This is my Body

I was out on Family Leave during part of the "Good Shepherd" Cycle. Now I'm back, and we're doing "This is my Body" from WorkshopCycles, with changes and additions of our own.

Our one-room Rotation classroom schedule includes the regulars and a few fun additions. The children will be making pita bread in Kitchen, and will do body tracings for Art.

Here, the youth studied "The Last Supper" then put on costumes to reenact the painting:



Our children sure don't mind coming to Sunday School. And we have so many adults involved in one way or another. Rotation Model can't be beat for adult involvement!

Miracles of Jesus I

Oh, my goodness. I can't believe how long it's been since I posted here.
Well, we've just completed the Miracles of Jesus Cycle from WorkshopCycles. The kids made a great book on the miracles:

Jesus walk on water:


Jesus calms a storm:


Jesus heals someone who is blind:


Jesus provides a miraculous catch:


Jesus heals someone who is paralyzed:


continued in the next entry...

Miracles of Jesus II

Jesus multiplies loaves and fishes:


Jesus turns water into wine:


Our Workshops for this cycle included the normal movie, games, computers, and music. Some extra-fun Workshops included:
-making a 3ft by 10 ft poster of the miracles
-making this book
-making tornadoes (from pop bottles)
-making sponge cakes (the miracle of taking a little and making a lot)

OEC@K Children's Program

Harcourt Parish hosted the Children's Program for the Ohio Episcopal Celebration at Kenyon. We had a great group of kids and helpers and although the program was simple, it was a great success (reminder to self!!).

The Eucharists at OEC@K attempted to be family-friendly. Luke tested that theory, and it was well-received. All the children were invited to join the bishop celebrant around the altar.


Our program theme was based on Jamie Lee Curtis' book "Is there Really a Human Race?" We found a ton of fantastic activities based on the book here.

And of course, we made up a few activities ourselves. One of the things we did was give each child a disposable camera and help them do a photo scavanger hunt to take pictures of people and things that help the human race. (The 2-year old's pictures contained a lot of grass and sky!)
Here are some of our group posing with a Gambier firefighter, definitely someone who helps the human race:


Another activity we did was offer free cold water to folks on this hot summer day. The kids loved this activity, and I think the adults did, too.


In the car a week later, little Luke began saying "Free cold water! Free cold water!" Young brains are sponges. I'm glad we're filling these kids' brains up with the Good Stuff.

12 Who Changed the World

Our last WorkshopCycle for the school year was "12 Who Changed the World" and, of course, was about the disciples. The kids did a lot of nifty things, but my two favorites were ones that weren't in the WorkshopCycle curriculum (which is making me consider writing my own rotations instead of using canned ones...)

Instead of a plain-old drama, I thought we could liven things up by having the kids create some sort of puppets. As I surfed the web looking for great, easy puppet ideas, I decided up on Kitchen Untensil Puppets. You can find directions here. I dug through my kitchen drawer and went to Goodwill and found a nice assortment of items. Then I dug through my "fun fabrics" pile, got some yarn and googlie eyes and pipe cleaners, and was good to go.

The kids used info they had gathered about different disciples to make the puppets. They had a great time making the puppets one week, and using them the following week. They turned out so well!


And then our final week was the week I was looking forward to most of all (well, eating bugs last December came in a close second!). We were going to print t-shirts with fish. REAL fish!!!

Well, it turns out you can't buy real fish in the grocery store around here. Sigh. So we used fish stamps, and the kids still had an amazingly fun time.
I bought a bunch of white kid's t-shirts, and dyed them ahead of time with several colors of blue and green, and God helped out because when I hung them on the line to dry it rained and the shirts turned out even more ocean-like than I'd imagined!

It was a beautiful day, and we set up outside. I lured my friend and amazing fabric artist, Jo Rice, into helping lead the day (thanks, Jo for leading and for taking most of the following pictures!)

Here's Jo with Maggie and Emma at the table with the Versatex paints and stamps:


Here's a close-up of one of the shirts:

And here they all are, hanging to dry on the church lawn.



Excellent!

