Our second session together was on Sunday, September 16th. This week we covered Unit 1, Chapter 1 "Our Church Welcomes Us". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as being about our church community and how we are welcomed to mass. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion, the activities worksheet, and craft activity.
Packing Light: If you just want the activity sheet for this session, you can find it here. It has a word search, crossword puzzle, and coloring activity.
Somewhat appropriately, we had a new student added to the class. So we made sure to make her feel welcome! She chose polar bear as her animal (photo forthcoming!).
I passed out the activity worksheets, which were very well received - the children wanted to work on the puzzles right away! But we decided we would have our conversation first and do the puzzles later.
We discussed "what is a community?". Our Pragmatic Tiger knew: "it is a group of people who come together." So we named some different types of communities we know about: neighborhoods, schools, families, sports teams. I asked "What about our church?". They weren't so sure about that at first, but then they decided since they do things together (like kneeling and Sunday School), church could be a community too.
We talked about ways communities come together to meet or celebrate. What kinds of things do we do when we get together? "Party!" "Eat!" Our Effusive Jaguar volunteered to write all these activities down on the white board. I asked for a volunteer to read from the scripture reading ( Luke 5:27-29) and our Courtly Polar Bear signed up. She did a terrific job! We talked about how Jesus liked to share meals with lots of different people and made them feel comfortable.
We talked about how after Jesus' death and resurrection, the early church still liked to get together to share a meal and tell stories about when Jesus was with them. Our Rocking Horse read the second scripture reading (Acts 2: 42-47) like a pro. We discussed how sometimes when the members of the early church got together they became one by sharing the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and that is why today we still get together as a community, and how the Eucharist at mass is a special meal.
We tried to see how mass might be like a family gathering, like a birthday party. At a birthday party, when we first come together we greet each other and we also sing to the birthday person. Similarly, at mass we start off by singing and greeting the priest and each other. Sweet Pea Elephant noted that this week the priest was wearing Green. She said that was like regular mass. We agreed we would keep our eyes open for when the colors change - that must mean something important is going to happen!
Out of curiosity, I asked the children if any of them knew who King David was. Several of them knew he was a great king and our Pragmatic Tiger even knew he built a temple, but they didn't know how he liked to sing praise. They decided that was a really good thing he did.
It was then time for our hands-on activity. We cut out pictures of church doors, and glued the bread and wine and a "Welcome" inside. We are a community and we are welcome! As the children finished their crafts, they spent time talking and working on the activity sheets. We all had different ideas how to complete our crafts. Rocking Horse cut the back page and the inside designs to fit the shape of the doors and glued them all together. Pragmatic Tiger cut along all the intricate edgings of the bread and wine pictures. Courtly Polar Bear trimmed the "Welcome" letters to be individually glued. They all seemed to really enjoy the activity, and because I didn't have quite enough glue sticks and scissors to go around, they figured out how to share them and take turns so no one was sitting with nothing to do for very long!
Then it was journal time. I passed out journals for each of the children. Each journal had been customized with the picture they drew of their animal on the cover. They were so excited to see their very own artwork on their journals! I explained that after each session together we would talk about what we learned, and they would write down anything they thought they liked or wanted to remember. We took a few minutes to write our entries in our journals. As the children finished their entries, they drew on the white board. In fact, they worked as a team to locate enough dry-erase markers so that everyone could participate!
I sent home the Family Time pages for Unit 1, Chapter 2, which we will be discussing next session.
A successful outing, I'd say!
Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...
- If you just have a bit of time, definitely go for the online activity for this chapter at Blest Are We
- For more in-depth activities, check out the lesson on the early church at Higher Praise
A note about journals: I am a strong believer in "we remember that which we write down". I use journals for myself and also with my own children when we are reviewing something we have learned. The act of formulating one's thoughts and crafting them into statements is in itself an activity that helps in retention... the actual writing out of the statements is even more reinforcement. Even if it is only one or two sentences, it still is a distillation - from the child's point of view - of what has been learned and what is to be remembered. You will be amazed at their entries and also how their entries mature over the course of the year!
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