5

"stealing" from

under pendulum

"what has been

stolen?"

(worksheet)

Luke 19:

1-10

8/19/07

Free talk/play

   

8/26/07

False Witness—

Naboth's vineyard

"Mother May I?"

(only if true)

Belts of truth

Matt.

5:33-37

9/2/07

Covetousness—

Ananias & Sapphira

Overloading

a container

"contented

cats"

I Tim.

6:6-10

9/9/07

10 Comm. Review

Arranging laws

in order

Graduation

hats

Is. 53:4-6;

I Pet. 2:24-25


 

I become more and more aware that my charts here are far from self-explanatory. I'd better save my paper copies, huh!

We had a lot of fun—as usual—with the ten commandments. Highlights were probably a couple of the games: For "Musical Hats," whoever got one hat was the child, & the other was the parent; the child then poured tea for the parent. We played several rounds & the final round had my pastor husband as the child, and an Indonesian hired maid as the parent. This was SO culturally bizarre, for a white professional to serve the maid—she was laughing so hard she could hardly keep from spilling her tea! For "Mother May I," at each turn a child would draw a card with some statement such as "Ka Hei is wearing a red shirt today" or "Wing Tung is 13 years old"—some were inherently true or false, some might be true or false on any given day, so had to be checked before the child could or could not "take a giant step."

Guess that's all for this time. I need to hurry up and get this blog up to date so I can start fresh & be current when we return to Macau a month from today…