Bulletin update

Found the website for the children's bulletin downloads. I'm so excited!! When I had did it before they didn't offer it in a download format. It is going to be so much easier to work with this way. Today I'm going to go get the clipboards for the bags and I hope to make the bags today too! I have some great canvas material (green stripe and blue stripe). I will use one color for the 3-6year old bags and the other for the 7-12 year old bags. Hope that the kids like it!!

Went to the movies last night with the kids. Saw "How to Train Your Dragon". It was great! Joanna got a little emotional toward the end but it all was O.K.

Activity Bags

Just keep thinking about our Christian Education Dept. at church. I'm thinking that perhaps I need to be part of the committee that helps with all of it. This would give me input in what's happening and maybe help with the creative end of things. The other area of children's ministry that has been neglected is the activity books that are available in the lobby for kids. The gal that had been keeping track of that doesn't come to church anymore (or VERY infrequently). I've been thinking on this one for awhile on ways to improve and freshen the area up. I had seen at a church we had visited some activity bags for kids that had a box of crayons, stencils, stickers, a small clipboard with paper, and an activity sheet. I'm thinking that I could do that. Started working on general clean-up of the boxes yesterday and found a shelf/rack that I could house the bags on to keep the area neat. Just need to find the activity pages to use and then assemble the bags. I'm excited about this project!!!

The weather has been incredibly nice here. Yesterday it was in the upper 60's and today it is going to be in the 70's!!! Spent some time raking the yard out yesterday and doing just a little bit of cleaning in the flower beds. Looking forward to digging around some more this week!!!

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.