My Sunday Preschoolers

I've been teaching Sunday school for years.  I've taught 6th grade all the way down to preschool, and my favorite age by far is preschool.  This year is the biggest class of preschool age students I can remember having.  Today I had 10 in my class!

If no one has taught preschool, I can tell you, ten is an insanely huge number.  Thank goodness for my husband, who stays in the room and helps cut out crafts, and supervises bathroom visits, and occasionally uses his dad voice to help but a lid on some rambunctious chaos.

As hard as I try, I can not keep the class running smoothly and cohesively with so many students.  Asking an open question, such as in today's lesson, "have you ever lost something?" leads to every child having a story to tell, and wanting to tell it all at the same time because of course Teacher can understand each individual story in the cacophony of voices.

I've been starting class of with reminders of how we behave in church.  Do we run in church?  Do we yell in church?  Do we do somersaults or throw crayons in church?  No?  Well, we don't do it in Sunday school either.

Today, after my husband used his dad voice to encourage the kids to be quiet and listen to me, one child quietly asked if they could raise their hand to ask a question or give an answer.

Yes!  Raise your hand!  That would work out perfectly!

Ten hands shot up into the air.

When we left church, my husband said he thought I had it under control, that was, until I said they could raise their hands.  After that not even a dad voice could save the situation.  True.  But that didn't stop me from putting  away today's lesson with a care for future classes.  You'll find me in the same place next year during Sunday school.  Preschool class, corner room.  There's just something about their exuberant shouts of "God!" to almost every question I ask, that I enjoy.

And, we get to color and glue.  I really, really enjoy that!