Jesus’ boyhood

In spite of the nice break the picnic gave me, I'm still feeling stressed out. The core group accepted yet another request that would make my life a little easier: for the next month or two, I will lead the stories, games, & crafts myself. I will still write them in Chinese "for posterity," but if I don't get them done until Friday or Saturday, it won't matter because I won't have to meet with any of them to go over the material ahead of time. Once I find a way to get at least a week ahead, this won't be an issue. I do love our core group folks!!

This week's story had two parts. The first was Mary & Joseph bringing Jesus to the temple as a baby, & His being recognized by Simeon and Anna as God's promised Savior. Our one stubborn-unbeliever mom got into the part of being the elderly Anna, leaning on her cane as she wobbled up to see the baby. '

Part two was Jesus visiting, and staying behind at, the temple at age 12. I asked one of our neurotypical girls, an 8-year-old, to play the part of Jesus. Took her aside before the morning program started to explain how, when the "crowd" went out through the bedroom & balcony to reappear in the living room, that she should stop in the bedroom & then turn back. She seemed quite proud to be chosen for this "secret mission"—but then forgot it when the time came and I had to yell after her several times to get her to come back & not go into the living room with everyone else! Oh well.

For our game, instead of the parents looking for their lost son, the parents went to hide one at a time to be searched for by their kids. Good fun. I finally remembered what "craft" we'd done for this story three years ago, & did it again. A maze for the kids to trace the path to help the parents find the boy Jesus.

I was watching the kids during the adult Bible study. Bruce told me that as part of the discussion he said that good parenting practice may have included Mary & Joseph discussing this incident with their son and praying with Him about how to deal with His role while still a boy. Our new believer asked, "Oh, could they pray already back then too?" I LOVE these kinds of questions!! So real, so innocent (and so easy to answer)!

Interestingly, before I heard about the Bible study, I had had a talk with one of our Christian moms about an ongoing conflict she's been having with her neurotypical daughter over the girl's tendency to dawdle over her homework. I urged her to consider praying with the girl for a solution to the problem. Even before God provides the solution, it would be a chance for the two of them to put themselves on the same side in the war-with-dawdling, rather than being only antagonists. So that dovetailed rather nicely with the Bible study application! Perhaps I can find out this week if they tried it & how it went.

A church picnic in December

The other core group folks didn't necessarily think having a church picnic at the end of December was the most brilliant idea. But they agreed to go with it to give me a badly-needed break after the Christmas rush. And oh, what a nice break it was!

The weather turned out very nice—in the 60's & overcast. We met in a local park. Sang several of our songs, and then Kevin led us in some new & fun games about "shaking off the old year" (several balloons & toilet paper rolls scotch-taped all over each child who then had to wiggle around to get them to come off), and "not letting it stick to you" (each child having to lead his/her blindfolded parent through a "minefield" of sticky-taped paper squares).

"Craft time" was making your own sandwiches, choosing from butter, peanut butter, two kinds of jelly, cheese, and tuna salad. Except that I was in charge of bringing the sandwich fillings and I managed to forget both the cheese and the peanut butter! But nobody got bent out of shape about it, and with all the other snacks people had brought, everyone got enough to eat. We so appreciate how our folks just make do with whatever. So easy to hang out with!

We did learn not to fill up a whole slew of paper cups with water for people to take. Best to fill them as people want to drink them. It may be more fussy, but we had at least one boy who was caught sampling every cup. He had a cold, of course.

I feel refreshed and ready to start the life of Christ with the New Year!

Christmas

Last Christmas we'd acted out the nativity story; the year before we'd done the three wise men. The first year, we'd used flannelgraph, but I've been trying to get away from that more to keep the kids moving. But I didn't want to act out the story just like last year. So I took the flannel figures & Xeroxed them onto stiff cardboard.

Oh, but talking about keeping kids moving—ha! To help make the connection between the Genesis stories we've been learning and the birth of Christ, we went extremely quickly through the genealogy in Matthew 1—Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob begat Judah, etc. etc. With each new name the next person in the circle had to stand up & the previous sit down. It got everybody a bit giggly, but that was okay!

So, with the cutout figures, we had various kids hold them as we talked about their roles. When Mary & Joseph had to take the long trip to Bethlehem, they were passed around the circle twice. Then their "holders" knocked on all the doors leading out of the room, with no one letting them in to spend the night. Finally, they found the stable—a wicker cat carrier! It really looked authentic, I thought!

