Encouragement

Last Sunday was a real encouragement. We had a new family in church and the younger two girls joined us in Little Learners. Our prayer time was very extended with so much exciting news for which to thank God. Ethan, Maya and Lottie all prayed individually with their list of thanksgivings to God which was a real delight to hear.

Our memory verse for this Christmas is “you shall call His Name JESUS” Matthew 1 v 21 which Hadley is beginning to master! The girls loved joining in the singing with percussion instruments so we shall try more of this the next time. I read with the help of Maya two story books about the shepherds seeing the angels and then running to see Jesus. I love what Lydie wrote a few years ago in Saturday club….”I would like to be a shepherd because you would think you are a nobody and then an angel comes and tells you that the Greatest Person on earth has been born. And that you can see Him.”

Then we had a wonderful time with our shepherd pictures and creating a thick covering of wool to keep even the shepherds warm! I think the pics below give a good idea of the activities. Church lunch was nearly forgotten in the fun of craft work!

Joannie's first time at Little Learners

Busy evening! Writing up what we did last Sunday and preparing for tomorrow. Well it was terrific having Joannie’s help. We started on the Christmas story including the journey to Bethlehem and the Baby Jesus being born and laid in a manger. We told the story together while Joannie put up the figures on the flannelgraph. It was a real joy to see my Saturday club girl changing roles and the boys were fascinated. She helped them with their pictures and as you can see from the photos Hadley had great fun with the golden glitter glue!

Penny's morning with her "ninnle nerners"

here is what we did today at little learners.

Prayed:
thank you for:
Hadley: thomas, maisy and engy bengie
Ethan: the visual aid field
help for understanding the lesson.

Memory verse:
"He who has ears, let him hear."
Matthew 13:9

Song: 4 little seeds.

Story, from their children's bible. Jesus parable of the Good Sower. Matthew 13

Looked at the visual aid 'field' whilst reading story.

Each scattered seed on path, rock, thorns and soil.

Took seed off path, as birds ate it.



Watered seed.

Also grew cress heads, just for fun!!


Musical instruments for few songs.

Coloured pictures of the story, and talked about the seed being God's word, and Satan being an angel who used to be good and is now bad taking the word from our hearts if we don't understand it.

Also talked about loving money as being like thorns stopping us from loving Jesus.

All decided we want hearts like good soil.

Prayed that we would understand the bible when we read it so that Satan doesn't snatch the word away.

This week we had a prayer time full of excited thanksgiving for Auntie Hannah’s new baby, Eva. Then we (Cilla and Pauline) told the story of Moses crossing the Red Sea. The evening before I made up some ‘sea’ using angel delight, instant whip and blue food colouring. That made a tasty sea as you can see by the pics on the Little Learners front page. We had playmobil Israelites, with Moses and his rod, who walked across as the sea parted, followed by the Egyptians on horseback who drowned as the sea was pushed back over them. Colouring pages didn’t get reached as the boys were having too much fun re-enacting the story whilst washing the playmobil armies in a bowl of water to clean them up and start all over again. To call that session fun is an understatement! Penny is going to reinforce the lesson with the bath water. Sounds like a challenge!

“Hard after them Pharaoh’s host hurried
With chariots, horses and all,
But down in the depths they were buried;
The Lord caused the waters to fall.

No wonder they sang the Lord’s praises
Those Israelite children of old,
No wonder that down through the ages,
This wonderful tale has been told.”

This poem was written by my Auntie 50 years ago! I can’t remember the start of it but when I do I’ll fill you in!

Our first few weeks

We began with the story of Noah, spending about 6 weeks on this story and the children produced such good art work that it is in the process of being mounted on the main church wall alongside a poster courtesy of Saturday club.


After Noah we progressed to David and then to Moses. Penny took a fantastic visual lesson on the burning bush. Then last week I (Cilla) had an in-depth lesson on the plagues! We had visuals for the river Nile turning into blood…red material over a blue shiny ‘river’; cut-out frogs; lice (rice) in our hair; black rolled up tissue paper flies; ‘dead’ toy animals; red stickers for boils (the boys would have nothing to do with these!) table tennis balls for hailstones; green pegs on pictures of plants for the locusts; and we spent some time under black felt material for the darkness.

This past Sunday we (Cilla and Elaine) took the story of the Passover. The boys mixed up flour and water to make unleavened ‘bread’ and then we ate the resulting crackers, and they painted strips of red to represent the blood of the lamb being smeared over the doorposts. When we have more strips we will be able to position this. We would have painted the actual door but seeing as the church has just been freshly painted in magnolia we didn’t think Penny would be impressed!

Next week is the crossing of the Red Sea. We will keep you updated!

A new venture

Little Learners was commenced in July 2009 replacing crèche as it was laid upon our hearts that no child is too young to learn about Jesus.