Sunday school teaching

Hubby and I both started teaching Sunday school this fall. 

It's my second experience teaching kids and his first. He teaches the grade 1 kids while I take the grade 2. It's been a exhausting, chaotic, but at the same time joyful and rewarding experience for both of us. 

The two first weeks hubby came home defeated, telling me that he was not sure whether he could serve in this direction. Things simply didn't work! He had a bunch of handfuls on top of one with ADHD. These few always find a way to create a scence, somewhere, and somehow. Starting the third week he got an assistant to literally "shadow" the ADHD kid, and things were turning better. He felt like he finally saw hope that he could survive in that room. The fourth week, however, the class grew from 9 to 15 and the chaos came back again.. alas. 

I am co-teaching with an experience teacher and she took on the first two weeks so I just flew through being a dedicated assistant, handing out materials and snacks, maintaining the needed classroom order, and taking kids to bathroom or water break. The third week Traci was away so I started solo teaching. It was the day we talked about loving your enemies. I had them do a word scramble to fill in the blank of verses, listen to Jesus teaching about love, and work on a cross with two hearts craft. The idea is to bring the two hears together through the cross, and reconcile any issues with Christ. LH, one of my lovely students, made the above and said she wanted to give this to me as a present. Also on that day, J, my student with peanut allergy and always comes in with his inhalers and custom snack, told me that he loves his sunday school teacher, who is standing in front of him, when being asked who are the people you love. They also talked about the kind of people they find hard to love, such as one's brother, and the bully kids at school. Lovely, isn't it? 

Today was focused on the great banquet parable Jesus told the Pharisees. I had them each make a cone shaped party hat, which took a lot longer than I had planned. We all put on the party hats while listening to the bible about being invited to a feast. I paused and asked them questions to make sure they were listening, which worked! We had a bit of discussion about being inclusive/exclusive and what party Jesus was referring to after the story. Last but not the least, I had them do a short play of the parable. I was the director, and I had the name tags (big ones that they wear in front of their chest) and the lines for my casts, the master, servant and the three guests that each gave their own excuse. 

It was a big hit among the kids! The volunteer response was so great that we did the play twice to make sure those who were interested in acting would get a chance. N, the restless, independent (aka do not make me do anything I don't care for), and chatty kid did a great job acting. I made sure that I mentioned this when mom came to pick up. 

Hubby is away today, fishing at sea with the guys, a fun trip organized by the men's ministry. Not having someone to remind me I guess, and I was so focused on the Sunday school teaching today that, I forgot, completely slipped my mind about picking up Kodi from her first sunday school classroom. I was doing the last minute prepping when I heard "Mommy!" and saw Kodi and teacher B standing by my classroom.. Needless to say, I sincerely apologized to B about my forgetfulness. 

Give myself a pat on the shoulder for another week of teaching. This is really a lot more fun than my old days where I would go through a hundred slides and sometimes got lost in my own class... 

乾燥

Kodi really loves the ground pork sauce cooked with soy, sugar and garlic（肉燥). It's like the Taiwan style Bolognese sauce without the tomato in it. I love it too as I grew up eating it with rice or noodle. She calls it 乾燥. "Mommy I want more 乾燥".

She loves tofu too so the two cooked in one dish will guarantee a good appetite.

Two mommies

Hubby is on business trip this week. I have noticed that Kodi tends to need more company when daddy is away and tonight was no exception.

She had a busy afternoon and was still sick from the cold. I gave her a TV break after dinner while I cleaned the kitchen. She picked Barney and Mother Goose. She asked me a few times if I could join her in watching Barney. I sat down with her for about five minutes and told her that I needed to get back to cleaning. She looked at me, making a V gesture to represent two and said, “有兩個媽咪 一個陪我看電視 一個洗碗“

It made me feel bad about not being available to her when she felt alone and did not want to sit by herslef. I gave her a little bit of M&Ms, hoping to cheer her up. Little did I know, she held onto the M&Ms until I finished the dishes. She told me that she wanted to eat the M&Ms with me, which didn't mean that she was going to share them with me because these were really a rare treat for her. She just needed me to be with her while she enjoyed her favorite candies. She was cheerful afterall, because of the M&Ms and having mommy back.

This is what we did at 7:30pm tonight, munching M&Ms while singing Mother Goose songs, together on the couch.

3Y2M More color!

We continue to play with color.

Kodi was sick today with a runny nose and a low grade fever. I suspect that she got a cold from the swimming playdate a few days ago. Luckily she was purky and cheerful despite coughs and constant sniffing. 

We were going to host a playdate with friends but I ended up canceling it. Just didn't want to pass germs to other kids even though I think she just got a common cold. So I thought about a great idea to keep her busy. 

a bowl of orange color ice cubes.

Container of different size and shape.

The setting meant an hour of playing by herself! 

The aqua blue container was supposed to be the swimming pool for the eggs. Those were the plastic, hide-the-candy kind of eggs she got from Easter. We tried to sink those eggs by filling them with water and marbles but it didn't work. Those eggs really wanted to float! 

It happened so that the balcony was due for a good scrubbing. So I carried a bucket of soapy water and scrubbed the floor while she played with the color water.  It was really fun that we could each be working on different things while at the same time share the space and some commonality. Water, of course, was the theme. 

Later on she decided that she's had enough of color water and floating experiment. She joined me by splashing the floor with water. There's always something magical about kids and water. Getting the water out of the bucket with different scoop or container was her big thing today. 

She also cleaned the chairs that have been sitting on the balcony collecting dusts and air pollution. 

She had a warm shower in the big bath tub when we were done. I decided that we should "picnic" since the balcony is sparkling clean now. 

Dinner grace.

Eat! 

3Y2M play with color

Lately we have been experimenting food coloring. 

I found a packet of animal shaped pastas (in fact, there were only four kinds of animals, elephants, lions, turtles, and giraffes) and on that afternoon we dyed 5 different colors.

I happend to read online about coloring your own pasta and the very next day a friend talked to me that she's been doing just the same. It literally took one minute to get the color on and how much ever time to let it dry. Easy! Why didn't I think about color before? It immediately donned on me that I could color water, ice cubes, rice, beans, play dough... oh you name it. 

Here is the how to.

Simply use a take out container or a ziplock bag for the process. I used the same one for all the five colors as the color was easy to wash off. I just rinsed and paper towel dried the container in between colors. You'd put in a bit of food coloring (both gel and paste worked fine), add a teaspoon or so of rubbing alcohol to dilute the food coloring, add the pasta, close the lid and last but not the least, SHAKE! Kodi helped with the shaking motions and she loved it!

 Orange and red worked the best while green somehow was hard to stick to the pasta. Purple and blue turned out to be a few shades darker than what I'd in mind. Nonetheless, colored pasta just look so much more fun and attractive than the plain kind. We lined them on recycled magazine papers to dry. Afterwards we just packed them up in individual ziplock bags and they are now ready for necklace/bracelet and paper plate crafts. 

This is one finished rainbow made of color pasta. We also made a necklace and a fall wreath with the orange ones. 

I also played with color water and Kodi was thrilled! She played with the big bowl of green water in the bathtub and kept saying "This is going to be fun!"

The ice cubes didn't work as well in this climate. They just melted too quickly at the balcony facing the afternoon sun! We will try to play with them indoor next time. I guess you could add these to a glass of water and drink it.. Honestly I thinkithey are fun to play but may be no to the mouth.