Wednesday Night Lessons 101 -Feb 27

Well, since I haven't been feeling well, I wanted to come up with a lesson that let the kids expend their engergy and not mine. Here is what I came up with.....

This was a "String Treasure Hunt." There were a total of four different string paths twisted around the room, each one leading to a memory verse with a clue on the back. Each kid picked a starting point, and followed their string to the end. We then practiced saying our memory verses and sat down to work on our keys. We finished our keys last night, but it took us a while!

Since our other teacher was sick, I had one of our younger students in my class last night too. He was very excited about making his keys (he's been wanting some from the beginning of this month!) He was so intent on making his keys, that he didn't want to do the treasure hunt. After I convinced him to start, he walked three steps, winding up his string, stopped in the middle of the room and pronounced "I found my memory verse! Can I do my keys now?" Needless to say, there were quite a few starts and stops to get him to finish!

I had planned on working on our verse in Hebrews 13:16 about sharing, and so planned on "hiding" the ingredients for brownies around the room. Then the kids would have to share their "treasures" in order to make the brownies. It backfired for a couple of reasons.

1. Two of my students have a habit of spotting unusal things in the room and pulling them to the table....hence, my hidden ingredients got "found" and pulled out. After this point, you can't tell them, "Oh, that's for later, let's put it back," because the rest of the class will be spent answering questions "When will we do that? What is that for? Can we do it now?"


2. I didn't leave enough time for the brownies to bake so we didn't get to make them, just mixed them up. That was pretty dissapointing. I told them we'd have to make them next week.

I must say I'm glad this unit is over. I think I planned too much in too little time, and need to re-work my teaching style quite a bit. Here are some things I need to work on:

1. My own devotions with the class verses in mind. I need to develop a deeper understanding of the Bible daily, and this will help my teaching
2. More prayer....for me, teaching, for the kids, for the class, for patience and wisdom
3. More focused time with the kids during the class....talk with them, instead of focus on getting the activity done
4. More use of Bible...I'd love to continue to help the kids see that they can read their Bibles too
5. Less set-up....I tend to haul too much stuff to class and it takes a lot of energy

Lastly, I have a question for you, maybe you could help:

• My students seem to have an affinity to walk on our table. I know it's a low table, but I can't seem to get them to stop. At first, I thought it was because it was up against the wall and it was just easier to walk OVER it than AROUND it. So, I moved the table, leaving a walkway around all sides. The table-walking still persists. Any ideas how to curb this trend? I even put my papers and class stuff on the table, but this doesn't seem to deter the errant table-walker! :)