I hope your MC goes well next Sunday, madhairday .
I had a lovely morning yesterday with my pre-schoolers. We're doing parables at the moment, and yesterday it was the wise man who built his house upon the rock. We read the story (from Stories Jesus Told, which is my favourite kids book ever - I wish they'd done every Bible story like this, because it's about the only thing that keeps everyone in a group of mixed 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 year olds' attention the whole way through), and then had a discussion where the houses were built and what happened when it started to rain (I love the details in that book, because we were talking about the house on the sand, and I said "and then the rain dripped on his head" and I was shouted down by several of them "no, on his nose!"). Then we talked about their houses, and what they looked like, and where they were built. We also had a little discussion about what Jesus meant when he said that he was like the rock ("does he look like a rock? Or is he strong like a rock?"). Then we passed a stone around to feel how it was hard like a rock, and put it in our jelly bean box (shoebox covered in jelly bean wrapping paper, with an item to remind us of each parable in it). A couple of them (not just the child-who-answers-all-the-questions - which there seems to be one of in whichever group of children you have) remembered what the story was last week, and why we had a plaster in the box (Good Samaritan). Then we built a house out of duplo and poured water over it to see what happened when it rained, ditto a sandcastle. I've got some gorgeous pictures of their faces as they watched me pouring the water, to go on the noticeboard for next week.
I'm trying to sort out what we should do for the rest of the term, and I think I've settled on the fruits of the spirit, starting with pictures of trees ("What tree is this?" "A insert-name-of-tree-here tree." "How do we know?" "Because it's growing x fruit" repeat ad nauseum until "Jesus wants us to be Jesus-trees. How will people know we're Jesus-trees? Because we're growing Jesus-fruit. What is Jesus-fruit? It's love, kindness etc"). I've also seen a demonstration with an over-ripe black banana, and a ripe banana, asking the children which one they'd rather have, and explaining that God wants us to be like the nice ripe banana, etc.
We'd then focus on one (or two some weeks, because there aren't quite enough weeks) fruit each week, with each spiritual fruit having a physical fruit which corresponds with it (so strawberries are love because they're heart-shaped, oranges are joy because the segments make smiley-faces, bananas are faithfulness because they stick together in a bunch etc), with a bible story where someone demonstrates that fruit, a craft to do with that fruit, and the physical fruit as a snack.
I was also thinking about giving each child a clear pencil case with laminated fruits in it (a picture of the fruit and the fruit-of-the-spirit word on it), which they could take home and bring back each week to collect more fruits, and encourage the parents to help the children use it each week, to recognise when they might need to be kind to someone, or patient for something, and use the fruits to remind to pray for it, but I'm not confident the pencil cases would come back each week - has anyone had any experience of children having things they should bring backwards and forwards each week, and does it work?
And more generally, does anyone who's still awake after my mammoth post have any ideas or comments? I really wish I could ask the person who's usually in charge of writing all the teaching for advice on this, but she's on Sabbatical until March :-(