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!

 

Week Three, God created People

This past Sunday we focused on how God created us, and loves us.  But first, we reviewed our memory verse (In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth) & each one who could say it after review got their butterfly stamp.  Next, we took out the creation pictures we’d used last week and everyone had to find one thing in the picture that God created.  For each one, we sang our “God created…so we thank Him” song.

                Then we passed out worksheets with five sets of four pictures, one in each set being something that God did not create: e.g. rabbit, fish, tree, car.  Most of the kids had to think at least a little.  I thought it was interesting that everyone knew that God made a tree, but several were ready to choose that God did not make an apple.  (The fact that there was a television in that set of pictures didn’t give them pause.)  Okay, so if God didn’t create those things, who did?  People.  And who created people?  God.  (I need to clue in the helpers not to volunteer the answers to the questions!)

                We explained that the Bible says God created people “in His own image.”  Does that mean everyone looks exactly alike?  Not hardly!  Here we broke up into pairs, each pair with one adult helper.  They were supposed to look together at what they had in common (two eyes, one nose, etc.) vs. what were differences (shape of ears, fingers, height, weight—hair and eye color didn’t work for our group, ha!)  Then each helper introduced one special thing about their kids.  As each was shared, we put their names in the “God created” song—“God created…and God loves him/her.”

                We repeated the concept that being created in God’s image didn’t mean we all look alike.  But that one thing it means is that we can create things, too!  Everybody got a small ball of playdough and were told they could make “anything they wanted.”  I knew this was a stretch for our kids, creative imagination not being their strong point in general.  But they responded well to suggestions and/or lots of help.  When they were done, we had one helper take them all out into the hallway for a minute while the rest of us distributed their creations around on various chairs.  Then they came back in and had to find their own creation.  We talked about how they didn’t want to end up with anyone else’s; each wanted the one that he/she had made because it was special to them.  Which is how God feels about us—because He made us, we are special to Him and he wouldn’t trade us for anything!

                The application for this was that because we are special to Him, we can talk to Him about anything.  We asked each kid whether they were happy or sad.  They all said happy and all gave reasons.  (Except the one boy who had fallen fast asleep while I was talking to the first two kids in the row, ha!  Aren’t I the exciting teacher!)  Then we offered a brief prayer with/for each child, thanking God for the thing that made them happy.

                We ended up the morning with something I was so excited to be able to pass out to every kid (except two newcomers, who were promised theirs for next week if they come back): I’d discovered this wonderful website, coloringpagecreator.com, where you can upload your photos and presto, they become coloring pages!  So everyone got a picture of themselves to color!  (The two new kids got generic creation coloring pages, but I have their pictures printed out and ready for this Sunday!)

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!)

A New Home and a New Creation

Of course, starting a brand-new Sunday-school format, what better place to start than at the very beginning—with God creating all things?

I thought preparation was going to be easy, mainly translation, as I’d purchased a tested & well-received curriculum from the US.  But I don’t know what my problem is; I’m notorious for not doing very well with teaching lessons right out of someone else’s book.  Means a lot more work for me but at least then I feel comfortable teaching it.

So: what did we do? First, even though we all knew each other, we had everyone write his/her name on a sheet of origami paper (so they could choose their own color & design) and spent some time giving each one a chance to sort through the pile of names and deliver them to the correct person.  During the last person’s turn, we slipped in an extra name tag that said “God”.  Who do you give this name tag to?  We can’t see God!  But we know He is real because we can see the things that He has made, so today we will look at how He created the whole world and everything in it.

Right away we found a benefit of the move to our new location.  The bathrooms have no windows!  So when we explained how dark everything was when God first created the world, we took everyone together into one bathroom and closed the door.  It was DARK!  But when God said “Let there be light,” which we all repeated, there was light—i.e., I turned on a flashlight.  We were all thankful that God created light so we could see things!

Okay, now that we can see, what did God’s world look like.  It was all water!  We had a plastic tub full of water & dropped a little plastic doll into it, to show that this wasn’t yet ideal for breathing.  So God on the second day separated the waters on the earth and the waters of the sky: we all took turns ladling water out of the first tub into a second tub which we placed on top of the first one.  That was the second day.  On the third day, God separated the water and the dry land on the earth:  everyone helped pour the rest of the water from tub #1 into different bowls marked ocean, river, and lake.  Then we put a florist’s brick (or whatever you call those green things you can stick stems into when arranging flowers) in the bottom of the tub.  On that day God also caused green plants to spring up from the earth.  So everyone got a tree or a flower on a toothpick to plant on the earth.

On the fourth day, God took the light He had created and organized it into a sun for the daytime, and a moon and stars for the nighttime: first we stuck light blue paper onto one side of the sky tub, and black paper onto the other side, then added sun, moon and star stickers.

On the fifth day, God made creatures to go in the earth’s water—cutout plastic fish—and in the sky’s “water”—bird stickers.

On the sixth day, He made all kinds of animals, also on toothpicks that we all got to stick into the earth, along with the final creatures, a man and a woman.

 

On the seventh day, God rested.  What do you like to do when you’re relaxing?  Besides sleep, which is what everyone answered.  Eat, of course!  So, like God, first we created these edible bugs, and then relaxed and ate them!

 

After we ate, it was time to sing a song:  God created X X X, X X X, X X X, God created X X X, we give thanks to Him.  We put the song up on the board and for each of quite a few verses, stuck up a different picture of some aspect of God’s creation—whatever I could make have exactly three syllables, ha!—and sang about that.

And that took our whole hour!  I had planned a couple more activities but things took longer than I expected.  This is NOT a problem since one brilliant aspect of the new curriculum is the suggestion to use two Sundays in a row to teach the same truth.  So I am half prepared for next Sunday already, nice deal!  (In fact, I now plan to stretch this theme out to three Sundays, with the last one focusing on how God created people, and how that is why He loves each one of us so much.)