Christian Momma

2008 has come and gone already.  It sure seemed to go by quickly…sometimes a little too quickly!

January

The year started out with me beginning to work on Power Lab VBS (Ah Ha!).  I was also homeschooling Michael.  We were pretty on top of our schooling and things were going pretty smoothly at the time.  I was also beginning to work in the K-1 Sunday School class room at church.  That, wasn’t going as smoothly as I had wished.

February

VBS started to consume my thoughts.  I was having dreams about not being ready, and just an overwhelming sense that I’ve bitten off more than I could chew.  AKA…I wasn’t relying on God to help me, I was relying on my own strength to do it.

February also brought about Daniel & Andrew’s 3rd birthday as well as my 34th birthday.

Michael entered his first Science Fair and ended up with a Superior rating!  I was proud, but knew full well that if he had applied himself earlier in the month, but he decided to wait until the last minute to do it.  Then we hit a rough patch in our homeschooling…a bad one.  Causing me to question my ability to teach him not to mention my basic parenting skills.  But, through the Grace of God we got through it with help from some friends in our church.

March

March brought in a lot of saddness.  My grandmother’s health begain to fail drastically.  And a friend of mine lost her child in a horrible accident. My heart ached in ways I never knew it would.  Things in me shined trhough as well.  I didn’t realize how “in tune” I was to other’s saddness.  Michael had a meeting with the staff from his online school and things turned out so much better than I had originally anticipated.

April

In April, I took a blogging break…school slipped behind and I had to push Michael to get as much done as possible a day!  Spring seemed to bring out the worst in his schooling abilities and slowly we fell behind.

May

I won this Word Press blog…I’m ever so greatful to Lisa for hosting the giveaway that allowed me to win! The final push to get VBS was upon us.  VBS was scheduled for the 2nd week of June.  My grandmother passed away that month as well.

June

VBS week came and went without too much problems.  Yes, there were a few bumps in the road, but overall things turned out GREAT!  I was elated that things went as well as they did and relieved that it was all over with as well.

July

We celebrated Michael’s 11th birthday in July along with Kevin and I’s 14th wedding anniversary.  In between those 2 events, we threw my mom and dad a 60th Birthday/40th Wedding Anniversary party.  We were very impressed that we were able to pull it off!  Mom and dad had only suspected that we were planning on all going out to eat together, not that we would have all of their friends and family at a hall waiting for their arrival!  We even got one of their friends from High School to travel from Chicago to Ohio to celebrate with them as well!

We also got to see Extreme Makeover Home Edition in our town.  My mother drove down the night before to stay overnight and we headed out to the new house to watch the bus move.  That is a day that was HOT, but I wouldn’t have missed for the world.  To see something like that is a once in a lifetime thing.  Michael still claims to have High-Fived Ty!

August

We went for our 1 and only camping trip of the year.  We had so much fun, and would love to go back to the Michigan Dunes again.  Our church also had a Worship Night.  Something changed in me that night and I have been forever changed!

September

School started right after Labor Day!  We decided to send Michael back to public school since things weren’t working out the best for us at home.  We are happy to report that he is doing wonderful in the public school!

We celebrated Noah’s 8th birthday in September.  We also found out that an eight year old child, when given $20 in cash and not watched very closely at the grocery store (because mom and dad were busy ringing/bagging groceries), will spend the whole $20 on lottery tickets!  And before you ask…YES it’s illegal for him to purchase them, but when they have a “vending machine” of lottery tickets just sitting over by the bubble gum machines, it’s just calling for a child to play with it!  And he only wond $2!

October

In October, Kevin and I started going to a new Bible Study.  I was elated that Kevin wanted to go to one since he has never really showed any interest in going before.

We also walked, for the first time, in the JDRF Walk for a Cure for my Niece.  We were so proud of her, she ended up getting 2 awards…one for the amount of money raised and the other for the T-Shirt design!

November

We celebrated Kevin’s 38th birthday.  How?  Well, I went to a Arbone party and he watched football…now that’s love!

