no blood. minimal tears.

Today was my first experience subbing for 5th grade Sunday School. I've never taught Sunday School before. In fact, before today I had zero experience teaching at all. The cool part was that the 5th grade class uses BTX, the curriculum I edit at work. I prepared over this last week, and had sat in on the class last Sunday to get a feel for what it was like.

5th graders are much younger than I imagined. And the boys are so different from the girls... who are all taller than them! And the boys are much rowdier. Fortunately there were two other teachers there who helped quiet them down.

But today went really well! I would even be OK with teaching again sometime.
Not every week, but as needed. :)

There was no blood and only one girl cried. Ha!
I had a review game where the preteens were sitting in a circle and there was a ball in the center. I asked a review question, and if someone knew the answer he was supposed to grab the ball to answer and earn a point. Well you can imagine how this turned out. Before I even finished asking a question, there was a dog pile of 3-4 of them on the floor: three boys and the bravest/most enthusiastic girl. Some of the boys didn't even know the answer or the question and just dove in their for the fun of it. Well lo and behold on about the fourth question, one of the boys throws himself onto this ball and in the process of doing so smashes the hand of the "brave" girl. She said, "Ouch, my hand," and I thought that'd be it but oh, no. Then the tears come. Fortunately one of the other teachers checked it out (nothing broken, of course) and we continued carefully with the game.

Bible story today came from Nehemiah 8:1-12. Nehemiah was a governor in charge of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. When the wall was finished, they celebrated and Ezra read the Book of the Law. Memory verse: "Those who hear the word of God and keep it are blessed!" Luke 11:28.