Joseph and his brothers

I can't remember anything real unique about the way we did this first story about Joseph. I've been too busy writing the next one!

What stands out most in my mind right now is that we had a "new" boy; a returnee who had come twice before, months ago. He is quite a bit smarter than the other kids. He cooperates quite well during the main program time. We assigned him to be Joseph because he was the one boy we could count on to be willing to stay in the "pit" (a large storage bin) until the Midianite traders came by to buy him. (He did NOT like having his hands tied and being led off by said traders, however!)

But during the free play time, he was harder to cope with. We now have two computers for the kids to use during free play, which may or may not be a good idea, but so be it. Anyway, one reason we have two is that Ka Hei has staked out one as "his" and he gets upset if he can't use it. The new guy didn't want to use the new one, he wanted to fight with Ka Hei over the use of the old one. Then when he got persuaded away from that he worked hard to see who else he could pick a fight with. Not violent, thankfully, just likes to get a rise out of people. I need to "pray up" so he doesn't get a rise out of me!

For our game we "boasted" like Joseph. People didn't get super serious about what they said they or their kids were good at (one kid was good at eating, for example), but it was better than the stammers we got when we first tried this. People aren't used to praising their kids!

Craft time was drawing on T-shirts with oil pastel crayons. I checked first—they didn't wash out of a sample I tried at home, though it would certainly fade with time. But it was still better than using the fabric paint we tried three years ago. The kids didn't get the idea of only squeezing hard enough to get a thin stream for writing or drawing. We had a lot of shirts with blobs on them! This time we had some pretty ones! I'll post pictures later…