Teaching Bible Class

In spite of my personal preference for teaching older kids, I've spent most of the past four years signing up to teach two-, three-, and four-year-old Bible classes at church... I have learned a lot in that time about teaching kids who cannot sit still, who cannot read, and who often do not follow directions well. I've learned to generally avoid glitter and any crafts that require me to cut out a ton of stuff, and I've learned that a coloring sheet won't occupy two-year-olds for long (if at all).

I've also learned that there is a lot of grace in those little hearts, and that the lesson I planned is not always the one that needs to be learned. I've grown to love not just my own children and their peers, but the children who surround them in age - and I couldn't be more blessed by that.

This teaching quarter, I signed up to teach Luke's four-year-old Wednesday night class. It is a weirdly timed quarter because it straddles Christmas, so we went rogue on the curriculum and did Nativity lessons in December and then have been learning about some of "God's Heroes" for the remaining eight weeks. We have learned that God's heroes are strong on the inside (David) and care what God thinks about them, not what other people think (Daniel). Last week, we learned about working hard with Jacob, and this week Jacob will teach us about asking for forgiveness.

I know that it's not always a good idea to teach your own children in Sunday school, but it has been nothing but a pleasure this time around. The truth is that all of the kids in Luke's class are practically my own - most of them have spent hours and hours playing at our house, and their moms are some of my closest friends. Even more than that, Luke himself has had so much fun with our lessons (I must admit, I planned the theme with a certain four-year-old's interests in mind), and he often asks me when we are going to have our next "God's heroes class."

One of the surprises for me has been how quickly the kids have learned their memory verses - and how well they understand the stories. They have all made a quiet leap in comprehension since the last time I taught them, and the intellectual in me is thrilled to watch memories working and comprehension dawning.

Of course, I have worked with Luke on the memory verses throughout the week - something I'm not very good at doing unless I am the teacher, I'll confess - and he has no trouble spouting them all off for me. In fact, we've worked on them in the car so often that Sarah has learned them as well, and she is so proud to burst out in the song we sing to remember one of the verse from I Samuel 16:7.

Luke also seems to enjoy getting to be part of some of the prep work - I try to make sure that there are still plenty of surprises for him in the lessons, but I know that it doesn't hurt for him to take a little ownership of the lesson himself; that's probably a lot of the reason that I have very little trouble from him in class. Last week, in order to tell the somewhat confusing story about Jacob marrying Leah and Rachel, I used stick figures to draw the story on the white board as I was telling it. I needed to practice that ahead of time, so earlier in the day, I did this rendition on the kids' easel.

{Try not to be too astounded by my artistic abilities.}

I erased the board that evening, and then a few days later, Luke asked for the dry erase markers so that he could draw on the easel. I gave them to him without a thought - and without noticing what he was doing. But yesterday, I happened to look at the board, and here is what he'd drawn:

Can you see Abraham's genealogy on the left? and even the spotted sheep on the bottom! I don't know what to be more proud of: that he's trying his own hand at teaching (at least the wacky version of teaching that he's learning from his weird momma) - or that he remembered so much of the story! I tell you what - it more than makes up for all the glitter mishaps in the world.