Week Two of Creation Story

First thing I did was ask the group, “Do you remember what we learned last week?”  Dear helpful Lai Ting flashed me her biggest smile and chirped, “No!”  Sigh.

I reminded them that we had talked about how God created everything.  Showed them the Bible that teaches us about God, and had one of our helpers read the first sentence, 起初神創造天地.  Then we set out to try & learn this sentence.  We had just enough words for everyone to have one word (including helpers).  Lined them up and had each one learn to say their word, then worked on saying them in order, faster & faster.  Lai Ting was prompting everyone’s word before they said it.  So then I asked her to repeat the whole sentence by herself but she totally panicked and froze.  Sigh.

Next, I told a simplified creation story with everyone instructed to clap whenever I mentioned something that God created.  Of course holding my hands up ready to clap to give the hint.  Then we went through it again with instructions to stand up instead of clap.  Don’t know if they totally understood why they were clapping or standing, but hey, if it’s physical, they like it!

Then we moved from the physical to the visual, with a picture of a Garden-of-Eden scene.  One of our helpers read out things to find in the picture and we helped everyone find them.  Thirteen things in all.  This was just about the right level for them, I think; everybody found at least one without help; no one found them all. 

Well, one brand-new boy, a four-year-old with autism, didn’t find any by himself.  His mom and I both were happy the few times he actually looked at the picture when we were pointing at the right creature.  He & his mom left at the end of this activity; mom felt he’d sat still long enough.  She said they would see if he could go longer next time.  I hope they do come back.  He is a PINCHER, big time.  Uses his fingernails and draws blood.  He got a grip on our thirteen-year-old volunteer that had to hurt.  She pried him loose and then crouched down at his eye level to try and make friends with him.  I don’t think she succeeded real well, but I was so proud of her attitude and her patience.  Melissa Chu, I love you!

Next we asked each child which was their favorite thing that God created.  (Or at least, what was something they could remember.)  Then they were helped to repeat, “God, thank You for making…”

Next (everything was going SO FAST this week!) we showed a display with six little pictures of different things God created and rehearsed what they were.  We kept another display of the same pictures intact, but  with the main display we had one kid at a time come “sneak” over to one corner and take one picture off; then we took it back to the group and the “sneaker” got to hold the display board and have everybody try and guess what was missing.  One boy kept grabbing things off the board for a closer look, oh well.  Sure, it would have been ideal to have one display per kid and one helper per kid, but we just don’t have those kinds of resources.  I wish I had some magical—or trained or something—skills to keep them attentive and cooperative like the published curriculum seems to assume the kids will be, but I don’t.  And I still worry about people’s expectations that I will. :-(

Still lots of time left!  So for our next activity, we said, we can’t create things out of nothing like God did, but we can use what he has created to make pretty pictures.  Everyone got a picture of bare tree branches, and a couple of vegetable leaves, and were helped to put the leaves on the back of the paper and rub the front with a crayon to make the leaves show up.  Vegetable leaves were definitely better for this than flower leaves.  I had tried this at home with choi sam leaves and they worked GREAT.  But the only choi sam in the market when I went to buy leaves for this craft was older & too big for our pictures, so I bought some other veggie whose name I don’t know.  The guy thought it was fascinating that I was buying veggies for a craft and told me to go ahead and pick through his pile looking for the stuff with the best-sized leaves!  They weren’t quite as sturdy as the choi sam though so the pictures, didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I’d hoped.  Sigh.  Lots of sighing this week!

We reviewed the Bible verse again.  Still didn’t get any of them to say it all by themselves.  Then asked them to remember some other things that God created besides “heavens” and “earth”.  Each one who could got a cracker; fortunately they all came up with something!

This was all I had prepared & time wasn’t quite up.  And then the adult class went overtime!  But the kids didn’t really seem to mind milling around doing nothing for a little while.  We had a closing prayer and, while we were in the circle sang our “circle” song: “Brothers and sisters, all join hands…”  Then we went over & hinted to the Hong Kong volunteer leading the adult group (my husband was away at a meeting) that they needed to wind things up.  Kind of rude, but it’s something we really need to stick to in this borrowed facility where we can’t store enough stuff for the kids to do during any “free time”.

I sure wish I knew where to go for some kind of encouragement that this is actually going to make a difference. (Sigh!)