Week 6 (September 23-27)

I wish you could be a fly on the wall when we start our day.  We begin with worship, prayer, and Bible class, and it is such a sweet time.  This week was especially powerful.  We had great conversations and touching worship times.  These kids are hungry for the Lord and His word.  I have a pretty attentive class, but when Bible starts, they are tuned in like you wouldn't believe!  I love it!

I introduced the class to one of my favorite Christian groups, Shane and Shane.  We've sung a few of their songs but on Tuesday, I decided to have the students listen instead of sing along.  I shared this song with them and told them to listen carefully to the lyrics.  I gave the background of the song (it was written by one of the Shanes after his dad passed away suddenly) and shared that a man named John Piper would be speaking towards the end of the song.  I chuckled when a child asked, "Is John Piper the drummer in this video?"  Cute.  

No matter what your thoughts are about John Piper, this song is quite powerful.  We were able to discuss the song after we listened, and I was amazed at the spiritual maturity of some of these kids.  We closed with prayer, and I was fighting back tears.  Oh, I love having the privilege of talking about (and to) the Lord with my students.  

This song was a great segue into our study on Joseph.  We will focus on him for the next couple of weeks.

 

I had the chance to read one of my favorite books to the students this week: The Turtle Saver by Mississippi author, Laurie Parker.  This is a great book that comes full circle; the ending always leaves kids jaw-dropped.  It's a very touching story.  I'd recommend it for children, ages 8-12. 

Speaking of books, the students presented their September book reports on Friday.  I assign monthly book reports that are due at the end of each month, but the students do not always present them in class.  I assigned a Cereal Box Book Report that you can read more about IN THIS POST.  Here are the fronts and backs of some of the boxes/reports:

One little girl decided to promote her cereal with an adorable "commercial."  She got the audience engaged with her commercial and then went on to tell about the actual book she read:

That's some expensive cereal, but it was a cute intro!

 

The students also presented their landform projects this week and we learned so much from each group!

I showed the students several different apps this week.  Here they are during indoor recess, playing one of my favorites--Stack the States:

We ended the week with a fun problem-solving activity that I call "Save Dave."  I tried it for the first time last year and you can read about the details IN THIS POST.  I used a different type of Gummy Worm this year, which was smaller.  If I could do it over, I'd stick with the larger ones that I used last year because they were more challenging for the students.  Click Here to access the flowchart/activity sheet I created.  It's the same one as last year, but the formatting was off in the one I shared from Google Drive.  I saved the document in Dropbox, and it's a little better but not exactly the right size.  For me, the document is just a front and back page. 

 

Here are some photos from Friday (all but one group were able to save Dave).  Afterwards, we enjoyed eating some Gummy Worms and Gummy Lifesavers.