It was 1973. We had been asked to teach a kindergarten class at the small church we were attending. We visited the space of the class with the pastor. It was a little tiny room at the end of the fellowship hall behind a Huge dark wall. Something about the wall caught my eye and I kept looking at it. I finally said to my husband and the pastor, "I think this wall moves." Sure enough, with some muscle application from all of us, the wall moved, folding in on itself.
Suddenly the little tiny room stretched the length of the hall.
I looked at the men with eyes twinkling and said, "why not?" And so it was. We found room dividers - there were other classes to be held in the hall so we couldn't take up all the space - and marked off a Much Larger Space for our little folks. Now they could play and move and have different activity areas. I wrote to the parents and told them to dress the kids for play as we would be on the floor a lot and outside when weather permitted. It was a Great year! The day I remember best was the day when the Bible story was Zaccheus. We had a little indoor slide. It became the tree. Up the tree went Zaccheus. When Jesus called him to come down, Down the slide the child came, laughing and excited way out of proportion to just playing on the slide. My memory is that we acted out that story most of the morning. The kids loved it and wanted to be Jesus and the crowd just as much as they wanted to be Zaccheus. What fun! And what a wonderful way to learn such an important lesson: God loves us just the way we are!
It was a good year in that wide open space with the big dark walls pushed out of the way. The next year we were asked Not to teach again. We intimidated the other teachers. And for one year we pushed back the walls and celebrated the love of God in a big space for little people.
1 comment:
It's amazing how much kids learn from the tactile and the physical. It's also amazing how easily threatened we adults are.
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