God gave us work

Well, we needed everything I thought of for this week.  I sure wish I knew if the kids were getting anything out of it. 

We started by repeating the song about God creating each person, one verse per person.  Then moved to, though He created us and loves us, He didn’t just say, now go and enjoy yourselves!  He gave us work to do.  What kind of work?  I adapted a lesson from an adult Friendship Ministries book, about how God created apples, but He uses a lot of different people to keep creating more apples.  We had different kids come up in turn to—

--plant a seed in a carton of dirt

--“water” it with an empty watering can

                (and it grew into a tiny tree—a twig stuck into the carton)

--“water” it again

--“weed” it by digging around it with a fork

--“prune” it by cutting off the tips of a couple of the twiglets

--spray it for bugs with an empty spritzer

--cover it with an empty wastebasket in case of freezing

               (and it grew into a big tree—twig & carton exchanged for cardboard tree with toy fruit stuck on with blu-tak)

--pick the apples

--bring them to market by driving it across the room in the back of a toy pickup

--sell & buy the apples

--eat the apples!  (This one we all did together!)

So, we understand that God wants us all to work.  The very first job he gave the first person he created was to name all the animals.  For this, each kid took turns pairing up with a helper to imitate different animals for us to name.  I thought this was going to work better than it did; our helpers couldn’t think fast enough as to how to imitate them, so I probably butted in too much.  But I think it was still basically fun.

The basic job God gave people was to take care of the earth.  Now, if all the apples got thrown away & no one ever planted any more seeds, eventually we’d run out of apples, right?  Just like if we use cans & bottles & never recycle them, eventually we’d run out of metal & plastic.  That wouldn’t be taking good care of the earth!  So I hauled out a big bag of recyclables I’d been saving at home & the kids had to take the things out and divide them into different bags according to type.  Then we all trooped down to the recycle bins half a block down the street and put them in the correct bins.

When we got back, I said we should also take care of our own bodies by drinking water (I didn’t want to provide snacks since a potluck meal was coming up).  Of course, whether the kids “got it” or not, I felt I should bring reusable cups from home rather than using throwaway paper cups right after our lesson on recycling—ha!

I couldn’t believe how much time we still had left after all this.  I was glad I’d found this big poster displaying different occupations.  As the kids figured out what they were, they got to put a little sticker under each one.  I left this activity for the helpers to run entirely, since I wasn’t sure of all the Chinese occupational names myself!