3rd Grade Religious Ed: Wedding at Cana

 Almost caught up!  Last week's gospel was The Wedding at Cana.

Perfect!  We're talking about Jesus bringing the Kingdom!

We started with the Second Luminous Mystery (The Wedding at Can), using this Rosary aid I had made a while back.  It's a different picture and scripture verse for each prayer in the decade.

 We also acted out the story using my (newly acquired) Jesse Box.  This was pretty neat.

The box gives you backgrounds, props and character "cones" which you fit around wooden cores to make them more stable.

The kids really liked this, although I need to find a way for each child to do one character.
 This worked out well as a continuation of the theme that Jesus is showing the Kingdom through his miracles!

I looped back around to parables using the Pearl of Great Price and the Mustard Seed.

For the pearl, I showed them oyster shells and explained how pearls were made and why they were so precious.

I also brought in a few fake pearls and one real (cultured) pearl, and had them try to find the real one. They were able to pick it out!

I asked them if they had any favorite toy that was worth the rest of their toys put together, and told them that when we really find Jesus, He becomes the most important thing to us!

For the Mustard Seed, I brought in a variety of seeds including mustard seeds and we talked about how large each plant would get.

We talked about faith, and the Kingdom growing within us, growing large enough to shelter others.

We also decorated some paper cups and planted marigold seeds.


And we talked about the miracles of healing, especially Jesus raising the dead.  Jesus is showing the Kingdom of God is about him coming to heal us on many levels!

We acted out the healing of the daughter of Jairus, which is always great for kids both because Jesus is raising a child, and because he throws out the noisy people, telling them the girl is sleeping.

For our game we played Wake Up, Go To Sleep.  The game is just the leader (Waker) saying "Go to sleep!" (everyone lies down and starts snoring) and "Wake up!"(everyone gets up looking surprised). I was a little worried it would be too young for them, but they loved it, especially since I was one of the ones sleeping and waking!

That's it for Religious Ed for a while: I'm caught up with what we've done, I can't imagine we'll have it this weekend if we really get 20-30" of snow, and the following weekend is a skip weekend.  By the time the kids see their seeds, they will have really grown!