Joseph is carried away to Egypt

Didn’t take any pictures last Sunday.  Just too busy “doing” to step back with the camera.  First we reviewed that Joseph was Jacob’s favorite kid.  Showed a picture of Joseph, wearing an origami shirt and labeled, “Jacob loved Joseph…he was Rachael’s son.”  Then asked, who is Mary’s favorite kid?  Before anyone had a chance to guess, the mom who was helping out that day said, “every single one” which was the right answer.  I reeled off my (prepared ahead of time, I admit) reasons each one was special, and then we sang our “God created so-and-so and did a great job” song, with one verse per kid.  Then they made little origami shirts like Joseph’s, stuck them onto a paper-doll type background, added their own photo faces, and stuck on labels that said “We love so-and-so…he/she is such-and-such”  (note I deliberately left out the word “because”) This was one of those crafts everyone chose to take home, so the only picture I have is Joseph’s.

                Then we began our story.  Chose the only boy as Joseph, and had him wear the “coat” we’d made two weeks ago.  His brothers (all the other kids) were at the front of the room watching the sheep (flock picture on the whiteboard), while Joseph waited at the back.  The brothers said, hey, here comes our little brat of a brother.  Nobody is around to see us, let’s kill him!  We asked, was that a good idea?  One brother yelled out NO!  And of course that was what happened in the Bible too.  So instead of killing Joseph when he came to the front of the room, they ripped his fancy coat off and threw him in a pit, which in our case was the kneehole under the teacher’s desk.  He did NOT like being under there, though.  So we ended up putting him in one of the chairs (all our chairs have desktops attached, so I say “in”) against the wall, and surrounding him with other chairs so he was “trapped.”  Then all the brothers sat down to eat their snacks.  They had pity on Joseph and let him have a snack too, but didn’t let him out of the pit.  That is, until the slave traders (the two teenage helpers) came along and the brothers decided to make some money off Joseph.  The traders gave each brother a couple of coins & then took Joseph away with them.  The brothers then squirted ketchup on the torn-up coat, and brought it to show “Jacob”  (a father who happened to be there as a chance to see his daughter—parents are separated) who obligingly pretended to cry over his presumably dead son.

                Next took a break from the action to talk about how the brothers thought they’d be happy if they got rid of their brother, but they weren’t.  First they had to see their dad cry, and then they had to spend the rest of their lives worrying about whether he would find out what they did!  So our verse from the last lesson, pursue what makes for peace, shows its merit again.

                Meanwhile what has happened to Joseph?  He becomes a slave to Potiphar, and he decides that he will pursue what makes for peace.  For example, if Potiphar tells him to sweep the floor, is it better for him to sweep, or to say he’d rather eat something first?  Sweep, of course.  So Joseph swept.  How about if Potiphar gives him money to go buy fruit?  Should he go buy the fruit & bring it back, or should he take the money and use it to run away back home to his father?  Everyone agreed he should buy the fruit.  So he did.  And Potiphar trusted him, and so even though he was a slave, he was a lot happier than if he’d tried to get his own way.

                So then we wound up by playing a game about being faithful slaves.  Kids were paired up & the “master” had to tell the “slave” to do things like: spread peanut butter on a cracker and feed it to the master, comb the master’s hair, carry the train of the master’s long robe as he walked down the hall and back…silly things, but fun.

               

A very special Sunday

We didn't have our usual program this past Sunday.  Instead went to the beach for our first-ever baptismal ceremony!  Congratulations, Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Chu!


 

Jacob's Favorite Son

     We started today’s lesson by doing the craft we hadn’t had time for last week.  If Jacob had twelve sons, and he couldn’t just go to a furniture store and buy a new bed, he must have had to make a lot of beds!  So we followed suit and made these cute cradles out of empty Pringles cans.  I 

ate a lot of potato chips in preparation for this one! :-)

                

                Next, we did a little exercise in which the kids had to find the right son on the whiteboard and match it with the right mother as we read out the birth order story.  Not that we are trying to get them to remember all those names, but it’s good reading practice.  Okay, so we said last week that Jacob loved Rachel best, so then which was his favorite son?  Her oldest boy Joseph.  Even though he made beds for all his sons, only for Joseph did he make a fancy coat, so together we made just one fancy coat.  Originally I was going to just lay out the paper “tunic” on a large table that they could all stand around while attach the strips of double-sided-tape-backed wrapping paper to front and back.  But then I realized it would be more fun to have one of our volunteers wear it while the strips were being stuck on.  Then when it was done, everyone got to put it on and get their picture taken.

