SPRED Safari: Nature Trail - Jesus' Sacrifice Give Us New Life

Sunday March 2nd was our twenty-first session together. This week we covered Unit 4, Chapter 13 "Jesus Saves Us From Sin". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as our mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. 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, coloring, word search, and dot-to-dot activity.

We only met briefly with the whole group for a prayer, then we were off to our room. We learned that Fair Cheetah and Rocking Horse would be late, but it was the first time we have all been together in many weeks!

We had our usual conversation about what was going on at Mass this weekend. We talked about how Father is still wearing purple and how the Alleluia and Gloria are still locked up and can't come out. We talked about the Bible readings, how the Gospel was soooo long this week but we liked the story of how the blind man could see!

We continued by remembering what we have been discussing: that we Listen to God's Word, We Act on God's Word, and We Pray for Others. We talked about how in the Old Testament, God promised to send us a Savior, and in the New Testament we see that He did: He sent Jesus, His son. That is why we say Jesus is "the Word made flesh". Jesus came to save us. He died for us and then rose from the dead. We talked about how this is a very important part of our faith... in fact, so important that we say it every time we go to Mass. I took out a copy of the missalette and we read the parts together:

...We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in fulfillment of the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. ...

We talked about things Jesus did to show us how to "Act on God's Word" and "Pray for Others". We decided he definitely helped serve other people, especially when he was curing people, like he did with the blind man in the Gospel.

We talked about how sometimes it is not easy to "Act on God's Word". Sometimes it is hard to serve others. Sometimes we have to give things up if we help others, and we don't always like to do it. Pragmatic Tiger told how one time he gave up watching his favorite show so that he could help his sister get ready for a special activity. Effusive Jaguar told how she is giving up attitude for Lent, and it is hard work. We talked about what it means to give up something so that we can help someone else, that we call this a 'sacrifice'.

I asked - what did Jesus give up? what sacrifice did he make? The children knew - "his life!".

How hard is that? Can you imagine that? We don't even like to give up a TV show, and Jesus gave up his life! It is truly a great mystery of our faith:

Christ has died,
Christ has risen,
Christ will come again.

We discussed that because Jesus gave up his life, we now have "new life", a "new life" where we can have hope and to be with God... and we often see signs of "new life" at Easter... signs like new flowers and baby birds. Working with this theme, we then did our activity, which was to color a flower that would "pop up" like a bloom when you open the card. The children colored them so amazingly beautiful! And then they did a terrific job following instructions to cut them out and attach them to the card...