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!

Deborah

This story turned out a little too short, in spite of adding some "filler" at the beginning with introducing Moses, who dies, then Joshua, who dies, before explaining the role of the judges, of whom we'll meet just two in this unit.

We had Deborah sitting in front of a palm tree drawn on the blackboard. Lai Wun did a great job. She is non-verbal, yet when she was supposed to tell Barak to go destroy Sisera, she got all the tones exactly right!

While she and Barak were chasing Sisera, our Jael invited him into her tent, which was a sheet over a desk. He was very cooperative about going in there and lying down. Deborah and Barak were also cooperative about not noticing his feet sticking out!

The cooperation evaporated real quickly when Jael crept into the tent and started hammering on the end of the tent peg. I don't think she was actually pounding it on his head! But it took some coaxing to get him back under the sheet, so that Jael could get Barak to come look at him with the tent peg through his temple…

Last week a visitor had complained that our game was "dangerous" because we were having kids throw things. Funny she did not object to this week's game, which was screwing large plastic screws, relay fashion, into cardboard heads. (Actually less dangerous than pounding something through.) I had wondered if it was a little too gruesome, but the kids just had fun. It was good practice for them to learn to use a screwdriver; two kids went from clueless to getting the idea during the course of the game!

For craft time we made leaves for our palm tree, by sticking two pieces of tissue paper together around a stem, and then fringing the edges. Here is "Deborah under her palm tree."

We might have made too big a deal out of the palm tree. It was a great craft! But during the adult Bible study, one of the moms asked if Deborah got her power from the palm tree she sat under! Oops! Another mom helped clarify that the palm tree was special because Deborah sat under it, rather than the other way around. It is so great when they ask questions like this though. So much better that they ask them than just think them!!

The Fall of Jericho

Of course before we could conquer Jericho, we had to get across the Jordan, right? So we had everyone line up behind our two "priests" who were carrying the ark of the covenant between them. I used this ark I'd made a couple of years ago for a different story. It was somewhat the worse for wear after today's story; our priests couldn't quite hang onto the idea that they were supposed to stand still in the middle of the Jordan. So with all the forward and backward pushing and shoving, the sockets for the poles got ripped off the sides—oh well!

After everyone crossed over, but before the priests came up out of the riverbed (not yet, not yet), Joshua had 12 people go & each retrieve a large stone from the riverbed to build a memorial. When I was planning this story, I was trying to think, what can I use for stones? The small planter/aquarium stones I have are too small & hard to make a solid pile of. Legos didn't seem right either…aha! A perfect use for all those boxes of individually wrapped mooncakes we were recently given for the Chinese mid-Autumn festival!

Next it was time to conquer Jericho which, we reminded everyone, was the home of Rahab. She was sent up to the upper bunk with her "family" (half-a-dozen paper-towel rolls with faces) where she tied the red cord to the top of the ladder, and waited. In the meantime, we began our marching. When we did this three years ago, we had a smaller crowd. Today's was extra large & it was not working as well to get everyone out of the living room, out the balcony, in past Rahab's house on the edge of the city wall, & back out to the living room. So we didn't do the whole thirteen circumnavigations this time. Did two (sitting down and "sleeping" after each) & then said now we were at the seventh day…and the seventh trip around. Then when the people shouted and one of the priests "blew" a trumpet, our cued-in Rahab dropped a "wall" of legos off the top bunk with a satisfying crash! Our two spies then rescued her and her family, taking the paper towel rolls from her before helping her down the ladder. Rahab hammed it up very thoroughly, I love it! Only after she was safe did a bunch of kids run in with swords & then come back out and throw a bunch of tissue paper flames into the doorway. End of story.

The obvious game consisted of knocking down a small wall of wooden blocks (NOT mooncakes—you'd have to have a bowling ball to knock them over!) with a sponge "trumpet." Then we made our own little trumpets of toilet paper rolls, colored paper, & stickers for the valves.

Rahab and the two spies

Back up to eight kids this week. It was a shorter story than usual. Three years ago we'd done Rahab and the fall of Jericho together; this time I decided to split it into two stories so we could have a little more fun with the fall of Jericho (for next week). Which meant that I was desperate to embellish this one, ha!

We started by introducing Moses and reiterating how they'd followed him around the wilderness until all the older generation had died off—so we all marched around the room, pushing the adults down into chairs one by one. Finally Moses (last adult standing) died too. And Joshua was introduced as his successor.

Joshua tells everyone they are going to enter the land in three days. This time no one dares to say no! But he still sends a couple of spies in first to check out their first big obstacle, the city of Jericho. It was a big city, so they needed to spend the night there. This woman named Rahab invited them into her home, i.e. one of the side bedrooms. (Decided not to point out that she was a prostitute.) Some people got wind of this and went to tell the king of Jericho, who decided to send a couple of soldiers to capture them. So Rahab sent the two spies up the ladder to the top bunk. I wasn't sure how Sally would manage the ladder but she did fine! (Wish I'd gotten a picture.) Then Rahab did her best to cover them with a sheet. It definitely was a good thing the soldiers didn't inspect the "roof" too closely, ha! Rahab sends them off to keep searching, then she makes her deal with the spies to rescue her family. We almost missed giving her the red cord, but then they managed to give it to her before they climbed back down & left. End of story. A lot of parents missed the action since it was taking place in the side room & they didn't come look, sigh.