                We tried to talk a little about jealousy between brothers & sisters, and some of the kids did express that they knew how it felt.  We said that Joseph had made things a little worse by boasting, but that we were going to try doing a little of that ourselves. Each one in turn had to come stand on a low stool in the front of the room. I had also brought a portable microphone in hopes that hearing their voices echo would motivate them to speak up.  They all seemed to like getting up on the stool, but the mike was something of a fizzle.  The grunter still grunted, the echolalic was still echolalic, and the girl who has to be coaxed to speak at the best of times was flummoxed by the mike—kept trying to stick it in her ear instead of up to her mouth (mikes help you hear better, right?) :-)  Part two of this exercise was to do what is better, and instead of saying good things about yourself, each person was supposed to say something good about the person on the stool.  “He drools,” volunteered one girl promptly.  Psst…you’re supposed to say something GOOD.  “Oh—well, he has a fat stomach!”  Sigh.

                After all this hard work, we needed to do something a little more physical.  So we introduced our Bible phrase for the week, 追求和睦的事 or  “pursue those things which make for peace.”  One of those things being cooperation, and our game involved some cooperation, as well as concentration and dexterity skills.  The six words of the phrase, with magnetic strips on the back, were stuck to a cookie sheet, with the edges sticking out so they could be grasped with a clothespin.  The kids lined up & the person at the end of the line would take a word and it had to be passed to the front of the line from clothespin to clothespin, with the front kid sticking it on the whiteboard and then running back to the end of the line.   Yes, we had quite a few fumbles, but it was fun to watch at least some of them gradually get the hang of when to pinch and when to let go.  Our final “thing which made for peace” was to tidy up the room and line up the desks (and being rewarded with a snack) before going over to gather with the adults for announcements.

Introducing Jacob's Family

Most of today’s activities were only very marginally related to our Bible story, but some good things happened, so I guess that’s okay!  We only had three kids (big Special Olympics event going on).  First thing we did was give everyone three name labels.  They were instructed to write their names on two of them.  For the third one, they had to think of the name of a friend or relative that they loved better than anyone else in the world.  Also had to tell us why they loved that person.  Then we stuck those names on hearts with “love” ( 愛)in the middle to read (for example) Mary loves Bruce.  Then we showed a large heart saying Jacob loves…reminded everyone that in our story last week, Isaac had two sons, one named Jacob, and today we were going to find out who it was that Jacob loved.  He loved…Rachel.  But her dad wouldn’t let her marry until her big sister married too.  So Jacob ended up having to marry them both (Wedding march around the room)—in fact, he ended up with four wives!  But he still loved Rachel best of all.

                But her dad made him work for 14 years to get to marry her!  He must have really loved her a lot.  We probably don’t love candy (candy hearts, no less!) enough to work 14 years to get one package.  But are we willing to do 14 different things?  For this we used the “Do” cards from “The Appreciation Game,” which are obligingly bilingual.  Our helpers read them off and everyone had to do each one.  Or carefully selected ones; it was very perceptive of Melissa NOT to go with “Pluck out a strand of your own hair,” when Sally has just recently broken this bad habit!  One of the 14 tasks was to jump like a frog.  Everyone tried, and we gave them all credit, but none of them did it as well as our talented helper Melissa.

                Another one was making ugly faces.  I thought they mostly ended up cute rather than ugly, but they tried, right?

 

                There was also one where you had to look into someone’s eyes for a count of five.  Sounds too simple to be in a game like this for ordinary folks, but for Sally, who is notoriously bad at making eye contact, this was a real challenge.  And she made it!  Took a few tries, and when she finally did it, it was with her eyes nearly squinted shut, but facing the right direction anyway!  Thrilled!

                Everyone won their candy.  While they were eating, we talked about how Jacob was willing to work 14 years because he loved Rachel, and we were willing to do 14 different things because we loved candy.  But that Jesus was willing to do a lot more than that—He was willing to die because He loved us so much!  We asked each one if they know Jesus loved them.  They all said yes, and they all said they loved Jesus too.  So I asked them to just pray one sentence each out loud: Thank you, Jesus, for loving me.  And they all did, even Wing Yan who never talks if she can get away with gesturing.  Thrilled again!  So then we took the last labels, with their names on them, and stuck them onto hearts to make them read Jesus loves…(name)

                Okay, so back to our story.  Jacob loved Rachel best, but he did have four wives.  With four wives, you could end up with a lot of kids.  Jacob had twelve sons!  They were all tacked up around the room at a height that required the kids to stand on a stool to reach them.  Our helpers read out the names and one kid at a time had to look for that son, climb on the stool to get it down, and stick it on the board in the order of the numbers on the back.  Everyone really enjoyed this, except for Sally had way too much trouble getting up on a stool, so she had other kids get them down for her & then she went & stuck them on the board.  This took longer than I’d estimated, so we didn’t have to do our last activity—now I’m slightly ahead for next week, hooray!