Deep Thoughts from Vacation Bible School

This week I am teaching the preschool portion of our church's Annual Vacation Bible School. I'm not particularly fond of teaching preschool. They are tiny and needy and you can practically gurantee one of them has to pee and one of them is crying at all times. But, it is rewarding and they love everything you do with them, if only for about two minutes. I sometimes feel like I am dancing circles on a stage trying to keep them all engaged. You can't give them busy work when they are three because they don't know how to keep busy. They can't cut particularly well. They can't color very well. They can't write their names. They can't operate a glue stick. And they absolutely cannot follow directions. So, with this in mind, I am reaching for just about any activity that lasts about two minutes that somehow incorporates their limited knowledge of the bible and Egypt and Joseph. I have no curriculum except for what the older kids are doing. I have simply geared down down down and tried to make it exciting.

Today I had 17 of them. All excited to be there, our first activity was the simple task of getting them seated on blue painters tape in the shape of a circle. We then proceeded to practice our VBS songs with the help of drumsticks. They love to drum. Then we attempted to revisit the story of Joseph in Prison. Guess what? None of these kids (praise God) knew what Prison was. And I'm pretty sure they didn't know what jail was either. Apparantly I'm the only bad mother who threatens that if their kids don't wear their seatbelts, they'll go to jail. I'm not sure how effective this chat was, but we moved on to arts and crafts, which involved decorating Egyptian style collars and Gold cuffs for their arms with plastic rhinestones. The boys could have cared less, the girls....well, it was one step away from picking the engagement ring of their choice. Apparantly, no matter what age, a girl knows some good bling when she sees some and there were some tears over the pink heart shaped jewels. See, this is where I fail miserably at teaching preschool, because, while I pride myself on transition and flow and accurate lesson plans, I don't have a lot of patience for the tears and the tattling. Therefore, I ignore it, which only proves to make it multiply and grow in decible. Thank God my other sister, Leanne, is also helping in my class, because apparantly God gave her all the compassion because she was able to calm them down. Not the first time that I have ignored the drama and she has been able to calm a hysterical person down. I don't know why I'm such a hard ass like that. And yet, here I am teaching preschool.

After arts and crafts, we were mostly all in tears so it was time for a recharge, which included moving outside for some fresh air, and a go-gurt and some fruit punch. And then we were all smiling again, sugar charged and ready to pee. So back into the bathrooms, where we had bathroom helpers and it was a group ordeal to get all 17 pottied and washed and zipped and back in place on the blue tape.

The day continued pretty much like this. And while I am exhausted, it is one of the most rewarding things that I do. I am headed downstairs to finish cutting out Joseph's coats of many colors for a project for tomorrow, because, as I mentioned above, not one in 17 has the ability to cut.

And to top it all off, my daughter, who is out with the big kids, was telling me about Joseph and how mean his 11 brothers were to him and so on and so on about prison and slavery, etc. And in the middle of feeling bad for Joseph, she immediately says, "I have to poop." and she's off. So while moved, poop takes priority over Joseph every day of the week in our house. And we still have four days of VBS to go.