This empty blog has been like a new notebook in my mind. I’ve been intimidated, feeling I need something truly spectacular to start it off with. Well. The truly specatcular rarely features in my life so I thought I should just get something down and keep going!

The latest Play on the Word stuff I’ve been doing follows what Mikey’s age group are doing at Sunday club in church. I’m using their teaching programme for a couple of reasons. Partly as something that is already set out for me – it’s a bit easier! It’s also a way of supporting Mikey’s sunday club ‘buddy’, Jennifer. Jennifer works one-on-one with Mikey during sunday club, helping him stay on task and learn with the other children where possible and working separately with him when the other children are doing things that are beyond his ability or when he is likely to distract them. I wanted to help her find some things to do with Mikey that link in to the main group teaching even if he is learning on his own and in a very different way.

The theme is to do with being friends of Jesus and last week they were looking at Luke 18:15-17 which says:

¹⁵People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. ¹⁶But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. ¹⁷I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

The main point the group were looking at was that Jesus wanted children to be his friends. For the boys I wanted to focus slightly differently and I majored on two things: coming and receiving. These seemed to be the two main things Jesus wants. He wants the children to come to him and for everyone to receive the kingdom like a child.

Coming

For this we played silly fun games where I would stand away from the boys and beckon with crazy enthusiasm calling out “Come! Come! Come on! Come to Mummy!!!!” and shouting and gesturing until they came to me and when they did we cheered and cuddled and tickled and laughed. With Mikey I was very close to him when we played this and helped him come to me – my main aim was that they would have positive experiences of coming to me when I called them. I then used phrases like “we can come to Jesus!” and “Jesus wants us to come to him”. I didn’t want to make this an obedience lesson, so if it didn’t work out it was fine!!

Receiving

Now in our little family the boys rarely get presents from us – aren’t we mean?!! But they’re just starting to get the idea of opening a present and feeling excited about this. So I bought the boys a cheap present  – for us it was a toy broom and dustpan and brush because Mikey has a bit of a thing about sweeping! It could easily have been a 30p tub of bubbles! We got together and gave them the present. In many ways it was a lesson for Dave and I – receiving was natural and joyful for the boys! God wants us to receive his great kingdom just like that!