Today I taught the beginnings of 2 Samuel. We started out class by having some of the kids who either didn’t have time or who didn’t follow the instructions complete their work on the scroll. Some of them forgot their names. Some didn’t write power phrases. One was absent, and I had two visitors, so they had to start from scratch. While those kids were working on the scroll, I had the others shooting with a Nerf sticky dart gun at the dryeraseboard, where I had this giant version of Magic Squares. The students had to say the verse and rhyme for each square. We have been slacking on Magic Squares, and so most of them have forgotten those rhymes. I will get us back on track again with that.
After that I had the kids come back for a short two-topic lesson. The first discussion went longer than I expected, but it was because I decided to have the kids read aloud part of 1 Samuel 31 regarding the death of Saul. We discussed Saul’s death and then summarized the first chapters of 2 Samuel mostly using the chapter headers. I used the lesson idea from the manual on page 127 to teach a very short lesson on consulting the Lord. It was a little weak.
Then I taught the kids about reverence using 2 Samuel 6. Before class I wrote “REVERENT?” in big letters on two pieces of paper. On the back of the papers, I wrote some feelings. One sheet said “happy, joyful, peace, testimony, etc” and the other said “distracted, angry, bored, etc.” I asked for two volunteers to come sit at the front of the class and handed them the papers to hold in front of them. I asked the class if they could tell which person was reverent. They made some guesses. I had written the ‘v’ in the shape of a heart (Valentine’s day is coming, and reverence has to do with our hearts) and so they were trying to figure out if there was a hint in the hearts. LOL.
Anyway, I said to the class to imagine they were like Heavenly Father and could see into the hearts of people. What was in the heart of this person [ and turned over the paper with the negative feelings] ? Was this person being reverent? Showed the other positive feelings. Reverent? What’s the difference?
The students summarized the lesson material and after a brief interlude about Uzzah and the ark, we talked about whether or not David was being reverent when he danced before the Lord. The question is not so much about what he was doing, but more about where his heart was. Can you be irreverent even though you’re sitting still with your arms folded looking at the teacher? I was able to quote a little of our opening song, which had been “Reverence is Love” from the Children’s songbook that helped drive the point home even farther.
Anyway, it was a pretty good little discussion. I think they got the point.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to do 2 Samuel 7, 9, but I told them to read 11-12, so I guess I’ll go ahead and cover that instead. We can come back to 7 and 9 on Thursday.
