Elizabeth's picture of the morning.
again... neglected so he just put himself to sleep.
we were two minutes late to church, as usual, and I got almost nothing out of sacrament meeting because I felt like I was an octopus trying to wrangle a herd of angry kittens in a church pew. as I was about to walk into the relief society room for Sunday school, honey said something about primary needing people to sit with classes for singing time because of teacher training maybe? so I went in there and sat with Brady's class. but his teacher just recently moved and they haven't found a replacement so they asked if I could teach the class for third hour. I was worried a bit because I'm not very skilled at teaching meaningful lessons to a group of four and five year olds when I've had no prep time, but it turned out well. we had a bit of chat time where they all got to tell about a good choice they'd made during the week (Brady's was when he was playing with the red chair and I asked him to stop and he listened immediately with zero whining. I'm glad I pointed out to him at the time what good listening that was because I think it helped him remember it) and let into the lesson that way. I told them a good choice I'd made was being reverent and taking the sacrament. so then we had a lesson on the last supper and Jesus and remembering him during the sacrament and what it means. I closed our lesson and then was going to share my granola bars (I'd thrown a few in my purse before running out the door) when I had the idea to break them in pieces and have us practice/role play/pretend passing and taking the sacrament. not in a sacrilegious way, but just to help those little minds understand and practice that part of our sacrament meeting in a way that would make them think and engage a bit. so we went through the parts (sacrament hymn, prayer, bread, prayer, water, thank the priesthood holders and have them sit down) in a shortened version (like for the prayer just fold arms for five seconds and then say amen) and they all got to have turns passing the granola bar pieces and pretend water tray. here is Brady passing the water. the kids were seriously so good. for the most part, they really took it seriously to be engaged during the song, reverent during the prayers, and attentive when the sacrament was being passed. and since we did it at least five or six times, they really memorized the parts and order. I'm sure they all went home and told their parents that they can't remember learning anything but I know that all of them learned something that they'll remember next week during sacrament meeting and I'm grateful for that.
we survived another Sunday of church!
sassy and sweet.
I had a couple in the parking lot after church comment to me on how "expressive" Elizabeth is. they said she's got a lot of feelings and I agreed. scary enough, Chris and I have said those exact things about Abigail within the last week. I feel like Elizabeth is following in Abigail's footsteps and it terrifies the crap out of me. she is pretty cute though.
Brady wanted gum so we did a reading lesson (we actually do two at a time or however long it takes us to get anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes) and then Abigail wanted a piece too so she did a writing lesson which is just her writing over and over the lowercase letter Y. she has trouble focusing when she's around anyone so after a lot of unsuccessful minutes, I took her to her room and sat with her. sadly, it didn't really help her at all to be in a quiet environment... most of the time was spent playing with her pencil. eventually I had her just fill the page and call it good. I'm wondering if she does this at school as well.
I think Brady is on lesson 16 now. it's going really fast because he already knows his basic letter sounds and the book is repetitive so he just knows what to do without me really telling him. he did four lessons today (12/13 and 14/15) but it barely seemed like anything at all. I'm so curious what lesson he'll start to feel challenged and how he'll do with that. he can get discouraged really fast if something doesn't come easily to him so I'm hoping all of these easy lessons are building up some confidence.
also, I put a ton of books on hold for him at the library... mostly about soccer (because he'll have four soccer lessons in September and I want to get him extra excited) but also some of these flip a word books that were so helpful when Abigail was in kindergarten. I really really really love these books.
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