Peace Queries

I cut up this document with quotes about peace and placed the "peace pieces" in the center of the circle and told the children that they'd be choosing a peace piece to illustrate. Everyone looked though them until they found one they liked. Before we moved on to illustrating, we talked a bit about what Faith & Practice books are (this was not new for most of the group) and the meanings of the words faith and practice. Then I asked the children to talk about what's in Faith & Practice. Even though someone remembered that Faith & Practice contained queries, no one knew what queries were. We read a couple as examples, and people came up with the idea that they were questions that made you think and reflect. I asked the students while they were drawing to think of one query to go along with the quote they were illustrating. For some quotes, it helped the children to be told to think about to think about a question that might have been answered using the quote. When I do something like this again, I'll probably suggest that the queries begins with a typical beginning of  "Do I/we . . . ?",  "How do I/we . . . ?" or "Am I/we . . . ?" since some people had trouble figuring out how to get started. Once everyone had finished, we got back into our circle and passed around a small object from our centering basket. When the object was passed to a person s/he read her query, counted silently and slowly to ten so that everyone had a chance to reflect on the query and then passed the object on to the next person. Our queries were

How do you get to peace?

How do you think a prisoner has peace inside a cell?

How can we love what we think we hate?

What is the best place for dreams?

How can I make friends with my enemy?

How do I make peace with my enemies?

How can we forgive others for mishaps and not hurt, but heal during the process?

What would you say if you feel there's not enough love in someone or something?

Cards for Friends

One Friend in our meeting has a "ministry of cards." She tries to send cards to meeting members and attenders who are ill or have just gone through a major life event such as the birth of a child, a graduation, or the death of a loved one. Our Care and Counsel committee helps to keep her abreast of who might need a card. In today's class, we made cards for her to have on hand.
 

Valentines for All

Today we did our annual activity of making valentines for the meeting, which is always a hit for both the makers and the receivers. I bring in a few copies of a sheet with Bible verses about love and tell the children that the only requirement for their valentines is that they need to include one of these verses on each valentine. Some cut out and paste on the printed versions and some copy the verses by hand. (The formatting of the sheets is such that they can be printed on address labels, but I didn't have any on hand this year. Scissors and glue are a fine alternative.) Many children enjoy looking through and choosing verses they like. We've built up a stock of valentine-making supplies over the past several years of doing this project. (Essentials are some colored paper and glue. Other possibilities include tissue paper, pink index cards, colored card stock, stickers, ribbons, doilies, . . .  . This year one of the other first day school teachers had used a die cutter at her school to make lots of pre-cut heart shapes, which were a big hit.)

Since our First Day School program meets before meeting for worship, a couple of the children stand outside the meeting room door with a basket full of valentines and hand one to each person who comes in. Today the ministry was heavily influenced by the valentines and when one speaker read aloud the message on her valentine, my daughter leaned over and whispered, "I made that one!" It turned out to be a nice way of having the children feel connected to the ministry.

The Plague of Frogs

Today, after composing text messages from Moses to Zipporah, we acted out the first few scenes in a skit about Moses that I found at www.rotation.org's Ideas & Lesson Exchange. (Here's my differently formatted, abridged and slightly edited version.)

With each scene we switched the actors. Before doing the scene about the plague of frogs, we stopped to make lots of jumping frogs for the scene from 4 x 6 index cards (actually, brightly colored cardstock that I had sliced into 4 x 6 pieces). Once they got the hang of this, the children could have gone on much longer with the frog-making. (We probably spent about 25 minutes making frogs.) We did, however, manage to get in the plague of frogs scene just before we ran out of time.

Text Messages from Moses to Zipporah

After considering Moses and the burning bush last week, we started on the plagues this week. Because the two are so connected, we used this 10-minute activity to recap last week's story for those who hadn't been there. (The activity, though, would work well with almost any story.) I asked children who'd been present last week to tell the story to those who hadn't been with us, and for everyone to put themselves in Moses's sandals and try to imagine what it would have felt like to experience what he experienced. Their task after hearing the story would be to pretend they were Moses and to compose a text message that Moses might have sent to his wife, Zipporah, at the end of the experience. As you can see from the samples messages, the children enjoyed incorporating text-speak. (One person noted enthusiastically that he was not going to worry about spelling at all--and was even going to intentionally misspell--since spelling is not all that important when texting!) Most children read their messages aloud when we finished and there was much laughter. A few were inspired to include Zipporah's reply as well!

            

Turning a staff into a snake

Students pair off, and decide which one in the pair will be God and which will be Moses. Each Moses gets a toilet paper tube to serve as a staff and each God gets a piece of orange construction paper to serve as a flame. Read Exodus 3:1-12 and 4:1-17 and have students act out the story as you go. After acting out the story and giving an opportunity for students to react to it, give toilet paper tubes to the children who were playing God and move on to the activity of turning the staffs into snakes. For those students who finish early, suggest that they figure out a way to make a burning bush using construction paper and/or felt. (When we did this, the first student to work on a bush asked me for a cup, and then all the other bush makers wanted one, too, so our bushes involved cups.)

 

Materials

• one toilet paper tube per child, plus a couple of extras
• various colors of felt
• scissors
• glue
• (optional, but appreciated) a pair of googly eyes for each child
• construction paper (including several sheets of orange)
• (optional) paper or plastic cups to serve as a form for a bush