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Good Morning, y'all! So I'm trying to get back into blogging on a full-time basis again. Right now, I'm planning on trying to have a theme for each day to keep me motivated and on target. We'll see how that goes..haha! The past 2 years have been a little crazy with the kids getting bigger and life's craziness, so blogging took a backseat.
So my plan is to share about my 1st grade Sunday school class on Tuesdays, hence the blog title Teaching Tuesdays! I'll be planning lesson ideas, school themes, and funny things that occurred along the way.
For those of you that are new around here, I teach 1st-grade catechism for our local Catholic church. This is my 12th year. I started teaching when Therese was in 1st grade! Boy has time flown by.
Essentially, it's 1st grade Sunday school with Catholic teachings. Not all my lessons are strictly Catholic, so if you are another denomination of another Christian faith some of the lesson ideas can work for you too!
I'm currently working on my classroom and I'll share photos once we get it done. Therese is my aide in class. I love teaching with my girl. Therese picked the theme this year, We are doing an outdoor, mountain theme. It's one we hadn't done before. We both searched Pinterest for some ideas and then came up with our own take. I can't wait to share it with y'all!
Today, I thought I'd share how I break up my classroom time, so that little ones do not get bored or antsy! As you teachers now out there, first-grade can be like corralling cats!
Opening Prayer~
Once we enter the classroom and everyone has taken their seats we open with prayers. Throughout the year, we will be working on 5 prayers: The Sign of the Cross, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and the Guardian Angel prayer. We start with the easiest the Sign of the Cross and then start working on the Our Father. We devote 2 months to each prayer and then towards the end of the year, we are praying all 5 in the class together.
Saint & Virtue~
This is where learn about the various saints honored in the Catholic church. For each saint, we also learn about a corresponding virtue that the saints pertrayed in their daily loves. We learn all about the saint and how we can practice their virtue in our daily lives. I love seeing the kids excitement and seeing how much they remember from week to week.
Bible Lesson~
This is something new I've added to our lessons this year. We will start with stories from the Old Testament and then lead into the New Testament. Over the past few years, I've noticed more and more kids not knowing the basic Bible stories, so I thought I'd help fix that. We will be using the Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name from ZonderKidz as well as other resources to help teach these lessons. We'll read the story, work on a few pages, do a craft or play a fun game.
Bathroom Break~
This is pretty self explanatory. We take a quick bathroom break, water break, and maybe a snack break depending on the day.
Story Time~
I have a special section in m y room set aside for story time. This allows the kids to get up, move around, and just change their scerenry a little bit. Our story will go along with one of the topics we've talked or will talk about during class. Examples are saints, a virtue, person from the bible, or our lesson for the day.
Class Lesson~
Class lesson are topics from our book that pertain to the Catholic faith. It's our weekly Catechism lesson. We will cover various topics throughout the year, such as baptism, the Trinity, Mary and Joseph, prayer, the church, and the liturgical year.
Closing Prayer and Goodbye~
We end class with prayer. We usually end with the Our Father and Hail Mary. We pray for our friends, family, and church family. We aske God to help us during our week. I ask each child to work on completeing one good deed during the week. This helps them grow closer to Jesus, be more like Jesus, and to see Jesus in their fellow man.