No matter of what faith you are, any one involved in passing that faith on to the next generation may be able to take these ideas and run with them. If you already do a tightwad Sunday school, share your ideas.

When I got the summer curriculum for my 4- and 5-year-old Sunday school class, I was dismayed to find that the publisher was, ONCE AGAIN, totally redoing the curriculum, starting with the fall quarter, meaning that we could no longer order just the workbooks and use the visuals from previous years. This is rather irritating, since we have shelves full of old, no longer relevant, supplies. Having been brought up in Sunday school and taught Sunday school, I figured I could surely make up my own lessons with all those visuals.

Lesson: To make organizing topics a little easier, I decided to use a book I already had, called "Leading Little Ones to God" by Marian M. Schoolland. This book teaches basic Bible doctrine in simple terms for children aged about 4-8 years. There are enough lessons for over a year and a half. Each lesson includes a memory verse and a song to learn.

Attendance/Memory verse charts: I made a mural for the fall quarter with a tree and a squirrel for each child. Every Sunday they are there, they give their squirrel a nut. Every time they know their verse, they get a fall-coloured leaf for their tree. Each leaf has the verse reference printed on it. This is all made with a background of newsprint (you can get an end-of-the-roll from most newspaper offices), with the trees drawn on with marker and coloured by the children with brown crayon. The squirrels, nuts, and leaves are made of construction paper and stuck on with small pieces of double stick tape. At the end of the quarter, we will cut them apart so each child can take their own charts home. For the winter quarter, I plan to do a snow scene with a snowman and evergreen tree. We will dress the snowmen and maybe scatter snowflakes about.

Songs: We have a collection of hymns and chorus written up on poster board or construction paper (both can be cut or folded and taped together to make books) illustrated with magazine pictures. I have added to this collection, and we are planning to redo some older ones that are falling apart.

Crafts: This has been the most challenging for me: designing a craft that will match the memory verse and lesson for each week. In the supply room, I found an old pattern book of simple pictures of all sorts of things: nature (trees, birds, etc.), children doing different things, paper bag puppet heads, body parts (which I used for "oh, be careful little eyes what you see...."), etc. I try to think of all the things kindergartners like to do: cut, glue, colour, paint, etc; and all the materials they like to use: coloured paper, glitter, stickers, markers, etc. Then I vary the different craft ideas so that we are not always colouring every week. This week we are learning about the Trinity, so we will have a picture of heaven (God the Father), baby in manger (God the Son) and a dove (God the Holy Spirit). Heaven will have glitter, the manger some hay and a scrap of flannel (blanket), and the dove maybe some small feathers.

I have been having a lot of fun with this, and will save the church a tidy bit of money over the next 18 months or so (since I don't order the curriculum, I don't know the exact amount, but it would probably be about $150, maybe more; that's US funds).

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), November 08, 2001

Answers

WHY CAN"T I BE MORE LIKE YOU MISSY??? ,my dearest Mrs. Newton, i had thought of that idea myself, but i don't think i'll start doing that until i'm done school. I'll miss teaching tomorrow morning, katies forcing me to stay until the afternoon. =) Tell my class, they'd better know their memory verse. =) And i'm going to test them on last months verses, they'd better start reviewing. Well, we'll see about that...i had tried to do that from the begining. Its hasn't stayed that way. When you get a chance, write if you can. JILLIBEANY

-- jillian (sweetunes483@yahoo.com), November 10, 2001.