Sunday, September 28, 2008

Small group

I teach small group at church for fourth grade girls. They are sweet and adorable and dying to talk to a "big kid" like me, which is fun. :) They also talk ninety miles a minute about anything in the world, and are VERY high energy. I love talking with them! But it does make for a difficult setting for our small group - especially since they've just come from sitting still for half an hour for large group. I've been experimenting with ways to make our time productive as well as social. The results so far: Lesson planning is helpful, but not tremendously; a different location helped as long as there were NO distractions (water fountains are too much of a distraction); board games involved too much time between turns so they got overexcited; today we did Christ, Community, Challenge cards. (They're something we do at the camp to have kids set goals for themselves). They actually listened, spread out quietly, and filled out their cards well. It was fun to see what they wrote. I gave them examples of goals, and let them read mine, but they each came up with one true original goal somewhere on their cards. One girl wanted to "do my part to make our group less noisy", another "I want to find out how to be friends with God", and another "I want to listen more and talk less". It was so cute! Now I am trying to think of a way to keep them engaged in reaching those goals, and continuing to check back and hold themselves accountable. I know it's doable, but in only 20 minutes a week? It's tough!
Any suggestions for me?
I'm off to Pittsburgh for a promo/reunion in the South Hills. Have a great Sunday.

1 comments:

suzannah | the smitten word said...

what an amazing small group meeting! those girls are so blessed to have you, leenanne!

what if you had a journal the girls took turns taking home week to week? (or they each had their own?) they could write prayer requests in it and also write something about how they see God working--that way they can be thinking about/working on their goals without taking up group time too often. plus, it gets them developing aspects of a devotional life independent of structured church times. and it provides a way for people to actually keep track of and follow through with prayer requests--and manintain a record of how God is working!