First week of the 4-year-olds...

and the Sunbeams teacher didn't show or have a sub, so I had the 3-year-olds, too. Somehow, with half the ward missing for the holiday weekend, primary still was packed! And singing/sharing time were rough - the music person did all patriotic type songs, but my little kids didn't know any of them, and then for sharing time the primary president had pictures of the founding fathers and was trying to tell stories about what they did. Again, the little kids didn't know any of them, and by now were crawling out of their chairs, and the stories ran together pretty quickly when you're telling them at Jr. Primary level. Everything was meaningful and stuff they should learn, bit it would have been nice to mix it up with some parts the kids knew.

Class went well, though. I had planned the lesson in 3 parts, with activities following each part. I felt that was one of the problems last week, where she tried to do the whole lesson at the beginning (as they rapidly lost focus/reverence), then went to the activity when it got too out of control. Only one activity doesn't really hold their attention for that long either, and they weren't prepared to sit back down and do more lesson. So I borrowed my friend, Heidi's, suggestion about using a stoplight and pictures of the rules - only we have just one rule. When the picture of the chair is up, it's time to put bums in the seats and be quiet. Then when we would do an activity, I'd put the picture down so they knew they could get up and talk and move around. And same as for Heidi, they rose to the occasion - they couldn't get in their seats fast enough when the first activity was over and I put the chair picture back up. So we had the story of the 10 lepers, then we got up to search the room for Mr. Potato Head pieces and reviewed the story as they put each part in place - Jesus saw (eyes) they were sick and heard (ears) them ask for help, so he blessed them (arms) and made them better. Then 9 of them ran away (feet), but one stayed to say thank you (mouth). Then there was a story about a little boy who's dad died, and he was so sad because he loved fishing with his dad. But then his primary teacher invited him fishing, and he was so happy and said thank you. Then we went magnet fishing, and the fish had pictures on the back of things we should be thankful for, and we thought about who we should thank for them. And finally we had a story about a little girl who wrote a thank you card to her primary teacher, then spent the rest of the lesson time making thank you cards for whoever they wanted - which pretty much ended up being all their moms, but they had pretty good ideas of what to thank them for. Kids that age are so funny - What do you want to thank your mom for? 'Cause she found my other shoe this morning! She bought blue bubbles for my bath! She sits outside so I can ride my trike! I thought those were great - they all deserve thank yous, right? And I remembered how quickly they got tired of coloring last week, plus how my mom always says that Olivia (my niece) can sit for hours putting those foamie stickers on stuff. They were on sale this week for 50% off at Michaels, so I stocked up. And once the first kid was done with coloring, we transitioned to stickers. I figure I can stretch the quiet lesson times longer and make the activities shorter as we progress - but I was really glad I'd planned it this way, instead of going all in on a long lesson, when I suddenly had the Sunbeams to deal with as well.

It was interesting, because the helper for the Sunbeams is a developmentally disabled lady. I thought it would be great to have another adult in the room - then I realized she was earnestly participating in the lesson. I asked the kids how it feels when you're sick, and suddenly she's telling this long story about having pneumonia and being in the hospital! And she wanted a turn in the activities - fortunately, Mr. Potato Head has a lot of parts, and there were 9 fish in the little magnet game. But it threw me a bit at first to have an adult-sized person jumping into these simple little activities. She was enthusiastic, though, and she was able to walk kids to the restroom. Plus she knew all the Sunbeam's names and was able to understand the ones that I couldn't quite follow.

So, more than you ever wanted to know about CTR 4s, but that's pretty much the only interesting thing I did this week. Unless you all want cat stories - and I've been assured by more than one person that you don't really. So I won't go on about how Bodie has learned to fetch his favorite toy, and how dang cute it is. :)