In celebration of Easter I made the decision to teach my kids a string of six bible verses. My nieces learned it at their school when they were five. My kids are three or four. They remember bible verses from October. I thought, Let's give it a try. The first day was rough. They struggled with the world "Sabbath" and they didn't understand that "dawn" didn't mean the name of one of the girl's moms. And then I started handing out SweetTarts and Hershey's Kisses anytime the kids got a line right and the ball started rolling.
We learned the verse in two weeks. That means some of the kids learned it in FOUR days (the other kids in six... still impressive!). I was so proud. But that didn't mean we didn't have some stumbling blocks along the way. The last line in the verse is "He has risen!". Instead of risen, one kid said ribbons, another prison, and presents got mentioned a couple of times. It references Mary Magdalene and my assistant had a baby girl named Mary Ellen a few months ago. We talk about her a lot and all the kids think she's really cute. And apparently they always have her on the mind because one girl said "Mary Ellen and the other Mary Ellen went to look at the tomb". And if there was ever a tricky word, we would break it down syllable by syllable and say it over and over until it wasn't scary. This lead to us chanting/screaming "cru-ci-fied" for about twenty seconds until I realized how it must have sounded to passerbys in the hall and we moved on.
We really pounded this into the kids' heads. On Thursday, the last day of school before Easter, I was telling them about the "Angel Rolled Back the Stone" craft we were going to make later that day. And I asked them what the angel said to the women and they ALL automatically replied, "Do not be afraid. For I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, He has risen!" I said, "Wow. I kind of turned you guys into robots". And one little boy laughed and said, "No! If we were robots we would sound like this: "Do. Not. Be. A-Fraid" as he did the actual robot. It was AWESOME. And then we were done going over it for the morning so I started to tell them what I had planned for the day. I said "First we are going to have snack. Then you need to go potty before music. After...," and several of the kids jumped in and started with "After the sabbath." Like I said, robots.
But I am SO proud of them for learning SIX verses all together (Matthew 28: 1-6). They are little rockstars. I would totally post the video I spliced together of all nine kids saying it but I don't want to get fired for privacy issues. And if you want more kids stories (and I want a paycheck) let's not and say we did.
Happy Easter!
