Jesus Calms the Storm

It's not really atypical for the Sunday following a week of school holiday. The kids are out of the habit of sitting still and behaving, so things are more undisciplined than usual. Then we had a new story leader who did an excellent job of leading, except for her soft, sweet voice which I was afraid nobody was paying any attention to. For the story of Jesus calming the storm, we first had everyone, adults and children alike, follow "Jesus" around the room, until he needed to get away with His disciples for some peace and quiet.

To get into the boat, everyone (all the kids) had to walk down the "dock," which was four stools in a row with a board on top. Then they were supposed to step into the boat one by one and act like the boat was rocking, but they didn't quite get it. They did, however, very much "get" the idea of rocking violently with the worsening storm. Two of our "normal" girls were standing up & jumping up and down—not part of the script. Jesus (Ka Hei) did a very good job of sleeping, though!! And he calmed the storm just fine, but it took a little more work to get the girls calmed. Sigh.

I was frustrated with what I perceived as a lack of attention/involvement on the part of the adults. I wondered if anyone had been following the story! So, even though I hadn't been the leader, I shoved my oar in at the end and asked for the people to give me a review of what went on. The normal girls all answered, and answered well. So I should chill out, huh. I'd feel happier if the parents had done more of the responding. After all, they are the ones we are most trying to reach.

For a game I had made a bunch of small origami boats and had the kids sink them with squirt guns as they were floating in a basin of water. Hard to convince them that the guns would work better if you kept them shooting at some kind of angle rather than straight down perpendicular to the boat; they "ran out" of water way too quickly that way. But I think they had fun with it anyway.

We made the same type of boats (called "sampans" on the website I found the instructions on; I didn't like the more generic boat patterns with the big pyramid in the middle). Originally I thought we might do craft time first and then sink our own boats. But I discovered during preparation time that a) the smaller boats were a lot harder to unfold without tearing, but at the same time b) boats made out of larger origami paper squares were almost impossible to sink!

Mrs. Lei & I were in with the kids during free play & she encouraged me to do the "Appreciation Game" with the three verbal girls. They seemed to really enjoy it, though, again, they were much more interested in doing the talking part than the listening part.

I do hope this Sunday goes a little more smoothly. I'm about due for a little encouragement, I think.