Moving Up

My fifth graders spent their last hour in the Children's Wing this morning. (Or, my fifth grader, as the case may be. We are well into the season of weekend sports, so, out of a tiny group of seven kids, I had one fifth grader, one sixth grader, a third grader and four fourth graders.)

He was excited to be moving up, though, and, seeing as these are the children who practically melt with relief when they make it the ten steps across a crowded room to where our small group is standing, I plan to sic a few leaders on him and a couple of my other fifth graders, to make sure that they do more than stand in the entry way, wide eyed, and hesitant  to go anywhere near a large group of humans.

They have been amazing to have in my small group, and it's been so much fun to watch them grow as they get more confident in all of this God stuff and more confident in the fact that I will always tell them the truth, no matter what they ask.

(The fourth graders were amazing as well. I just have a little more time to hang out with them still. One of the boys informed me confidently that he was, "going to be in [my] group next year too." Which, as most of my kids ended up placing themselves into my group, regardless of where they were "supposed" to be, might just end up working out for him. Lol.)

We finished off the year with a Jeopardy style competition between the small groups to see who remembered the most from the year. And... they kicked butt. They remembered not only all of the memory verses (Oh, the excited eyes and fist pumping that occurred when they realized that was one of the categories!) but also characters and events from the various stories AND when we did which virtue.

I just wish someone else could have overheard them talking through the questions, because it was pretty hilarious at times. "No, forgiveness was in May!" "No!" "Yeah! It was! 'Cause, that's when we had the donut fight!" "Oh, yeah!"

Clearly, whatever we did this year, over 39 weeks of laughing, sweating, running, jumping, flopping on the ground, chaotic, sometimes bleeding, never slow, sharing of our lives, was enough to make some lessons stick and imbed some verses deep enough to not be forgotten.

Now, we just need to find a way to teach that to other small groups!