Friday, January 30th, was a “practically perfect” day at Smoke Rise Weekday School! It was a day to focus on the letter “P.” We had a “P” party to which students and teachers wore pajamas. We decorated pink party hats with pom-poms, pink and purple polka dots and purple letter P’s! We had a percussion parade and we ate pizza and chocolate chip pancakes! We had a special visit from Princess Petunia, Ms. Jillian’s pet pig! The whole school doesn’t get together for lunch very often, so it was an excellent opportunity to talk about the most important “P” word, PRAYER. And together, all 70-plus of us sang, “God our Father, God our Mother, we thank you, we thank you, for our many blessings, for our many blessings. Amen. Amen.”
We have so much creative fun learning our letters and numbers throughout the school year! However, what I love most about the Weekday School is that we develop the whole child. We work hard to help the children learn the fruits of the Spirit: how to be good and kind humans, how to share, and how to see that they have something special to offer the world. For the month of January, we memorized Ephesians 4:32. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.”
And that is how we kicked off International Night, after all the fun of our “P” party earlier that day. We read the story Our World is A Family by Jennifer Jackson and Miry Whitehill. It is a story that encourages kids to welcome newcomers with compassion and simple acts of kindness. Then the children sang our Bible verse, Ephesians 4:32.
Our school is quite diverse. We have 71 students representing at least 17 nationalities. After our story, song and blessing, we all gathered around tables filled with amazing food from around the world. We explored the seven continents in an imaginary trip around the world, built world landmarks with Legos and blocks, played with penguins in ice, learned how to say “hello” in many languages, played a game of shadow matching to discover which animals live on what continent, counted stars on various flags and did brightly colored picture puzzles of children from around the world.
Of course, the ABC’s and 123’s are important. Learning how to be a kind and compassionate human being, especially in our day and age, is even more so. Pray with us that these little children will soak up these lessons and be the leaders of tomorrow who will make the world a more kind and compassionate place to live.
– Rebekah Edmonds, Weekday School Assistant Director