Regent kids...

I finally got back to church after being away a few weekends in a row. It was my turn to teach Sunday school to the 2-6 year olds: a group of 18 cute but, sometimes, wild kids. Our theme was ‘Shepherds’, since we are working through the alphabet and reached letter ‘S’. I decided to tell them the parable of the lost sheep. The kids got really into it and you could see on their faces that they were really sad when I said one sheep was lost and got excited when I told them the shepherd chose to go out to find the sheep and bring it home. It was a good opportunity to tell them that God cares about each one of them!

In Regent, Sunday school is held outside, under the hot sun, on chairs - there is no separate room and no tables. It’s works well; it’s just a bit more difficult to do crafts. It’s also right outside the church, so we cannot make a whole lot of noise. If we do, one of the adults pops their head out and says we need to quiet down. I experienced this a few months ago when we decided to play ‘Duck, duck, goose’! Definitely not a quiet game- that was a first and a last. ‘Follow the Leader’ is much quieter.

We usually start with a prayer, learn everyone’s names, sing a few songs (favorite is: ‘My God is so BIG’), review the previous week’s story, tell a new story, learn a short memory verse and color. I think I finally found a good system for coloring – lining the kids up along the side of the steps and placing their little chairs in front of them to function as little tables. It seems to work. The key is to make sure they’re spaced out enough to not torment each other and draw on each other’s papers!

Amazingly, I taught the children that when I hand out coloring sheets or crayons they should sit quietly. Usually they call out ‘gi me, gi me’ or ‘aunty yu no gi me yet’. I told them if I hear them calling out, they would be last to get anything. I was impressed at how quiet they were as I was handing out paper and crayons and delighted to hear so many of them say ‘tenki’. I also figured out that giving them 3 crayons each (instead of 2) was just enough to keep them happy longer and encourage them to trade colors with their neighbor, rather than have them calling out to me every two minutes saying ‘aunty change, aunty change’ and being bombarded by little kids trying to grab crayons out of the Ziploc bag. Anyway, last week was good. We had fun and hopefully the kids learned something. I’m on the schedule again in a few weeks time…