Friday, March 21, 2014

Adventures in Sunbeam Land

For the past nine months now I have spent two hours every Sunday trying to keep a dozen squirming three-year olds in their chairs and somewhat entertained.  It has honestly been a blast.  I love those little guys and they give me something to laugh about nearly every single Sunday.  When I first started we had 18 (yes, 18!) sunbeams in our class - 16 little boys and 2 little girls.  Every week was an adventure.  In January, though, we got a brand-new, fresh-out-of-nursery class of 6 little girls and 1 boy.

Together we learn very, very basic lessons every Sunday, such as "Heavenly Father has a Body" and this week's lesson, "I am thankful for Fish".

Here are just a few of the lessons I've learned from my Sunbeams:

Lesson 1:  The answer to everything is Jesus.  Doesn't matter what the question is.  While on a deeper level, I can philosophize about how wise it is to have Jesus as your answer to any question, I'm not convinced that my little guys are answering this out of wisdom.  For example, I once asked my class what animals they could think of that lived in trees and received the answer, "Jesus."  Um . . . let me ponder that one.

Lesson 2:  Three hours is too long for kids to go without food.  My very first week in Sunbeams one of my little boys came up to me at the end of class with the saddest look on his little face.  Sorrowfully, he told me, "Avery ate my paper" and held up his reminder slip that he was giving the prayer in primary next week.  Sure enough, his poor slip of paper was very soggy and looked like someone had taken a giant bite out of it.  Poor kid, life's rough when you have to guard you handouts for fear of other kids eating them.  Fortunately, we now have snack time every week and this has dramatically cut down on the eating of non-food items in our classroom.

Lesson 3:  A promise from a three year old is not very binding.  Just last week we had a lesson entitled "I am thankful for Plants, Trees, and Flowers", and since the weather was so nice I decided to take my little girls on a trip outside to look at all the plants and flowers we could see around the church.  Before we left the classroom I made them promise me that they would not leave the grass and would not go into the street.  After I had extracted a promise from every single one of them, we proceeded down the hall to the door and no sooner did I open it for them then one of them immediately took off running, straight for the street.  Fortunately, Marc was my co-teacher that week so he chased her down while I was able to keep the other five little girls enthralled finding pine cones.

Lesson 4:  The difference between boys and girls.  My little boys were INSANE.  There were times when we'd arrive in our classroom to find a dozen boys, all climbing up on the chairs and jumping off of them while making explosion and fighting noises.  However, when once told to do (or NOT do) something, they were pretty quick to respond and happy enough to do it.  Imagine my surprise when during the first week with our new little class of girls I told one of them that she could not stand on the chairs, only to have her burst into tears and spend the rest of the class time in hysterics.  Since then I've learned that I have to be a LOT more gentle with my little girls because they are simply so much more sensitive.  Even still, we have at least one crying fit every single Sunday when one of them doesn't get their way.  I miss my wild little boys.

Lesson 5:  The concept of honesty is impossible for three year olds to understand.  We once had a lesson entitled "I can be honest."  To begin my lesson, I spent a fair amount of time trying to impress upon them what a truth was versus what a lie was.  It was a timely lesson - the very first attention-getting activity we did was play Button Button, Who's Got The Button, and the very first child (who did NOT have the button) that got asked if he had it giggled and said, "Yes!"  Of course, that was hilarious to all the children, so they all responded in turn that Yes, they had the button, until it got to the little boy who actually had the button, and he responded that, No, he didn't have any button.  Even after an hour's worth of teaching and explaining, though, they still just couldn't grasp the concept of what truth/lies were.  We played a game at the end where I would tell them a simple statement like, "Johnny's wearing a red shirt today" or "We came to church today" and they would stand up if it was the truth, and with every single statement they all just stared at me in confusion.  By the end of the lesson I concluded that three years old is simply too young to understand something as complex as "truth."

Lesson 6:  Learn to keep a straight face.  My very first week in Sunbeams, a week after Marc and I got married, we were in the middle of a lesson about temples when one of the little boys suddenly started screaming at the top of his lungs, "The bad guys are coming to steal Jesus' body!" over and over and over again.  No amount of soothing from the other teacher could dissuade him from this idea, and I have to admit that I wasn't much help, as I was having difficulty keeping a straight face while she kept trying to explain to him that there were no bad guys in the temple.

2 comments:

  1. Ha ha ha Robyn, I love this!

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  2. Ha ha!! Oh my goodness Rob. First of all that is a TON of sunbeams. And I think I'm grateful just to be the primary singing time person--I don't really have to worry about controlling any children, I leave that to the teachers. You are awesome, and I would NOT be able to keep a straight face. :)

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