3rd Grade Religious Ed: The Good Shepherd

This past weekend was Good Shepherd Sunday, and the theme was "God Blesses Contrite Hearts." Perfect!

We started out acting out the parable of the Good Shepherd with all the kids looking for our hidden sheep.

We talked about how Jesus himself was the Good Shepherd, looking for people who needed forgiveness.

If you read the Gospels, Jesus forgives a lot of people! 

We talked about three examples: Peter, the woman at Simon's house (washed Jesus' feet with her tears), and Zaccheus.  What did they all have in common?  Contrition- being sorry for what they had done wrong!

What about us? Do we do things that are wrong? Those are sins, but what is a sin? For something to be a sin, it has to have three things:

1. It has to be wrong (if it wasn't wrong, nothing bad happened)
2. You have to know it's wrong (if you didn't know, then it's a mistake)
3. You have to do it on purpose (otherwise it's an accident)

And, of course, if you want to do something wrong, but you don't do it, that's just a temptation!

We went through a lot of examples with the kids telling me if the scenarios were sins, accidents, mistakes, or temptations.

We played this board game!

Then we worked on how to do an examination of conscience.  Did you do anything wrong? Did you not do something you should have? How have you loved God and others?

 
I encouraged the kids to make a nightly Examen  where they look at what they did wrong, and ask forgiveness, but also look at good things they did (what did you do that made God smile?), and bring that as a gift to the Lord.

We did a little art project, a coloring page of the Good shepherd where we clued bits of cotton to the lamb.

And we finished up with a "Find the Lost Sheep" card game where they were looking for the card with the sheep.