Season of Gratitude

Today I am incredibly grateful for my Kindergarten class. I teach Kindergarten for Sunday School, and I absolutely love it. I look forward to class every week. This week was particularly fun.

We walk the kids through the new testament and of course we start at the beginning. This week, we were talking about the three wise men. In the past this lesson has been a movie day. The activity is really short and the kids don't always get it. Typically after the teaching part of class they draw their gift to Jesus, which is intended to be something deep and spiritual, but the kids are five, they don't really think that way.

Instead, today we had them draw what they would bring Jesus if they had been with the wise men. My favorites included a rattle, a doll, and a bottle. The bottle was so that baby Jesus could drink it and get really fat. (Definitely a walk away and laugh moment.)

Then, we had the kids wrap gifts to give away. The rules are that they have to give the gift to someone not in their family and not in our Sunday School class. We had some of our high school kids come and help, and the little boys just loved it! Not only did several of our little boys talk about how they would give their gifts to girls so that they could get girlfriends, but they were really hoping that some of the high school girls would be cheerleaders. It starts so early!

Then came my favorite part! Before they sat down for lesson, the kids took their shoes off and placed them outside the classroom in a line against the wall. The Three Kings then came during class and filled them with treats!

I loved doing this! It was great to see the kids emptying their shoes (particularly one boy who trying to put his boot on but it didn't fit so he flipped it upside down and shook out a starburst). We had several adults wishing they could be in Kindergarten for class that morning. I really enjoyed putting that together for our kids. I can tell why "Santa" likes coming very year on Christmas.

I am so grateful that I get to be there for these kids and minister to my church family every week. In particular, I'm glad that I have a church family that is so supportive of my work with these kids. I've had experiences in the past when I've been told that for whatever reason that I haven't been able to minister in one way or another, but the church we're out now is incredibly supportive and I couldn't be more grateful to our ministers for giving me this opportunity each week.