Christian Education

I took a turn yesterday at teaching the 3-5 grade Sunday School class. Usually I don't mind doing it...kinda of fun to hang with the kids. However, I found yesterday's session challenging. My own 2 kids were being quite obnoxious and not good at being "present" with the lesson and the other two (a member's daughter and her friend) were really out there too. Usually I don't have a problem with the class (I've taught it before) but yesterday was not good. I'm wondering if the regular teacher just isn't teaching well and commanding their respect. It took about half my time to just get them centered on reading some of the scriptures for the class. This shouldn't have been so hard. My youngest said something along the lines of "we don't usually read from the Bible but read from a worksheet". I think that there is a need to get hands on experience with reading the Bible. I even made it easy because we used the same version of the Bible and I gave them the page number of where they needed to be. The other part of the problem (I think) was the cirruculum. They were starting in on the "winter" quarter with the text being the Christmas prophecy and story. Strange to work with because it is almost Easter and should have been something about the last supper or palm Sunday. I'm going to ask the pastor about it and see what's up. There has been a real laxness on the part of the Christian Education at our church and I'm concerned. There are some fabulous people in our church whose talents are not being used. Hmmm....gotta meditate on how to approach all of this.