Treasure Hunting, week 6

[edenfalling]

Today we talked about being angry, and ways to express and deal with anger. Which, to be fair, is a useful sort of thing to talk about, but it feels very weird to me in a religious education class.

Yeah, I'm still having issues with the curriculum. So sue me.

We had 12 students and one guest, despite the absolutely icky weather (seriously, you could close your eyes for three seconds and the cloud you were watching would completely vanish over the horizon, the wind was that strong) and today's project was making sock puppets. I think the theory behind that was to have a 'friend' to whom you could freely express your anger, since, well, it's a sock and won't get hurt if you yell or pull at it. In any case, it left a godawful mess of glue, string, felt, and googly eyes to clean up.

Story time was... long. It's hard to keep a lid on that many kids when at least half of them are determined to act up and generally be noisy and wriggle around. I find myself ignoring certain other kids simply because they're not being immediate problems, which is bad of me, I know. I try to make sure I call on them and talk to them, but sometimes it's so nice not to have to hush them or grab them that they just slide into the background.

The 'story' was I Was So Mad, which is less a story than a collection of incidents that would make a child angry. It's an audience participation sort of thing -- you read a page, say "Would that make you mad? Yeah, that would make me angry too," and then go to the next one. It apparently ends with a song, which kind of caught me by surprise, and I skipped it in the interests of saving time. We shared incidents from the past week that made us angry or happy, talked about things you might do when angry (and whether they were okay or not), and then did a little relaxation exercise. It was supposed to be a guided meditation (oy!) but the tape was missing so we went with the fallback option.

Frankly, I think the fallback option was the better one, but I didn't write the curriculum, so what do I know? *grumble*

Class ends at 11:45am, and with most other classes, you can be done with cleanup by noon, but for this group I'm lucky to get out of the room by 12:15pm, especially on days when the projects involve glue. Oh god, the glue. I swear, someday I am going to have repetetive stress nightmares of washing glue out of paintbrushes and they'll never get clean...

Comments

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of teaching UU RE. What curriculum is that? We're doing a social action curriculum at our church. I could have used the anger thing the other day; Maya got in trouble at school for writing an angry note to another girl (in concert with a third girl who was really the instigator). Supposedly this was payback for Girl 2 doing something that made Maya mad TWO YEARS AGO. ARRRGH. Time to work on "dealing with your feelings at the moment" and "not holding grudges" :(

[edenfalling]

It's the Treasure Hunting curriculum. Last year I did Special Times, which is like Holidays and Holy Days geared for first graders instead of... fourth?, and I liked that much better.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Yes, I taught that lesson two years ago! I had to search all over the Bay Area for the book. We did sing the song, because I was able to read the book ahead of time and get my spouse to teach it to me on the piano. We didn't make the sock puppets--I think maybe we used paper bags instead. I try to use glue stick instead of liquid glue whenever possible. Another cool way to make a puppet is to have the kids draw faces on "multicultural" construction paper, decorate them with yarn or construction paper "hair" and googly eyes, cut them out, and glue them onto big popsicle sticks. We did that for Purim last year--loads of fun.

The way I look at "Treasure Hunting" is that Unitarian Universalism is a covenantal religion--which is to say that it's about how we keep our commitments with each other, rather than about specific beliefs--and so lessons that help us stay in right relationship with each other are very much within the purview of our religion.

--Willowgreen, not teaching RE this year and surprised how much she misses it.

(icon by casse_the, stolenborrowed via the "Unitarians" community)

[edenfalling]

Fortunately for us, at some point in the past somebody tracked down a copy of the book and made a photocopy... which has now been laminated and stuck into a three-ring binder. *sigh* RE programs accumulate the strangest things.

The trouble with sock puppets is that glue sticks, frankly, do not work well on fabric. So we have this giant container of liquid Elmer's that we pour into little plastic cups, with paintbrushes as applicators. It's suprisingly functional, but it does take some washing up. (I made a command decision not to lay down newspaper because that was just one more layer of stuff that would probably end up flying around the room, and besides, we do have soap and sponges for cleaning up.)

We had socks of many colors, and we also ended up with a number of three-eyed monster puppets as well. Googly eyes, apparently, are irresistable. :-)

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I would never suggest glue stick for fabric! Liquid glue is the only thing that'll work for that. That's probably why I didn't do the sock puppets (that plus a lack of spare socks). I go back and forth on the newspaper thing; sometimes I think it saves time, and other times it just seems like a lot of trouble for little discernable benefit.

A tip on the liquid glue: Instead of paintbrushes, try giving the kids Q-tips. They won't work as well for all activities, but are often more than sufficient, and you can just throw them out instead of having to wash them. Unless someone objects to their disposability, I guess (obviously, I don't have a problem with it).

I adore googly eyes! Try sticking them on random vegetables sometime... you can come up with some pretty hilarious critters.

[edenfalling]

We've tried Q-tips. The kids seem to have this weird cognitive gap where they don't realize they can throw out the Q-tip once it starts unraveling, so you have gluey cotton unwinding and leaving trails all over the place. Then they drop them on the floor. And step on them.

*headdesk*

Scarily, it's easier to clean up after the brushes.