Easter Creations

On Easter we have a combine Sunday School and they do a fun craft project. This year, they made egg carton caterpillars (and we had plans to make tissue paper butterflys, but time got away from us). The caterpillar/butterfly image is a Christian image of resurrection, perfect for Easter morning.
The kids really enjoyed making their caterpillars beautiful!

Play Altar

I usually don't make blanket proclaimations, but Every Church Needs A Play Altar. Really. We added one to our preschool classroom a couple of years ago, and it is a favorite activity week in and week out.
Ours is a side table that was just sitting around. A sewer in the congregation made simple altar cloths in the liturgical colors with matching stoles (actually, they're reversable, one color on each side, 2 sets):


We added an inexpensive brass communion set and a couple copies of Gretchen Prichard's Alleluia, Amen. Occasionally, we'll have some wafers. But the kids go *crazy* when they have wafers and would go through a roll a week if we let them. So it's a special occasion thing.

I grew up with a Children's Altar, but it was as Revered and Transcendent as the main altar. Just like kids like to have a play kitchen or a play workshop, they also like a play altar. If you need any help figuring out how to make it work at your church, just ask!

Esther Cycle

WorkshopCycles includes Esther as a cycle. This wouldn't fall into my top-50 Bible Stories of all times, but they've got a cycle ready to go, so we're using it!

Week 1 was the Art cycle, and kids made noisemakers out of empty water bottles. I wish I'd gotten a photo of some of the kids and their creations, but we'll just have to deal with this.
1) Start with an empty water bottle:

2) Add beans, rice, rocks or anything that will make a good shaking noise. Screw the lid on (put a bit of glue on it if you want to make it permanent).
3) Decorate! We chose to decorate them as people. I cut up a few old polo shirts and sewed them into covers with arms and legs, then the kids added decoration.
4) Add a head--you may use a styrofoam ball, or we used quick-dry clay
5) USE! As the Esther story is re-told, shake your noisemakers to drown out every time the name "Haman" is said.

Our other workshops for this cycle include:
-Computer activity
-Purim Drama
-Games (red light/green light, rock paper scissors, etc)
-Kitchen: making Hammentaschen for coffee hour

The Beatitudes Cycle

Harcourt Parish Recently completed our WorkshopCycle on the Beatitudes.

Our activities included: Making a Blessing Cup out of quick-dry clay, Computer and Movie workshops (always a hit), fun with the Doxology, and making Blessing Cookies for coffee hour (like fortune cookies, but with blessings inside).

Presenting: John the Baptist!

This year we ordered our Children's Pageant from Creative Communications. It was a pageant mainly about John the Baptist (and thus helped my High Church side be comfortable that we presented on on Advent 4!).
The pageant was simple, very elastic (easily changed to work for a smaller or larger group), and inexpensive. We would happily purchase something from them again.

Here is Zachariah and Elizabeth being introduced:


Although it was a Children's Pageant, we did also use some adult actors. Here's our daddy holy trinity of John, Gabriel, and Zachariah:



And here are the children performing their "Big Number:"

John the Baptist: Science

I hope to add more Science Workshops into our program. This was our first one, focusing on "arise, shine for your light has come."

In this Workshop, the Leader put together solutions with different chemicals that create different colors of flame. Here, you can see the bottles of solution, and the children with their long wooden qtips:


The children listen as the Leader explains how there are many different colors of flame, but they all possess attributes of heat and light. Just like each one of us have our own unique gifts, but all those gifts can be ways for us to show God's love to others:

Prep for John the Baptist

I'm preparing for our long-advent WorkshopCycle on "A Voice in the Wilderness: John the Baptist."

The Story Cycle teaches the children to tell the story of John's life using a variety of stickers, which I purchased here.

And I didn't like the suggested Kitchen Cycle, so am writing my own which will include offering the children to task real honeycomb and bugs. Did you know you could buy edible bugs at Amazon.com?!?

CROP Walk

Harcourt Parish has completed our CROP Walk Cycle and it went very well. The granola bars from the Kitchen Workshop were a great success both at coffee hour and with the walkers. The signs the children made decorated the sanctuary for several weeks, and then some signs were taken to the walk itself.