For our game we did use the flannelgraph, covered with a sheet of clear plastic. Kids and adults were blindfolded in turn and given a paper baby figure to try and stick in/on the manger. Lots of floating babies, lots of fun.

Craft time was making Christmas cards for whoever they might like to make them for. We used some of the extra material to make cards for a couple of our regulars who weren't able to make it.

Afterwards we had a potluck. Always popular! There were also gifts for the kids. Something really neat was that one mom who has always been very timid, very passive, and has been accused by some of only coming for what freebies she might get, brought gifts for all the kids too!

Her son had been making some progress in behavior, but the last few weeks has developed the unpleasant habit of playing with his saliva. This week he had a cold and was also wiping his nose on any available surface—ugh. We're not talking little kid, or even clueless kid here. He does know better. I don't like it when other parents rag at him for losing his temper, which I can understand he can't control (and only gets aggravated by being yelled at), but I agreed with him being scolded for wiping his nose on the arm of the chair!

The Family Reunited

I know I'm supposed to be writing these stories so they're reproducible in the future. But I got carried away and wrote in stuff that requires our particular facility as well as some of our particular attendees!

The story starts early in the famine years predicted in Pharaoh's dream. Joseph has been in Egypt a long time & always speaks Egyptian now, not Hebrew. So Bruce played Joseph in our story because of his ability to speak a "foreign language"—English. First we had a couple of Egyptians come to him to buy grain, doing the bent-elbow "Egyptian walk." Then it was time for Jacob back in Canaan to send ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain. They exited out the door to the balcony & came back into the living room (where we hold our main meeting) via one of the side bedrooms. When they had to go back to Canaan, they reversed this route. They had to go back and forth three times, so we got our exercise!

During the whole first visit, Joseph, not wanting to be recognized by his brothers, spoke English & I, as his servant, translated. And translated back to him when the brothers spoke.

Joseph was supposed to grab one of the brothers and say that he was going to have to stay behind in prison. He grabbed the nearest person, who happened to be the mother of two girls. The younger girl started to cry when they had to leave their mom behind all tied up & go back to Canaan! Poor kid. She didn't want to participate in the rest of the story, but finally we convinced her that she needed to go back to "Egypt" to rescue her mom. :-)

We had been using small ziplock bags filled with rice to hand out when people were buying grain. Joseph's small china cup (the only silver one we had was way too big) was put into Benjamin's bag. We used this combo for our game. Divided into two teams; each team had one full bag of rice & one small china cup. Relay style, each child had to scoop out some rice with the cup & then run up to the front of the room & pour the contents into a tall glass. The winning team was not only the faster team, but had a fuller glass; they didn't spill as much. Clear winner!

The story went extra long with all the traveling the brothers had to do. By contrast, the craft was very quick and easy. We cut out preprinted (by hand) templates on sandpaper and made pyramids!

Joseph, part two

Our Joseph from last week didn't come back this Sunday. But we still had ten kids! The story was long—first the scene with Potiphar's wife, then in prison with the baker and cupbearer, then interpreting Pharaoh's dreams. The leader chose the most impatient & hyperactive kid in the bunch to play Joseph. We had to chase him down quite a few times (hey, where's Joseph, he's supposed to be interpreting this dream…). He drives me a bit batty, but he is never, ever either mean or destructive. So I remind myself of this significant virtue and grab his little face and kiss it instead of grabbing his little neck and wringing it. Smile. I probably drive him nuts too (why is she always bugging me when I want to go and get another drink of water…)

I just happen two have two identical warm-up jackets, one gray and one red. They were perfect for our game. The red one represented happy times & the grey one depressing times. Joseph flipped back and forth quite a bit between these two circumstances in our story. So for the game, each pair (mainly mother & child) started by each wearing one of the jackets, and then exchanging them. The catch was, only one arm out of the four could be exposed at any one time. Try it!

Craft time was matching shapes of "skinny cow" and "withered grain" stickers (not really stickers; they had to use glue sticks) & "swallowing up" the correspondingly shaped fat cows & plump ears on their worksheets. Not real difficult, but everyone liked it.

 

Joseph and his brothers

I can't remember anything real unique about the way we did this first story about Joseph. I've been too busy writing the next one!

