We're Teaching Sunday School

This quarter, Harmony and I are teaching the kindergarten / 1st grade Sunday school class. Although usually by the second or third week I am not nerve-wracked, I don't think I ever got nerve-wracked to begin with, because I had my wife to help me.

I don't even know what we're supposed to be teaching. I learned my lesson from the last time I taught, and I remember telling myself that the next time I teach Sunday school, I am going to make up my own curriculum.

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I saw a coloring sheet of what the Wednesday class had learned about. It was a cartoony drawing of a boy, Jesus, and fish. Verbage on the page said something about "A boy shares with Jesus." That annoys me a bit. The purpose of the feeding of 4/5000 story is not that a boy shared his stuff. The purpose is to illustrate the miracle. Sharing is a good thing in most cases, and parents should teach their children...but Sunday school is a time to learn about God and His Word and what it contains. This is the main reason why I do not even have a copy of the curriculum materials. I do not wish to take the Bible and turn it into Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street.
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This quarter, our main topic is Judges. This is apparently somewhat of an unorthodox topic for young children, but these scholars can handle it. It does get a bit verbose and complicated at times, but they will still understand the main points. The class is small and mostly girls (3 girls 1 boy is the usual line up). There is only one boy who is a regular in this class (but he hasn't been there 2 of 3 Sundays that we've taught). That's too bad, because I think boys would like all the battles and violence and stuff. Regardless, they are all smart and come from good families. One of the girls appears to have some sort of audio recording capability in her head, as she is able to repeat every single detail (however minute) of every lesson that we teach. (her parents read this blog and probably know who they are) One of the other girls seems to be still half-asleep during class, but still understands the material.

Part of the reason I picked Judges is because 1) I was not entirely too familiar with the period, 2) it's not a usual Sunday school topic, and 3) owing to #2, they probably hadn't ever learned it before. Teaching something is a great way to motivate yourself to learn the material.

We are glossing over the judges who only have a couple of verses written about them, such as Othniel, Shamgar, Tola, etc. Most of our time will be spent learning about the ones who have significant details recorded about them.

Our sequence will go as follows: Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Gideon, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Samson, Eli/Hannah (Hannah not a judge, I know), Samuel. There might be a lesson in there on Abimelech, and either Eli or Samuel might have an extra lesson. So far we have learned about Ehud, Deborah, and Gideon's destruction of his father's idols. I will post more about the lessons we have already done, and after that I will tentatively post each week on the lesson/craft and how it went. I have not received picture posting permission from all of the parents, so you might see a bunch of blacked out faces.