Daniel & the lions' den
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This past Sunday was my first time teaching with EKKO Kids. It was filled with both things that worked well, and things that I know to work on for next time.
After children’s worship, we came to the classroom and sat on the rug. We went over the class rules of Give Me 5. Then we learned the Bible verse for the week. I had the Bible verse with each word written out on a separate piece of paper and taped to the white board. I taught the children a song with a few claps for the Bible verse. They all responded very well to this as they were attentive. The girls in particular were very enthusiastic about the Bible verse “game”, which was, we would sing the song, but each time we sang it, I would remove the last word of the verse from the white board and I would not sing that word. It ended with the white board empty, and the children singing the Bible verse all on their own. Since it is very easy to memorize a Bible verse when it is put to a catchy tune, Michelle and I took a lot of advantage of this throughout class. As a reinforcement and also to bring us back on focus, we sang the song at various times throughout Sunday school. We also asked the children individually to sing the verse to us (I think most of them were able to – Michelle took care of this while the children were in play time) and then rewarded them with a sticker.
I used paper head puppets while telling the story about Daniel and the Lion’s den. I didn’t stick strictly to the way the story was told in the lesson plan, but added some more details as it is written in the Bible. The children were also very attentive for the story. As in the lesson plan, I opted not to describe the part of the Bible story where the men who accused Daniel to the king, were themselves (with their wives and children) thrown into the lion’s den. This part of the story – about the men being thrown into the lion’s den – was later brought up by Martin while we were doing our activity of play-acting the Bible story, and we play-acted this part out too.
After the story, I asked the children if they had any questions. Then I asked if any of them had any comments. None of them had either questions or comments. I think next time, I will ask the children open-ended questions to generate thinking/more response.
Michelle had activities for the children to reinforce the story and lesson. First, she had them play act the story with toys. After doing this, she had the children play act the story with each child playing a character. Both of these activities helped to reinforce the story. It was interesting to observe that the children were not as conversant as I thought they would be when they were play acting. Michelle would ask them what a character might say and they would be very shy about it and not say anything. When she told them what the character might say, the child would repeat it in the play acting. It seems to me that upon the first go-round of play acting, a simple script with promptings from the teacher would work well since I noticed the children being confident about what the character says after Michelle told them what to say. Then on the second go round, I’d be very interested to see how the children would do without promptings.
The children behaved well and received 3 marbles in the marble jar.
I did goof up after the children had snack. All of them had gone to wash their hands afterward and Michelle was in the hall watching/helping them. As they trickled back in, I was not really prepared as Michelle was doing the activity. She had explained it to me, but I see that I had interpreted it as kind of a play time. So some of the boys came back first and since Michelle was still with the other children, I thought it best to get the activity ready and I brought out the toy lions and characters that Michelle had brought. I told the boys to play act the Bible story and for a few moments they did, but then they decided they wanted to play something else. One of them asked me if he could play with the Legos instead, and I said okay. Shortly after, Michelle and the rest of the children came back and we were in play time way ahead of time. Michelle told the children to put the Legos back because it was not play time. I told Michelle that I had brought out the “Daniel” toys for the kids to act out, but they didn’t stick with it, and that one of the boys had asked if he could play with the Legos, and I had said okay. I wish that I had not only explained what happened to Michelle, but also apologized to both her and the children. I should have told them that I was sorry and that I had made a mistake. I plan to be prepared to admit my mistake and apologize the next time something happens, no matter how embarrassed I am.
A couple of other things: at snack time one of the children started talking about another one of the children, a relative, and saying things about them that were embarrassing. I didn’t say anything at first because I didn’t quite understand who she was talking about, and then I also thought she would stop. However, she went on, and then said something else embarrassing about the child. This prompted another child to say something about it too. At this point, Michelle started another conversation at the snack table. Looking back, of course, I wish I’d known how to address this. If/when this happens again, I think I will say something like, “Sweetheart, let’s not talk about things about other people that would embarrass them.” I might also pose the question of how would they feel if someone said the same thing about them to others. I could also ask if that is a loving thing that they were doing by saying these things. I tend to believe this child said all these things for attention.
Finally, when it really was playtime, some of the children were playing with the game, “Operation”. This game is for kids, and has a naked man on the board with places where you have to remove body parts like the funny bone, etc. He’s very age appropriate with no genitalia. But one of the children pointed to that area and laughed and said a word in Korean. I ignored it because I thought not to make a big deal of it and it would pass. Another child asked me why the man was naked, and I said that it was because he was having an operation. The other child continued pointing that area out and saying the word in Korean. Michelle heard and said something, I can’t remember what, but it made the child stop. Next time, I will just say, “Okay honey, that’s enough” should something like this happen again where a child keeps on about something.