Over the summer, our church started doing the King’s Kids program for all our youth ages 2-18. We knew that the church needed teachers for Wednesday nights and that they preferred couples. Matt and I have never taught anything in church before; it just sounded like a lot for two young Christians who don’t have it all figured out! I mean, what if someone asks a question we don’t know the answer to? What if a child wants to be saved? We certainly couldn’t handle that! Matt actually suggested that we give it a try, which was a little surprising to me! We figured teaching teenagers seemed a little intimidating, so let’s go for a little kids class. Oh, they need a teacher for the 4 and 5 year-old? Sure!

We’ve been teaching 4s and 5s (the Flyers Club) for almost six months now and have really enjoyed it! Each child is given a booklet of bible verses to memorize. At first, I was trying to work weekly lesson around each of these verses, but it got a little difficult. The kids wound up working on different verses from each other, due to absences or needing more time to memorize it. Sometimes I just didn’t come up with enough material based on the verse for a whole 90-minute class. We had some good ones though, mostly about creation in the beginning.

I started looking online for Sunday School / Children’s Church lesson ideas and came across so many great troves of information! My favorite resource site is Danielle’s Place. I’ve been picking lessons off the site and adjusting them as I need. We did the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) lessons for nine weeks, which was a huge hit! Each week we focused on a fruit (e.g. cherries and lemons) and a spiritual fruit (e.g. joy and peace.) I think it helped them remember all the fruits of the spirit when they associated each one with an actual, edible fruit. It made snack time easy, too! When we learned about patience, we also learned about pineapples. Matt picked up a fresh pineapple and cut it up for them. They had to sit patiently as he cut off the skin, picked out all the spots, sliced it, cored each slice, and cut them up. When we learned about love and apples, we made little hearts out of apple slices. There were of course lots of other fun games, crafts, art projects, and songs too – not just snacks. It was a great lesson and now all of my kids can name all the fruits of the spirit and give examples.

Since then, we’ve been doing sort of an ABC format class. We did an A lesson about ants and how God says we should be like them (Proverbs 6:6-8.) The next week we did a B lesson where we learned about bees and how we are God’s masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10.) It’s been fun!

Our church decided to do different themed nights for each week. We’ve done sports night, bible character night, missionaries, etc. I’ve been trying to tailor the lessons to somewhat fit the themes, so I’ve strayed from the ABCs. Next week will be a lesson about fall, leaves, and how even though the leaves are changing, Jesus and his love never changes (Hebrews 13:8.) There are so many pretty leaves still on the trees and out and they won’t last much longer! Then I’ll have fun with Parent’s Night (maybe an “obey your parents” lesson) and Thanksgiving (we can do lots of things with that!)

It’s been challenging working with this age group, but it is all ready very rewarding. It’s so great when our members’ children bring guests who don’t ever go to church. I just pray we can make it fun and make them want to come back and learn more. The church talks about this program being permanent, so Matt and I plan to continue teaching this class until we leave in 2012. Rhino will actually get to be in our class for a couple of months at the end!

I’d like to keep up with blogging more specifically about each class, so be expecting updates on each fun Wednesday night King’s Kids lesson!

On this day..

• I have friends?! Hooray! - 2005