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...