What stands out most in my mind right now is that we had a "new" boy; a returnee who had come twice before, months ago. He is quite a bit smarter than the other kids. He cooperates quite well during the main program time. We assigned him to be Joseph because he was the one boy we could count on to be willing to stay in the "pit" (a large storage bin) until the Midianite traders came by to buy him. (He did NOT like having his hands tied and being led off by said traders, however!)

But during the free play time, he was harder to cope with. We now have two computers for the kids to use during free play, which may or may not be a good idea, but so be it. Anyway, one reason we have two is that Ka Hei has staked out one as "his" and he gets upset if he can't use it. The new guy didn't want to use the new one, he wanted to fight with Ka Hei over the use of the old one. Then when he got persuaded away from that he worked hard to see who else he could pick a fight with. Not violent, thankfully, just likes to get a rise out of people. I need to "pray up" so he doesn't get a rise out of me!

For our game we "boasted" like Joseph. People didn't get super serious about what they said they or their kids were good at (one kid was good at eating, for example), but it was better than the stammers we got when we first tried this. People aren't used to praising their kids!

Craft time was drawing on T-shirts with oil pastel crayons. I checked first—they didn't wash out of a sample I tried at home, though it would certainly fade with time. But it was still better than using the fabric paint we tried three years ago. The kids didn't get the idea of only squeezing hard enough to get a thin stream for writing or drawing. We had a lot of shirts with blobs on them! This time we had some pretty ones! I'll post pictures later…

All those babies!

I'm afraid I didn't do the best possible job of writing the story for last Sunday. I thought it was so simple that whoever led it would yawn all the way through it. Wrong. Jacob goes to Paddan-Aram, and sees Rachel at the well. I had "embellished" the story to point out that Abraham's servant had asked God to let whoever gave him and his camels a drink be the chosen wife for Isaac. But that Jacob didn't require such a high standard—when he saw how beautiful Rachel was, he ran and gave her and her sheep a drink! It came out all garbled, though; the reader said emphasized that Jacob hadn't stopped and prayed like Abraham's servant. Implying that if he had, he wouldn't have made such a foolish choice. Not sure I agree with that!

We did have some fun with getting Jacob married off. First there was the agreement with Laban to work seven years for Rachel. We wrote up a "contract" for Laban and Jacob to sign. Then Rachel insisted that she wanted to sign too. Sure, why not—women's lib lives! (smile) After "seven years," though, we had Laban shush everyone while he put this veil on not Rachel but Leah, and married her off to Jacob.

Finally he did get to marry Rachel as well (I meant to write in that wedding, oops—I thought it would be fun to have Jacob peek under the veil and see if it was really her). Then they started having all those babies. The reader just had to say the names, and introduce the various "surrogate mothers" as they got roped in. I had all the "babies" already prepared (paper towel rolls with faces and name labels) & handed them to the proper mothers to hang onto until the final count. So why was it so hard? I guess the reader just had a hard time keeping track of where she was with all these gobbled-gooky names (which don't sound at all like proper Chinese names). Sigh.

For game time we had the "Leah" team and the "other" team line up and, in relay fashion, run up and take one of "their" children out of the basket at the front of the room. The idea was supposed to be to see which team finished the fastest & then double-check if they had all their babies right (the teams were each given a list of names). I forgot about the little problem that if one team chose a wrong baby or two, then the faster/smarter team still couldn't "win". I suppose ideally I should have had two separate sets for them to have to sort through, but I didn't have enough extra towel rolls!!

At least the craft was popular. We made our own little "babies" out of pipe cleaners and some wooden beads that I was able to buy in Hong Kong while we were on vacation (good timing)! Though I think these could also be done nicely using colored drinking straws, cut up, instead of the hard-to-find beads.

We've lost a couple of our former attenders for various reasons, and have added another neurotypical 7-year-old whose mother wanted to come & volunteer with us. So it is getting a little harder to plan the games so that they are fair for the autistic kids yet not too blah for the "smart" kids. It would be great if we could do something special with the three neurotypical girls during the free time, but the logistics need some more prayer first. They like the free play time, of course. Plus we haven't got an excess of volunteers. Nor do I feel ready to take on preparing a parallel curriculum, however abbreviated. Like I said, needs more prayer.