The kids are just loving their
time doing the Jesus Prayer,
esp. as they get to have the prayer ropes to hold and use.
*
Most of them have not heard of the Jesus prayer
and all of them love the book we read on it,
that we still have not gotten all the way through
and will keep working on as we go forward.
One of the challenges of my particular class is that I can have kids
from age nearly 4 to even age 11.
A really wide range.
One of the neat things of this book is that it has illustrations of
all ages of kids, from about age 3 to teenager all praying
the Jesus Prayer.
So every time we read some of it, I talk about what I am reading
and show them that age differences in the pictures:
the Jesus Prayer is for everyone at any age.
We say the prayer together
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me
about seven or so times together, holding our prayer ropes.
The point of doing the Jesus Prayer together is to
get them familiar with it,
get them in time to remember it and to use it outside of class.
It will take time and a lot of repetition.
*
The lesson for the day was on the church new year
and what Christ did on the day that began the new year:
Mr. Husband printed this icon for me at work in colour
from an email I sent so it was big enough (the actual file was too small)
and I had it on my clip board.
Very rudimentary, simple use of the icon.
Eventually I would like to get a laminator so that I can
laminate some icons myself.
But we are dealing with reality here and that building and
starting anything takes time and a lot of effort.
*
I showed them all the icon,
I read them the words from Isaiah that you see in my
They were a larger group that day and a bit fidgety...
(I have lots of wonderful boys in my class!)
They had a harder time tracking the sequence of
Jesus reading the words from Isaiah
and remembering what I just read.
I was not at all deterred and kept circling back to it.
I would ask them,
what did Jesus do on this day?
Showing them the icon.
I explained about Israel
(I then got a story from one of them about the walls of
Jericho falling down which another boy then
incorporated into the lesson)
and how they sinned and were thus brokenhearted.
I talked about how Christ said
He has now come to do heal the brokenhearted.
I talked about big words like fulfilled and
about ways that we can have Christ dwell in us.
*
I talked about the word Gospel and that it means Good News.
One of the best parts of this process was when I asked them
what is the Good News? and a bunch of them all said or thought:
Christ is Risen!
and one of the boys said, yes and we say Christ is Risen! for 40 days.
So clearly they are getting the most important things
through church and home...which is great.
But the kids are all at different levels and situations.
So I teach and seek to enthusiastically tell them how God loves them,
how Christ came to heal our broken hearts.
*
I love how many of them are excited to answer the questions I ask.
I never am bothered if they don't know the answer or
do on a small rabbit trail.
*
One thing I think that my friend who graciously stayed with me again
told me after is that it may have helped
with the 'wiggles' if they had a chance to do a small craft time
and draw Jesus healing their broken heart.
I am hoping to do this in the future.
*
Really the lesson incorporates a lot of what the Orthodox church
teaches very quickly:
Salvation; how we are to acquire the Holy Spirit and be
dwelling places of God, what Christ came to do.
So these are all themes I hope to reiterate through out the class.
*
They are thrilled to have crackers by the way.
This week was graham crackers,
bought by Mr. Husband the day before.
*
I am seeing that this schedule may work well for our class:
~prayer time at beginning with Jesus Prayer
~going over the names of everyone to be sure not missing someone new
and make sure to not miss a birthday or name day ... while doing this is
cracker time
~doing the lesson ... lots of conversation time here
~doing a small drawing or reading a story
*
Overall it was a great second class and I am so glad
to be doing it.
I am learning a lot and am excited for next week!
I hope to write about some of the challenges I see
that are merely situational and how we are
doing things from a logistical, practical standpoint...
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