Please enjoy the many photos of our children painting, packing, celebrating, and rejoicing in our upcoming transition as we prepare for our renovation!  Many tiny hands created beautiful art and helped to pack an entire sanctuary and shelves of library books.  Thanks to everyone who helped on Sunday!

At dawn on the first day of the week, some women went to Jesus’ tomb. The earth shook and a dazzling angel rolled the stone from the tomb. Roman tomb guards fainted from fear. The angel told the women that Jesus had been raised from the dead and invited them to see the empty tomb. As the women ran to tell the joyful news, they met the risen Christ and worshipped him.

The children’s eyes were wide as they watched this mysterious and amazing story played out with the help of our wooden story figures and props. Afterwards we invited them to approach the story:  I wonder how the women felt when they saw that the tomb was empty. “Scared.”  “Shocked.”  “Confused.”  I wonder why an angel came to meet the women.  “?????”  I wonder what happened when the women saw Jesus standing before them. “They recognized his voice.”  “They remembered what he looked like.”  “Why do his hands have holes in them?”  I wonder what the women will do next. “They will go to Galilee!”  “They will tell the disciples!”  Which character would you like to be in this story?  (Mostly Marys, one guard, one Jesus, and one angel). 

Ask your child about Hot Cross Easter Buns and Pysanky (Ukrainian Easter Eggs). Download the free song “Alive, Alive, Alive Forevermore” at www.ShineCurriculum.com/extras.

As always, I was honored to be a learner with your children this morning!

Peace,

Ruth (*thanks so much to Ruth Sedlock for subbing for Lisa Frisby while she was away last Sunday!)

On Sunday, Melissa and I decided to combine our Multiage and Middler classes (we even included the Preschool for a bit!) to share in the dynamic activities planned for our lesson.  Following the incredible lesson from last week about Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead, we continued the story this week as we recreated, in dramatic style, the celebratory dinner that Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, held for Jesus and his disciples.  We assumed it was a thank you dinner for bringing their brother back to life!  All the children gathered on the stage while sister Mary (Melissa donned a fabulous disguise for this) invited them to a special supper.  Sitting in the middle was Jesus (thanks to Carlin for playing this role!).  Instead of serving food to her guests, Mary surprised everyone by pouring out an entire bottle of perfumed anointing oil on Jesus’ feet, then wiping them with her hair!  This special oil would have been valued at about $15,000 in today’s terms – so this was a VERY generous gesture!  Judas reprimanded Mary for wasting such a resource on Jesus, but Jesus disagreed, reminding his disciples that he will  not always be there with them (perhaps a foreshadow of the near future?).  Later in our dramatic story, Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey with the crowds shouting “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Our lesson ended with Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem.  When we meet again on Palm Sunday, we will continue teaching the dramatic events of Holy Week.

Lots of activities and explorations populated North Hall on Sunday after our drama was complete, focusing mostly on scents (the perfumed oil that Mary used on Jesus was said to permeate the entire room with its scent!) and special words.  The children were invited to scratch away the black surface of letters to reveal a special message that Jesus said; they created their own scented lotion with a variety of essential oils; they participated in a blind scent challenge where they had to guess the items hidden in the boxes using only their sense of smell (vanilla, mint, and onion were the hardest to guess); and they worked with Melissa on the stage to create letters using their bodies to spell out different words in our lesson.  It proved to be a fun but challenging task, so we only spelled out “king” and “Jesus,” but we had a great time!  Thanks to the preschool for joining us for this part!

On Sunday, March 5th, three of our third graders were honored at our worship service and received the gift of their own bible from WCUC.  Following worship, the children and their families joined together for an intimate forum to get to know their new bibles better.  A discussion about what the bible is and what it is for (they were blown away that our bible is not one book, but a collection of many books written by different authors!), a bible scavenger hunt, bookmark decorating, and yummy snacks rounded out our time together.  It is always special to have parents and children together during these important moments of faith formation.  And it is always an honor for me to be a part of them!

On the evening of Wednesday, March 1st, children, families, and adults came together to celebrate Ash Wednesday with a soup supper and a variety of prayer stations designed to help usher in the season of Lent.  After sharing a meal together, children gathered on the stage to help plant marigold seeds in a variety of vases to be displayed on our alter table during the entire season of Lent (the seeds were already sprouting on Sunday, March 5th!  So cool to see!).  Then all ages enjoyed visiting our prayer stations set up in North Hall and in our nursery: layering colored sand, praying with Band-aids and Post-Its, decorating an Alleluia banner, stringing 40 beads to count the days of Lent, and creating personal marigold planters to bring home.  In addition, our nursery was open to all for a candlelit indoor labyrinth walk, stone washing, and imposition of ashes.  It was a beautiful evening enjoyed by all ages and abilities.  Please enjoy the pictures!