We had our traditional weekend after Thanksgiving shopping adventure.  My parents’ took Michael, Noah, Daniel, & Andrew for the weekend (it ended up my parents had Daniel & Andrew and my sister had Michael & Noah).  We always enjoy that weekend away from the boys.  It’s nice to pretend we are childless…even if it’s just for the weekend!  But we are always so excited when they return.

December

We spent most of the month either running from Christmas Program to Christmas Program or from Christmas to Christmas.  However this year it seemed to be a little less travel than usual.  We only spent 1 night up at my parent’s house and we actually had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home for the first time in a long time!

For 2009, I’m sure there will be new things that God shows us along the way, new challenges to overcome and new friends to meet, but I trust that God will be joining us along this journey and we will rest in the knowledge of Him.

Yesterday as I was getting ready for church, my phone rings.  It was one of the Sunday School teachers calling to let me know that her son was sick and she wasn’t going to be able to make it into class.  She wasn’t sure if she should call me (since I have been covering for the Children’s Ministry Director while she’s  out on “Maternity Leave”) or Kate (Children’s Ministry Director).

Since the children she was teaching was half of my class (they closed my class room for the summer and shuffled the children around a bit…freeing me up to help Kate) and the other half of the class was children that had moved out of my class not too long ago, I would just go ahead and teach the class.  Most of the children knew me anyway.

So, I go into the class, look around the desk for some sort of curriculum…I couldn’t find anything.  Then I remembered that Darlene (the teacher) had been teaching the children something different.  I search for a note (I know she sent them home with the children when she started in that class).  When I found it, it had the things they will be learning on it:

Books of the Bible, Fruit of the Spirit, 10 Commandments, Armor of God, Creation, and Alphabet Bible Memorization.

I had no clue where she was or what was/wasn’t taught.  So what was I going to do??  These children ranged in age from Kindergarten (they would be going into the 1st grade in the fall) to 3rd grade (those going into the 3rd grade in the fall…4th graders moved up a class).

Once all the children came in and were seated, I looked at them and told them that I had no idea what Mrs. Darlene had taught on or how she ran her class…so, they were going to teach me!

First thing I was told I had to do was put all the books of the Old Testament on the board…I’m still not quite sure why I had to put them up there, but they told me I had to, so being the good student, I did what I was told.  I got my Bible out and Eric said, “Don’t you know that already?”  I can honestly say, NO, I don’t know the books of the Bible…I used to years ago know what order they were in, now I just sort of guess!

Next thing I had to do was turn on the music…we got to listen to a song!  It was the books of the bible.  Ok, I can see where this is going, we are learning the Books of the Old Testament.

Alec told me that it was now time for each child to recite the books of the OT and get their butterfly moved to where they stop at on this tree.

Did I mention that Darlene is very creative?  She made these 2 trees out of paper, a scene really where all the leaves on the one tree are the OT books and the leave on the other tree are the NT books!  Each child had a butterfly with their name on it attached to a paperclip that would get moved across the tree.

I just have to say that I was more than impressed at how well each child did!  I got to move almost every child’s butterfly to a new position and 1 child finished all the books in the OT and NT!  Did I mention the ages of these children?  They are learning!!

After getting through that, I started looking around the room and asked what they learned last week.  Most of the children weren’t there last week, but 1 child told me the Armor of God.  So over to the poster I went and I started asking question on what each part of the Armor of God was and what it stood for!  These children are S-M-A-R-T!!

After that, we moved onto the Fruit of the Spirit.  They explained to me what each of the 9 Fruits of the Spirit were/meant.  I began on the 10 Commandments…which 1 child informed me that they didn’t do that yet, but I know from my previous ’bouts of teaching that they should have heard this before, so I continued.  We got through most of them, then the parent’s started arriving to pick up their children!

I have never been so impressed by a group of children as I was Sunday with this class.  I wrote a note to Mrs. Darlene so that she knew what we did.

