Lesson 11: I Am Grateful For Fish

You know how sometimes you think you get a brilliant idea and you are sure it is the most innovative, creative solution and then it goes terribly wrong? That was my opening for the I am grateful for fish lesson. Thankfully the rest of the lesson went a little better.

I opened by showing a picture of the earth and asking what it was. Then I asked who made the earth and why. Then I got out a big bowl of water and asked them what was in the bowl. I let them touch it and asked them what it was. A lot of them really liked the water for whatever reason. Then I told them there was something really special about water. I said water made a very special home.

This is where the trouble began. At the dollar store I had purchase those little sponge pills that you can pop into the water and the pill disolves and a sponge comes out. I found a pack of 12 of sea creatures. Perfect, right? I let each child take a pill and pop it into the water. I told them to watch what happened, that the pill was going to "hatch." We watched and watched and watched. Nothing. Stupid cheap pills. Thirty minutes later a few of them had sort of half broken open. NO FUN.

So I powered through and asked the kids if they knew what lived in the water. I showed them a picture of a fish. Then I told about the apostles, that they were fisherman and I showed them a picture. Since it was Easter I told them the story of the resurrection and told them that the apostles were so surprised to see Jesus that they couldn't believe that he was really resurrected. I told the kids that Jesus ate fish and honey to show the apostles that he was alive again. Then I let everyone eat a swedish fish.

After that, I brought out my magnet fishing pole. I put cut out fish in a "pond"-tape on the floor in a circle. Each kid got a chance to come "catch" a fish. When they caught their fish they went to the table and got to decorate their fish with crayons and stickers.

12 kids showed up so the class was packed and everything felt pretty crazy. Some days are just harder than others. It was one child's second time in nursery so he wasn't too sure or happy about the whole experience. I was really grateful that my Mom was visiting and was kind enough to hang out with me in nursery. She has some mad skills with small children and did a great job helping that child feel okay. It was really interesting to watch. As always, my nursery assistants were life savers in a million ways.

Since it was Easter I also prepared a little Easter Egg hunt. I put two or three smarteez in each egg and hid about 30 eggs in the toys. The kids LOVED it. It was really interesting to see how the kids responded. Some were just happy to find an egg and didn't care about the candy. Some kids were ripping eggs open and devouring the contents as fast as they could claw their way into them. Other kid let the smaller kids find eggs then tried to poach them. I tried to step in to stop that. It was interesting how early you can see human nature in all its various forms.

Another thing that made last Sunday difficult is my apartment complex's internet was getting "fixed" last weekend which meant I was totally offline and now that it's back up I swear it is TEN THOUSAND times slower. I couldn't look up my lesson on the church's website and I was never given a manual. I had to free wing it. When I did look at the lesson I was sad there was so much I left out. Oh well. Everyone survived.

PS. My lousy internet situation makes it near impossible to upload images at the moment. I'll try to add them later.