It was fun to see how much of the 5-mile walk our young children could do. I think our family made it about 3 1/2 miles. Not bad for our first time without strollers. Here, you see that Luke (age 2) had more energy than Ella (age 6):


And here's many of our walkers with our altar party and signs right after church:

CROP Cycle and Children's Choir

Last Sunday was our first week of Children's Choir. We had a FANTASTIC turnout. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves--and the catchy tune hasn't left my head all week. (AKK!)
They will be singing for the congregation on Children's Sabbath Sunday, October 19th.


The Gradeschool classroom is currently doing a Cycle on CROP Walk. I created this cycle myself, so e-mail me if you'd like the lesson plans. The cycles include:
Movie (CROP Walk Video)
Art (Making signs and banners for the walk)
Drama and Music (older children rehearse a short play, younger children create a song)
Kitchen (making energy bars for the walkers).

Shameless Plug: To donate to CROP to help stop hunger around the world, just click here.

MDG Day of Prayer, Fasting and Advocacy

September 25th is a national day of prayer, fasting, and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals. Whatever day you happen to read this post, please take a moment to DO SOMETHING to support these.



There are about 1 BILLION people in the world living on less than $1 a day.
Every 3 seconds, a child dies of preventable, treatable causes (diarrhea, malaria, etc).
Some things you can do include:

Go to the Hunger Site. Click there and food will be donated by the sponsors just because you saw the advertising on their page. You can also sign up to get a daily e-mail reminder. I've been doing this for years. It takes about 10 seconds a day, and it gives someone food for the day.

Sign up to receive Action Alerts from EPPN or another group. When you receive one, it will take you about 1 minute to complete a form to send a statement to your legislators about issues around poverty and justice.

Loan $25 (or more) thru KIVA.org. It is really fun to look through their lists of people approved for micro-loans and choose the actual person and business you'll support.

Donate money to the Heifer Project, ERD, Curamericas, or the charity of your choice that helps "the least of these."

Have you DONE something yet? If not, stop right now and do one of these things.

I thank you, and God thanks you.

Samuel Rotation Sunday School

Harcourt Parish is again using WorkshopCycles for our 1st-5th grade Sunday School this year. It's quite affordable, but is best when you have a church member spend some time with it to fit it to your group. This year I'm investing more by creating short summary lessons plans for each of the workshops.

Our Samuel Cycle included:
Story (a game and a drama from WorkshopCycles)
Music (learning the torah ora hymn "God has spoken to his people" and a circle dance)
Art (decorating pillow cases--because Samuel was sleeping when God called him)
Kitchen (from WorkshopCycles-making rice krispy treats, a mix of loud and quiet food)

I was lucky enough to be able to lead the Art Workshop. It was tons of fun. After reading the cycle story, we talked about prayers we knew, scripture verses we knew, things we might like to hear God say to us, etc.

I had gathered a bunch of pillowcases from our parish rummage sale, washed them, and put cardboard in them to make a nice, flat surface. The children used painters pens, sharpies, and fabric markers, all of which worked really well.

The girls set up a table and did a great job decorating with dots and squiggles, writing scripture and prayers.

The boys drew pictures and accented with words.


Here is a fantastic monster being drawn (on the blue pillowcase). We paired it with the words, "you shall not be afraid of any terror by night" Psalm 95:5a . He could hardly wait to use it!


Next week we begin a rotation on CROP Walk that I created. Fun!

Prayer...In Action: Last Day

Again on Saturday, we had about 30 volunteers. I'm just overwhelmed at the turnout for this event. If I went back to work myself, Chapman would have had 3 workdays from me. Instead, by inviting others to join in the effort, they have instead had over 100 work days from all the volunteers this week! FANTASTIC.


After I heard about the tornado, I called my childhood best friend to check on her parents. They lived across the street from the school district office that was demolished. She said her house didn't have much damage. So I was brought to tears when I saw this "not much damage" on our way into town the first day:


Almost every window is boarded up around the house, the deck has damage, and that black line is a gouge in the siding that was one of many.
But when you compare this to the rest of the town, it really is "not much damage."