Since the soldiers had been looking for spies who were covered up, our game involved looking for candy that was covered up by one of three overturned teacups that were moved around the table. Most of our kids kept very careful track & found the candy without hesitation. The two Wong girls have a little more trouble concentrating, & the younger girl was starting to get upset because she hates to try anything she doesn't know how to do. And if she won't, neither will her sister. Mr. Lei, who was leading the game, got the brilliant idea of asking Lai Ting (the younger sister) to do the mixing up of the cups, which she could handle, so she was happy. Then some other kids wanted to do that to. That was a fun twist to the game.

Craft time was pretty simple. Each child had a drawing of a house with a flat roof. They first were given two stickers of men lying down (flannelgraph figures scanned in, shrunk, and printed on label sheets) to put on the roof. At first one of the girls didn't quite catch which side of the house was up (no one ever sees one-story houses here!) and stuck a spy on the wall. When her mistake was pointed out, someone else immediately suggested he was climbing up to the roof. He then made it to the top safely. :-) When everyone's spies were in place, glue was smeared over the whole roof, spies and all, and shredded-tissue "grass" (or "flax," whatever flax looks like—I have no idea) was stuck on to completely cover the spies. Not elegant, but possible for everyone; I don't think anyone needed parental help this time!

Spying out the Land

Extra low attendance this Sunday, due to a big Special Olympics event. Only four kids total—two mentally handicapped & two neurotypical. I don't know if this was good timing or not: We were being visited by a woman from Hong Kong who is planning on applying to the mission to be sent to take over at MLFF while we are in the US next year. So she didn't get the whole picture. Sigh.

Other than attendance, it was a good Sunday. We got our Israelites (kids) to the edge of the promised land, but could see that it was full of people (adults)! In fact, the people of the land were very tall (all the adults stood up on stools). So Moses sent a bunch of spies in to see just how good the land was. They all had to sneak quietly through the gauntlet of "giants" and head out to the balcony. While there, adults and children counted loudly to 40 (for the number of days they spied out the land) while the spies were collecting evidence of the land's fruitfulness. Then they brought it back carefully past the giants again.

Of course, in spite of this, everyone whined and complained again about how tall the people were, so they ended up being sentenced to wait another 40 years, for the next generation to enter.

For game time, we had a narrow aisle to pass through between two rows of stools, with two volunteers waving long cardboard tubes up and down for the kids to have to dodge. Our volunteers got a little too enthusiastic and one cardboard tube got destroyed! But no one was hurt and everyone had fun.

Our craft was making "giants" from marshmallows.

Playing Catch-up

Apparently things were a bit slow at Merciful Love while we were on vacation. Well, I hope it made things easier for the leaders.

The first week (August 22) they finished up the last commandment. For the story, they used Naaman the leper, with Elisha's servant Gehazi being covetous of the gifts Naaman had offered for his healing (which Elisha had refused).

The game was about the perils of coveting too much. A pan was prepared with a paper towel spread over it and fastened in place with a rubber band. This was placed on a stool in the middle of the group. Then a bag of small stones of various sizes was passed around the group. Each person would place one stone on the paper towel in turn. The object was to see whose "coveting" of "just one more…" would tear or otherwise dislodge/destroy the prepared pan. Even the cheap paper towels we used are amazingly strong—this game works better if you dampen the paper slightly before beginning the game.

The opposite of covetousness is contentment, so the craft was cutting & pasting these "contented cats."

The next week was the review of the ten commandments. The instructions were for each family to receive one or two slips of paper listing one of the commandments and the story that had gone along with it. I really wanted the parents to try to lead their kids to act their stories out. Even if they didn't remember the story, to at least act something out that would give a clue to the commandment for others to guess which one was being portrayed. But the volunteer helper who came that week, an even bigger ham than myself, ended up capitulating and acting everything out for the others to guess. I do hope she involved some of the kids (I didn't want to ask, in case it came out too grumpy/controlling), since it would be the adults in general who would be doing the guessing.

For the game, the kids were to divide into two teams, each with the commandments written out on ten slips of paper. With our big poster board example displayed in the front, they were supposed to place them in the correct order on smaller "stone tablets," relay fashion, racing to see which team was fastest and/or most accurate.

I don't know how it went speedwise, but I did notice that neither group got them all in the right order!

Since they were now done learning the ten commandments, the kids made paper graduation hats for craft time.

Whining and complaining

Yes, I know, this story belongs a lot earlier in the Exodus account. I doubt any of our people noticed though. :-) We had talked about manna when we talked about honoring the Sabbath. This time we talked about water and quail, with emphasis on the people's whining and complaining, not trusting that God would provide.

Included were:

The bitter water at Mara, with Moses throwing a tree branch (broken off of Zaccheus' sycamore, I love it when I can recycle props) into the crumpled-blue-tissue-paper water supply.

The water that came out of a rock (came out from behind the folded table that the rock was taped onto) when Moses struck it.

The flock of paper quails that came "flying" down among the Israelites when they were complaining about not having meat to eat.

We did craft ahead of game time this week. The craft was making slingshots such as perhaps the Israelites could have used to bring down the quail. Tied two craft sticks together in an x-shape, with the top part of the x being much larger, then strung a twisted rubber band across the top. Then of course we shot down (or tried to shoot down!) some stand-up quail targets using the slingshots, with small squares of cardboard, the same size/shape as our "manna wafers" but that could be folded slightly around the rubber band for gripping & shooting.

I was standing behind the targets and got hit a lot more often than the quail. I guess they wanted to eat "hippo meat" more than they wanted quail, ha!