Lions and Tigers and Bears - Make Noise!

Sunday October 7th was our fifth session together. This week we covered Unit 1, Chapter 4 "We Praise and Thank God". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as ways to talk and listen to God through prayer. 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 matching activity, color-by-number, word shapes, and dot-to-dot activity.

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we recognized all the children who celebrated birthdays in September and October. We sang "Happy Birthday" to all of them! We learned that Fair Cheetah and Pragmatic Tiger wouldn't join us today, they were on a special vacation with family, we decided we would miss them.

I had done a little scouting ahead this week, so when we arrived in our room, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" was written on the white board for us and we read it together as our opening prayer... no, that's not right. We drummed ourselves up into cheerleading mode and read it WITH GREAT JOY together as our opening prayer!

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest!

Alright! Let's remember just a tiny bit from last week. What did we learn? Courtly Polar Bear read her Journal and reminded us we learned about role models. Yes!

And what was that sacrament with the long name that helps us get rid of sins after Baptism? It was on the tip of their tongues, they tried, so I helped them out: "RECONCILIATION". I handed out the little printout, and we talked about it a while. Rocking Horse read it to us and then we talked about what the people in the picture were doing. I told them we were going to learn lots more about it, and they are going to hear that word "RECONCILIATION" a lot! Effusive Jaguar said she bets they hear it one million times! I said she was probably right!


Drumming back the rowdiness, I started off:

What color was the priest wearing today?

Green!

And who was that guy up there anyway?

Our new pastor!

Right! And what did he do different than we're used to?

He talked different!

Oh-kay... and what else?

[ah, er, what?]

Hey, Effusive Jaguar, I saw you in church, and when we said the "Our Father", you had a BIG surprise on your face! What did we do different today?

Oh Yeah! We sang lots of stuff today!

(I haven't even met the new pastor, and yet he gave me a terrific lead in for our topic! Thank You Holy Spirit!)

So we talked about how when we are at mass we say lots of prayers and sing lots of songs together. We talked about how sometimes we pray alone, like when we say our prayers at night. And sometimes we pray together, like when we are at church. Sometimes we talk, and sometimes we sing.

I asked, "What kinds of things do we say when we are praying?" ... needing some prompting I suggested, "Sometimes we ask for things"... to which Effusive Jaguar said "that's the easy kind of prayer!". (I said I agree!)

"But if we are going to ask for things, then we better be nice and say a prayer for thanks when we get it!" I said. To which Rocking Horse said, "Hey, what do you mean? It's not like God hands you something and says 'here it is' or anything!" I agreed that we don't usually see any UPS packages from God delivered to our houses, but he does give us things. So we spent some time discussing all the good things God has given us and how we know they are from God even though he didn't address the labels! We also mused on the possibility of finding such a UPS package and how awesome that would be!! I said, "You can't send God a thank-you note, so that's how come we say prayers to say thank you." Rocking Horse said it would be cool if you could give Him a hug, and I agreed. Effusive Jaguar said "I just hug myself and I know it goes up!" Wow. "What a terrific idea, I like that!", I said. (Instinctively all of them gave themselves a hug and I gotta tell you, I got goosebumps!).

We didn't do the "what am I thankful for" activity that I had originally planned in the lesson, but this conversation was probably way more fruitful anyway! We'll have lots of opportunities for the "what am I thankful for" activity.


OK, so we sometimes ask for things when we pray. We sometimes give thanks when we pray. What else do we do when we pray? Remember when we sang "Happy Birthday" to everyone? How did that make them feel? We all agreed that we were sure those kids were very happy, just like we feel so happy when it is our turn to have a birthday. Sweet Pea Elephant made the connection for me: "So sometimes we should pray just to feel good!". Yeah!

So then this led us to King David. We remembered that we mentioned him a couple of weeks ago. Yes, the same King David. We entered into a lively rendition of the story of how David was just a kid whose job it was to watch the sheep. And while he was out there he wrote lots of prayers and songs of thanks and praise to God. And sometimes he had to fight lions and bears to save the sheep! That was pretty impressive, we couldn't believe he was so brave to grab them by their heads!

We were trying to figure out how big Goliath really was. We decided he would NOT fit through the door! There happened to be a picture of Goliath on the wall. "Do you want to know how big he was?" I said. "See his sword there? Well, that sword weighed more than 15 pounds! Do you know how much that is? Let me show you." They each eagerly came up to try to lift my tote bag (which was fully loaded and weighed around 15-20 pounds ~ what a coincidence!). Rocking Horse could swing it just a little, but it was WAY too heavy for anyone to swing!

When we heard how rotten he was being and what nasty things he was saying about God, they were cheering David on when he said he was going to fight him (even though they were scared because he was just a kid and Goliath was so huge!). But I assured them that David was fighting in the name of God and asked for God's help. Sweet Pea Elephant helped me finish the story. Yahoo! Everyone was jumping up and down when David won! Exactly! And that's how David felt and he wrote many many songs of thanks and praise to God to show how happy he was!

We talked about how David wasn't the king when he fought Goliath, that was King Saul. We talked about how King Saul became very jealous of David and chased him and fought him for a lot of years. We talked about how he did some bad things and he didn't care and he wasn't sorry, and that made God very sad. So much so that eventually God decided to make David king instead.

We wrapped up our David story by talking about how David was a great king and he did some really great things (like bringing the Ark of the Covenant and planning the Temple), but he did some really bad things too (like killing some people he shouldn't have and some other things that we agreed we wouldn't discuss). But whenever he saw that he did something bad, he told God he was sorry. Effusive Jaguar broke into a spontaneous rendition of David getting on his knees and saying he was sorry and would never do it again! And whenever he would say he was sorry, God forgave him every time. ("Just like here?" asked Courtly Polar Bear, pointing back to the Reconciliation worksheet. "Exactly!" I said, "that is why we have it!").

(many thanks to our DRE who took me to a catechist seminar yesterday where one of the work sessions was on storytelling, where I learned some techniques I was able to immediately apply in our session today!)

Then it was time for our activity. "Cool!" was the general reception of the idea of putting together the window clings. Some wanted to follow the example exactly, while Rocking Horse and Effusive Jaguar exchanged pieces and were a bit more creative.

When you see the rays, give thanks and praise!

Next week we will be having a unit 1 review, so there weren't any Family Time pages, although I did hand out the worksheets, as well as the pages from the chapter in Blest Are We, and also the Good News pages for the upcoming weeks. You can enjoy following the mass with them through the months of October and November.

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
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the reading and puzzle activities on King David activity
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan there are many coloring pages of Psalms