New Church Calling

I was released from my calling at church. I was so sad. My calling had been teaching the primary children music. I love love loved it! It is the best calling in our whole entire church (in my not so humble opinion). You don't actually need to be able to conduct music (which I am horrible at), you get to do actions and visual aids. So you get to teach children while singing, and making cute fun things to do. My grandpa had a great love of music as well and I think that added to my sadness of being released. I am still sad that I am not in there with the primary kids. I love the songs that have been chosen for this years program, and had tons of ideas on how to teach them.

Luckily, the week after being released from my favorite calling, I did get another one. I am still the librarian, but now that everything is organized there is not as much to do there. And I do keep the main bulletin board updated. I have fun doing that, but it is only once a month. So my new calling is . . . .drum roll please . . . Nursery Leader. That means I still get to sing songs, now I do it with the toddlers. I am starting from scratch on a lot of things with it. The last lady was as sweet as can be with the kids. They definitely felt loved by her. However, for most of her time in there she did not have all the kids that will be there now. The church just came out with a new manual that is wonderful and will be so helpful. I have been busy creating a structured schedule with lessons, songs, games, crafts, visual aids for cute songs and my favorite - I found a parachute. Right now there are 6 kids in there (7 if you count Andrew and I do) plus another one that should be ready to go in by the end of summer. So 8 nursery kids. Timmy is the oldest, and the last one to join us in the summer is slightly younger than Andrew. This is a new thing for our little congregation, the most children there has ever been at one time was 4 and two were 4 year olds that shouldn't have been in there, but there was not a teacher for their age group. Our congregation is full of young families and we all have little ones so it is one of the larger groups. They are working on getting me an assistant, and a room big enough to contain them all. I am looking forward to making it a very structured, fun, safe place for the kids to be. I have now been in there for 2 weeks. The first week was nuts!! But they are already responding to having structure and the second week went much better. I am really excited to make this work. Timmy is a little hesitant at sharing me, but he is proud to have mom as his special teacher.

In the picture Timmy and Andrew are playing with a file folder game. I made a whole bunch of them. The games are slightly frustrating to me, as I cannot get the Velcro to stick to the back of the laminated pieces but I discovered if I sand paper the backs it helps. So now I need to find time to sandpaper the backs to a million little pieces. I already have plans to make more of these, because the kids love them. But before I make more of those I want to make flags for the primary colors song. I really think once an assistant is in place and we have a more permanent place to meet, things are going to go well. I love this kind of thing, and the kids are adorable, so it will be fun!