Gideon

Didn't manage to take any photos this week. Too busy refereeing! We had a very hyper Gideon who probably could have tackled the Midianites single-handed. When the Biblical Gideon is confronted by an angel who greets him with "the Lord is with you," he responds, "If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?" Our Gideon had a more "human" response to the shock of being greeted by an angel: "I have to go to the bathroom!"

We cut out a lot of the story to make it reasonable length; our Gideon (after his bathroom break) asked this angel right away about getting a sign with the fleece. Then while he "slept," the angel wet down a towel on the floor with a watering can. Then in round two, sprinkled the floor but not the towel.

Once this was settled, Gideon was all ready to set off with his huge army, but of course God had to pare it down first. We volunteered all the adults to be the ones afraid to go to battle, so that all the kids could be left to act out the water-drinking test. We just put a sheet of blue paper on the floor and had them either kneel & put their faces down to it, or just pretend to scoop some up & drink out of their hands. They were all very cooperative; it was great. But the power of suggestion was just too much for Gideon. He had to go get himself a real drink of water before his little army of three (each representing 100) could march off to battle.

Got to recycle again—we used the trumpets from the fall of Jericho craft time. Then had "jars" made of yet more toilet paper rolls (I've been saving them for months) covered with wrapping paper and stuffed with tissue-paper "torches." Of course these wouldn't break with enough noise to frighten the Midianites! So when they were supposed to smash them we had someone stir around the bucket of Legos. Plenty noisy enough! The Midianites (i.e. everyone but Gideon & his three companions) fled out the balcony door. We ended there, with a rousing rendition of, "Isn't He wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."

For game time, we had everyone, adults & children, stand up & then started through a list of things meant to winnow people out. Things like: stand on one foot (right vs. left), you're your birthday (odd vs. even dates), check feet (socks vs. no socks, etc.) Unlike Gideon, we always rejected the minority rather than the majority, so we could play longer!

Since all those jars got broken in the Bible story, our craft was "mending broken jars": taping cut-up paper cups back together. The kids (and parents) had a harder time than I'd anticipated. I had cut each cup into five pieces. If we use this craft again, we should cut them into just two or three pieces. Just holding them steady and getting the tape on was enough of a challenge for the kids; they didn't really need the extra challenge of figuring out how to fit so many pieces together. So I could have taken pictures of the "mended" cups but they were just too ugly!