After shuffling the children around to 2nd service class and off with their parents, I talked a bit to Kate.  She had asked me to pray about what God really wants me doing in Children’s Ministry.  I flat out told her that I know my gifting is not in teaching, but I will teach if that’s where I’m needed there.  She said she sees me more in an administrative position instead of teaching, but in moving me, that would require more teachers.

So, now I need to focus and lay it all out at God’s feet.  Find out what it is that I am supposed to be doing.  I know He will show me the way and it will all work out the way it was intended…I just need to listen!

I have never been hit so hard by Satan’s attempts to drag me down as I have these past couple of days! I know it has to do with my involvement in what God wants me to do…Praise & Worship, Teaching Sunday School, & VBS…and with Kevin getting involved…Sound team.

Michael is showing signs of rebellion and it came to a head today. I don’t want to go into it right now, I just am asking for prayer.

5 of the 6 of us are sick! And get this…I was supposed to sing this weekend and Kevin was supposed to run sound. Not to mention that Saturday is Daniel & Andrew’s birthday. Do you see how Satan is trying to drag us down! Please pray for us. I need a Spiritual covering and am in dire need of getting immersed in His word!

Thanks!

My Sunday School classroom is in desperate need of decorating!!

The classroom name is Alligator Alley…K-1

I have grey/brown (somewhere in between those colors) colored walls.

I was wanting to do something on my bulletin board and on the Walls (posters or cut-outs…no painting) and the door. Oh and there’s also a white board that I could decorate around. And cubby holes that I want to have a neat label for each child’s name…along with some sort of attendance record.

I need help! Any ideas??

This past Sunday was my first day teaching the children! I have 1st and 2nd graders…and boy was I blessed beyond belief!

They each said their memory verse from last week. The lesson went smoothly too! I was surprised, they were all really quiet. Not sure if that was because I was new or if they are always quiet.

I hope they all enjoyed themselves!

I have been sitting here thinking about Sunday School…

As you know, I have volunteered to co-teach 1st and 2nd graders starting in September. Our Curriculum has been ordered and I’m hoping it will be here soon so I can dive into it. Our schedule is set in place…I’m on 2 weeks in a row, then off 2 weeks in a row. But, knowing me, I’ll probably study EVERY lesson in there.

Last Wednesday, I had a meeting with the Director of our Children’s ministry (Kate) and the other teacher (Darlene) that will be teaching with me. Kate showed us where all our supplies were at, asked us to check a few weeks in advance for any art supplies, in case we were low on supplies and she would order them.

We sat in our classroom and looked around. Darlene and I have been given the go ahead to do as we want with the room (posters on the walls, charts, extra incentives above and beyond the “rations” that are given for knowing your Bible verse and bringing your Bible, etc.). I think Darlene and I (I’ll have to double check with her) are going to do a chart to help those children with their memory verses. We both have boys in that class, so we have our own ideas of what we would like to see as parents of children in the class.

Rations…these are little slips of paper that are given to the elementary students. Children get 5 rations for knowing their memory verse for the week, 1 for coming to Sunday School, and 1 for bringing their bible to class. They can also earn more for knowing all the books of the bible (I think it’s 40 for the OT and 30 for the NT). Once a quarter, they open up a store so that the children can use their rations to purchase toys, candy, etc.

Darlene and I discussed about giving the parents a list of all the memory verses that we will be going over for the fall curriculum at the beginning of September, but then also having that particular week’s verse written out on their paper for them to take home with them and learn. I do a lot of graphic stuff for a message board I’m a member of, so I have a bunch of graphics that I will probably work into our little slips for our memory verses. What I’ll do is probably get them all typed out week by week with graphics when we get our books and then we will have each verse ready for each week…we’d just have to copy them.

Darlene has a tape of a song that goes over the books of the bible, so we are going to incorporate that into our lessons so that the children will learn the books of the bible.

I would love to do some special things for these children, but I don’t know what. I feel like there’s something I NEED to do, but can’t quite put my finger on what that is!

Do you have any suggestions and or ideas for us? I’d love to hear how you do things in your Sunday Schools!