The lady with the jar of perfume ointment

That was the story on Sunday.

Before service, we had kids helping get key chains ready for "Artisan in 7" (All a visitor might want to know about Artisan in seven minutes sandwiched :-) between the end of service and dinner) and someone helped wash potatoes. Kids often help put pens on chairs. They help bring chairs out from the nursery. They puppy-sit Camden. Although the kids will do different jobs or no jobs, I think there are already jobs they enjoy and jobs they don't, depending on the child.

Pastoral object lesson: bath oil beads in a tub of water for the kids to squeeze. So much fun it was hard to break away!

The school aged kids had perfumes and lotions to smell with fake price tags (smallest container with the biggest price) and activity sheets. We have activity sheets for any child old enough to use a crayon.

The toddler to pre-K didn't seem to care about the smells. One of the magazines for cutting had some nice jar pictures. Too bad I didn't think to bring a jar for the littles in the foyer.

So we had the smell of perfume and a visual for the word "jar". Not enough for 30-40 minutes.

If learning is tied to experience and language to experience, touching, smelling, seeing, hearing, learning appropriate words to go with the story is probably enough for the 2's.

One of our pre-K's played a game standing and dropping clothes pins in a can. Harder than it sounds. The can could have been a jar.

Still working on handling the migration of kids between the time they finish their activities during the message and the end of service.

Working on ways to engage very active children (toddler to 7) in quiet non-directed activities on topic for 30-45 minutes:
Twenty to thirty non-reader/non-directed one minute activities. . . .thirty things a child can do with a jar . . . or smells. . . hmm. . .
Quiet games or playthings available in the foyer that will tie to more than one story from scripture...

You get the idea... They can be movement based but quiet... Things from home or things provided.