I am almost a week behind posting this! Last Sunday was my first lesson using the new curriculum Journey Land (see previous post). The focus this quarter is Paul’s Teachings and Travels.
This lesson was about Paul and Barnabus’ first missionary journey (see picture). The point of this first lesson was respecting others’ viewpoints, ideas and differences so that the message of Jesus can be spread. During the journey Paul & Barnabas showed respect by waiting to be asked before speaking at the synagogues. Had they just interrupted and started telling everyone that the people’s beliefs were silly, no one would have listened. But because they were respectful they were invited to speak again and many people became Christians.
This curriculum is based on the theory of multiple intelligences and each workshop focuses on a different intelligence (the photo below shows each workshop we’ll do and the MI used). This first lesson focused on bodily-kinesthetic and verbal-linguistic intelligences using theater! I wrote the script since the one suggested in the lesson plans was for 5th graders and was way above these kids’ levels. So the setting of our scene was a press conference held by Sergius (the Roman proconsul in Paphos, Cyprus) to explain to reporters why he became a Christian. The 2nd graders played the parts of Sergius, Paul, and Barnabas, and the remaining children were reporters that got to ask questions (all scripted, of course). They dressed up and got to use props, and they even had a small audience. And just from this one lesson I can attest that the theory of MI works because it was very clear which kids learned through theater and which ones couldn’t stand it. I can’t wait to see how each one learns and how they react to future lessons!
Next week (tomorrow, actually) is more verbal-linguistic with inter/intrapersonal intelligences. We’ll use Storytelling to learn about the leaders of the church (deacons, elders, preachers) and what they do. The following two Sundays we’ll apply what we’ve learned by having several of these leaders visit the classroom and talk about what they do.