Last Sunday the Multiagers had a very ACTIVE class, beginning with a dramatic performance of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, adapted from Matthew 4.  Directly after Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit guided him into the desert where he prayed and fasted for 40 days (the children, frankly, thought this was unbelievable.  They could simply not imagine not eating for that long.  Neither can I!).  At the end of the 40 days, Satan appeared to Jesus and tempted him three times, but each time Jesus refused the temptation.  We wondered how hard it would be to refuse bread after not eating for 40 days!  We then discussed the word “temptation” and thought about ways that we are tempted (pretty much all versions of video games, ice cream, cake, and candy dominated here).  Because God has given us free will, we are allowed to give in to our temptations, but we are also allowed to make different choices, just like Jesus did.  We continued our lesson in the Middler classroom (the Middlers were setting up a surprise for us in North Hall!) with a fantastic experiment with dissolving paper.  Children wrote their personal temptations on dissolving paper (although they didn’t know it would dissolve) and then wrote a “better choice” on regular paper.  We put all the paper in a large bowl, and then the children took turns pouring water into the bowl.  Surprise!  Their temptations melted away, leaving only the better choices.  We then regrouped in North Hall with the Middlers and got introduced to a fabulous Temptation Obstacle Course, which the Middlers had set up for us.  Balancing candy bars, jumping through hoops with a DVD between your legs, scooting with a comic book on your head, tossing beanbags at pictures of screens, crawling though money (don’t touch it!), and bowling over pictures of toys rounded out our obstacles.  I can confidently say that every child had a ridiculously fun time avoiding all of our temptations.  And not one child asked for a bite of the candy bars!  Temptation win!  – Jessica

The third Sunday of Advent already!  Wow, this season is just flying by!! We began our morning reflecting again on how Advent is a time of waiting and preparation for Christmas and the birth of Jesus. We read the book, Who is Coming to Our House? It is a story of animals in a barn wondering who is coming to visit while they clean up the barn, preparing for their “mystery guest”. We also read a short story, An Angel Visits Joseph and wondered: what does an angel look like? How did Joseph feel when he heard the angel’s message about Mary having a special baby?  What if an angel spoke to us in a dream?  Did Joseph hold baby Jesus? We also watched a short video depicting Joseph’s special dream.

As we have done each week of Advent, a variety of books about waiting and preparing for Jesus’ birth were available for children to read and browse at leisure, and there was also a Nativity set for the kids to explore. We made a bed for Joseph under a table, and some of the children took turns dressing up and acting out the story of the Angel visiting Joseph in a dream.  Many of the children created their own Nativity scenes with Nativity cookie cutters and play dough. They decorated them with ribbons, sequins and gems.  In preparation for our Epiphany celebration on January 1st, we strung beads to create garlands to be hung in North Hall.  It was a busy morning!  

Just one more Sunday in our wait and preparation for Christmas!  In peace, Lisa Frisby

On the evening of Saturday, December 3rd, a large group of children and parents gathered together to celebrate the beginning of Advent with stories, crafts, and our beautiful spiral of light in North Hall.  We began our evening in the parlor and were treated to a wonderful drama performed by several of our children about the real Saint Nicholas before we headed downstairs to the darkened and quiet North Hall to wait for our turn in the spiral.  Year after year I never tire of the serenity and beauty of our Advent Spiral, where one by one, each child and adult gets his or her own turn to walk slowly to the center of the spiral, light a candle, and carefully place it around the evergreen pathway.  The quiet anticipation, the conscious slowing of our bodies, and the gentle glowing and growing light of the candles create a mesmerizing and meditative space for everyone.  Such a beautiful start to this season of waiting!  A variety of St. Nicholas-inspired crafts, delicious snacks, and a quiet room for reading Christmas books rounded out our evening together.  Please enjoy the many pictures!

The Multiage and Middler classes were combined last Sunday, so I had a healthy crew of 15 kids with me on the first Sunday of Advent!  Thanks so much to Tim Haggerty and Sean Perham who helped out with our large group.  We began this new season by learning a new song, Wait for the Lord, which is so pretty and so simple.  Click here to listen to the version of the song we sang!  As we sang the song over and over, we lit candles around the circle until the room was filled with light.  So cool to have so many children on this day!  We then used tiles and stones to count out all the days and Sundays until Christmas (4 Sundays, 28 days!) and talked about what we do while we wait for Christmas to arrive (decorate, make cookies, get a Christmas tree, buy presents, go to church).  Then we told the story from the first chapter of Matthew when an angel visited a sleeping Joseph to give him the news that his fiancée Mary was pregnant with the son of God.  We wondered what kind of man Joseph must have been, based on the verses that we read: trustworthy, kind, a true believer, and brave were some of the children’s thoughts.  Our activities included creating our own angel ornaments, making holiday cards for the Concord Prison Outreach ministry, and playing with a variety of nativity sets on our Christmas-lit stage.  Blessings to you during this first week of Advent! 

On Sunday we celebrated West Concord Union Church’s 125th birthday with a lively discussion about the upcoming renovation project, fantastic activities, a surprise parade through the sanctuary at the end of worship, and of course, CAKE!  I vote we have a birthday celebration for the church every single year!  What fun.  Check out the pictures from our Multiage class as we did the following:

Created 125 stamps on paper
Strung 125 colored pasta on string
Made a pathway with 125 tiles
Built structures with 125 Brain Flakes
Decorated the numbers 1, 2, and 5 for our parade

I’m pretty sure the kids will remember how old the church is now!  🙂