Palm Sunday 2011

Today we were back in our old venue, just for a day. We pushed back the cafe tables, something I'd never really had the guts to do before, and I brought a blanket so we could sit on the floor. (Fortunately it has warmed up a lot recently, and the floor was not too cold.) We had a fairly minimalist set-up: the focal shelf plus one story: "Jesus the King" from Young Children and Worship.

I also had a more compact art supply center than usual: paper, clay (plus tools), colored pencils, and crayons:

But in other ways today was far from minimalist. The service began outside with adults and children together for the Liturgy of the Palms and a procession - led by our 13-year-old member carrying the processional cross! 


Moreover, for the first time ever we tried Junior Church bilingually today. Two pastors (both of whom had studied translation as well as theology) helped me translate the YCW story from English to Finnish. I told the English story by heart, and after every paragraph or so I read the corresponding Finnish text from paper. One Mom came to interpret some of my introductory explanations about how Junior Church and our classroom work, and seethroughfaith interpreted a lot of my other instructions, as well as looking after the younger of the two non-English speaking children when she began to need more help figuring out what to do next during the Response Time. Thank you to everyone who helped to make today work out as well as it did!  

He laittoivat vaatteitaan ja palmunoksia tielle, 

jotta Jeesuksen olisi hyvä kulkea, ja huusivat: 

”Hoosianna korkeuksissa!

Siunattu olkoon hän, joka tulee Herran nimessä!”

"Hosanna in the highest!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

lost and found

Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost! 

(Luke 15:6)

(It was hiding in a cannister of colored pencils)

photo by seethroughfaith

singing Amen

The "Amen" song went better this past Sunday than it had the previous week. Instead of asking the others sing Amen-Amen-Amen under the verses (after we had begun with 2-3 choruses), I sang the verses alone. We finished with one more chorus just the Amens.

One girl asked if we could sing it again, so we sang the chorus again. Then she asked for the other part. I said, What, all six verses? Won't that be too much? She said, No. Another child said Yes. I suggested a compromise, and repeated the two verses about that day's stories.

My verses are also a compromise. Whether the song was a traditional spiritual, recorded and arranged by Jester Hairston, or an original composition by him, it has been treated as a folk song and various versions of its verses exist. I've picked and chosen from amongst these, and also penned a few of my own to fit the GP story plaques. But at the same time I'm pleased to keep certain details in the verses which are not found in the GP script.

See the little baby ~ Lyin' in a manger ~ On Christmas morning...
Led before Pilate ~ Then they crucified him ~ But he rose on Easter!

Here's a clip from Lilies of the Field, where Hairston's voice was dubbed in for Poitier's. As sometimes happens in our classroom, there's a little to-and-fro about the "correct" way to pronounce the word Amen:

all the time we need

Godly Play is one of those activities which encourages you to step out of clock time, from chronos to kairos. The goal is to be able to say, We have all the time we need (and mean it!).

Last year, Junior Church felt awkward and rushed. We left the adult service at the gradual hymn and rejoined them at or after the Agnus Dei. We could never predict how long the sermon and intercessions would last, so either guessed what time to return (sometimes bumbling in long before the AD, sometimes arriving to find the organist patiently playing twiddly music and all the adults waiting for us) or, worse, we would be summoned by someone bursting into our room calling, We're starting communion! Little time to put crayons away properly, certainly not time for prayer or a blessing. It was chaotic.

Now, though, we have all the time we need. If we are running a bit behind, the priest waits for us, and the parents are not impatient because they are enjoying coffee and fellowship. If the priest is running late, well, we can usually find something to do to fill the extra time.

a public domain image!

Last week, a child accidentally went off the paper with a crayon. Unfortunately, this child was pressing hard for a wonderfully brilliant and bold color, which ended up where it should not have. I breezily said, No problem. You know where the cleaning supplies are! (That was before I had looked at the stain.) Then I walked over to give moral support and my heart sank. I truly didn't think we would get that stain up. But I knelt down and explained what elbow grease is, and after a bit we began to share the work. I sprayed and the child scrubbed, and we made progress little by little. We swapped roles for a while, and then swapped back. I don't know how long we worked. When Vandriver arrived we hadn't even started the feast... but you could no longer see where the stain had been unless you knew - and once we stood up I lost it altogether.

We then calmly had our feast, a short prayer time, a blessing and our dismissal song.

The child's sense of accomplishment can only rival mine! The stain was not a disaster, children can clean up after themselves, and we had all the time we needed.

cleaning

One very important aspect of Montessori education and activities is the idea that when children do a task they do it from beginning to end. A child chooses an activity, collects the materials, does it, cleans up any spills or mess, and then returns the materials to their place. It is also possible for a child just to clean for the sake of cleaning, whether because something is dirty or to practice their scrubbing skills or play with water or enjoy the clean scent ...

Part of my dilemma is to figure out how to make this work within the confines of our situation. We do not have a sink in our room, and we have to set up and take down everything we use every time we meet. 

I have not been willing to introduce painting in Junior Church. I’m not yet up for collecting a bunch of smocks and the wherewithall to clean paint brushes, let alone the materials for cleaning spills and mistakes. And I do not have any polish in my room. Godly Play books encourage the idea of metal polishing as an activity, even going so far as to recommend the use of some “cheap” metal objects which will tarnish easily and need regular cleaning. But so far I've been unable to find any metal polish which isn't labelled Keep out of the reach of children.

When we started in February we had just a bottle of all-purpose spray cleaner and a roll of paper towels (kitchen roll), along with the waste basket and broom/dust-pan which were already in the room. The spray cleaner I bought, Helea, has several advantages and a couple of disadvantages:

Advantages:

• environmentally friendly
• locally produced (in Finland)
• kind to the skin
• smells nice (orange & rosemary)

Disadvantages:

• an adult-sized bottle
• limited control of error

See - I’m learning Montessori lingo! As I understand it, control of error means that a person should be able to tell whether or not they’ve done something right, without a teacher telling them. The problem with our cleaner is that it’s not colored at all, and sprays a wonderfully fine spray – which means that it’s very hard to see on a table or the floor once you’ve sprayed it. (And our children are still learning how to aim a spray bottle and squirt it.) I was a little tempted to switch to Tolu, which foams as it sprays so is easier to see. But that spray mechanism is significantly larger even than the one on our Helea bottle.

I’ve solved the bottle weight problem by getting a smaller, recycled spray bottle from a mother (thank you!), and pouring half the cleaner into that. So now we have two bottles, both of which are lighter. There's so much more to tell, but this post is getting pretty long already. Possible future topics include the lessons I've given about spray cleaning, the other things I've added to our cleaning basket, the problems which remain, and the cleaning victory that one child and I had this week. But for now I'll just sign off for now with a photo:

new tab

I've added a new tab about my materials. I am a little embarrassed to do this because I am not a crafter, and my "advice" runs along the lines of I merely used regular white glue for this. But today (so say my "stats"), somebody came looking for "how to make", and I wonder how many of the others searching for "godly play faces of easter" are after the same kind of information.

At least this will serve as a place to collect and organize links to my various blog posts, plus links to others' helpful blog posts on these topics. For now this is, as they say, very much a work in progress!

flea market place-mats for the focal shelf