On Friday, we watched a 2-story house around the corner be demolished by a crew. It took them about 45 minutes. I was glad to hear that family has already purchased this house and will be making the minor repairs to it to make it livable.

One of the first tasks we did today was to help the Lutheran church move their things into storage trailers. Here is some stained glass they salvaged. The bottom piece is mostly intact. But the upper pieces are mostly just twisted lead from the windows that got blown out and re-sculpted. Amazing.


And our major task for the day was moving and cleaning as many chairs as we could.
We could not find a flatbed trailer to help with our job, so we borrowed a truck from Londeen's (Hardware and Furniture Store) for the day. We took many small trips, but got a lot done.


Once again, there was a heat advisory and again the volunteers did a great job getting lots of work done but also keeping hydrated and taking shade breaks.

THANK YOU to everyone who helped out in any way!! You are a blessing to me, to Chapman, and to God.

Prayer...In Action Day 4

We had 30 volunteers today!!!


I didn't get photos of today's big tasks. One was moving everything except 5th grade and cafeteria stuff from a pod to St. Michaels. The other was taking absolutely everything out of another pod, locating a specific secretary's computer that is needed for Monday's enrollment--and then putting EVERYTHING back into the pod.

It was an extremely hot day with heat advisories in effect. But our volunteers were real troopers and didn't complain at all. Everyone stayed hydrated and took shade brakes and we got the jobs done.

We also continued to work on the debris pile beside the daycare center:


And was able to make the alley completely clean again:

Thanks to all the helpers from St. Michael's and All Angels in Kansas City, Grace Cathedral in Topeka, and the Boy Scout troop from Witchita.

Prayer...In Action Day 3

My Day 3 (Wednesday) was mostly spent preparing for Day 4 (Friday). But I did get some pictures first thing in the morning. We began the morning picking up the yard around the school. Here is the house right beside the gradeschool, on the main drag for all the volunteers to see as they drive into town:


Here's the school yard we are working on. For those of you who knew Chapman before, you can easily tell the destruction. For others, you can see how the tree in the foreground has basically been peeled, and that under the green tarp part of the gym is missing. We are in the playground area, picking up metal and glass that is everywhere.


The tornado was 6 weeks ago, and new life is springing forth. All the trees that were ripped and peeled are now sprouting new leaves. They look so strange! I wonder what they will look like several years from now.


Here's some evidence of the power of the storm. These metal signs have been folded up, and the metal sign is bent almost to the ground:

Many of today's workers have been with us all week and planned to just work a half-day. But we started a big project just before they were to leave, and so they stuck with it and continued with some really hard work of carrying book boxes and other equiptment from storage pods to a trailer, and from a trailer to the Parish House where the grade school will be.

I am overwhelmed at the outpouring of help especially from members of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas as well as other family friends. When the tornado hit, I knew *I* wanted to go back and do something. But now instead of having one worker each of these days, there are 10 or 14 or...maybe even 30 on Friday/Sat. There's a parable in there!

Thursday is a day of rest. Shawn and I are visiting family, the youth and college students who have been helping are driving down to a youth Happening event in Wichita. Craig Loya, the campus missioner, is busy doing the rest of his week's work in this one day so that he can be present every day of our trip.

Prayer...In Action Day 2

Tuesday, day 2, it rained all day.
Two volunteers dropped out before we began because we didn't have our contingency plans in order until around 9:30. Luckily, they'll be able to work for a bit on Saturday instead.

Today, we were able to move more cafeteria supplies and food. The cafeteria went from 0% to 90% complete in the 2 days we've been here:


One problem with getting work done is finding enough trucks and trailers to haul stuff. Another issue is that there are too few dumpsters and volunteers can no longer take stuff to the dump for free.
Today, the daycare finally got a dumpster. It took us about 20 minutes to fill the dumpster, and we still had the same amount still sitting in the alley, and 4 times as much in the basement to be taken out:


By the end of the day, we had gotten through our other work but still had some time. So we started going door to door cleaning the markings off of homes:

I hope we're done with rain for the week. There is SO MUCH still to do to prepare the schools.