Sunday School – What Would it Look Like CM?

Karen,

Do not be nervous.   You never know….they may love this way of Sunday School! Give your worries to God. He already has your day planned out for you anway. :))) When we worry, this places the focus on ourselves. Our focus is to always be God. Your worship will be perfect when turned over to him and is then spirit-led. Sunday school is such a blessing to be involved in. God put those children in your classroom so that you can be an instrument of his grace. Congratulations. 🙂 

Warning: soapbox! Do  not allow children to belive that worship is only done on Sunday mornings at church. Worship IS every single second of our waking lives. If we aren’t worshiping God, we are idolizing something else. (Off soapbox.)

Phobo, some ideas from those pages and some of my own experiences: 

• Read straight from the bible, not watered down versions which can cause misconceptions. (ex. Adam and Eve did not eat an apple like some cartoons depict.) Over simplification of the Bible is not a healthy practice. At my church we read about four or five verses at a time and then stop and discuss. Repeat. 🙂 Do not make reading the bible a burden. 
• Narration (There was a FANTASTIC SCM blog series on narration lately. I highly recommend reading them all, print them out, highlight, write all over them, sleep with them under your pillow so the information will seep into your brain by osmosis. LOL!!!!)
• Read the free ebook Masterly Inactivity by Sonya Safer (give the children challenging information and leave them alone with their thoughts. Simplicity. Do not underestimate the child.)
• Older students have a personal notebook to record their narrations. Little ones can give oral narrationswhich are occassionally recorded by the teacher. (Think cassette tapes, your iPhone video app, microphone toy, etc.). My little ones draw their narrations sometimes. I just buy sketch paper from the dollar store and get office depot to cut the pages in half. They draw on the front and the back before getting a new piece of paper. I save them and bind them at the end of a term. 
• Have nature journals, go for nature walk. Focus your walks on God’s creation. If you can’t go for a walk, do object lessons with things like flowers, sand dollars, ant farms, fish, locust shells, bettles, your pet bird…..anything 🙂 The key is preparation. Don’t wait until Saturday night at 10:00 pm to figure out what to bring. 
• Cook a dish in your church’s kitchen….unleavened bread, etc. Discuss wine making as done in biblical times.
• Christian poetry readings
• Memory work like The Apostle’s creed, the 10 commandments, the Beatitudes, Fruits of the Spirit, Lord’s prayer, scripture passages, doxology words
• Book of Mottos to keep in the school room? (My kids are little so maybe someone else can speak about this.)
• Book of Centuries/Timelines (We love the Big Picture Bible Timeline Book and are making a scroll out of ours.)
• Simple costumes to act out the bible stories. (My sunday school kid LOVE this!) 
• Christian biographies or missionary stories approved by your church 
• Hymn singing and memorization. Do sign language with the words.
• You could write out scriptural notes of encouragement to area nursing home residents, paint them pictures using water color crayons or oil pastel so clothes won’t get ruined. Talk to your church about increasing your budget for Sunday school or ask for donations from the congregation for supplies. 
• Teach one doctrine at a time, referring to the parallel verses in the Bible. I think it is so important for children to see the tapestry of God’s love that is woven into all parts of the the Bible no matter what year it was. We must study doctrine ourselves to be able to teach others. This has been a struggle for me but God teaches those who seek him. 
• Biblical art masterpieces are an option but I would be very careful about that because many paintings, while timelessly beautiful, are unrealistic depictions of bible scenes. For Example, we love Giotto, but we also keep in mind that each artist has his own interpretations of the truth. Don’t you wish there had been cameras back then? 🙂 

I hope all these ideas help. The main thing to remember is to talk about God’s love for his people at every turn. Don’t forget to pray before you get started with class. (Sometimes I forget, LOL!) Just have fun! You have gathered in God’s name and he promises to be there with you and your class.

Have you read this articles on CM style Sunday School?

https://www.charlottemasoninstitute.org/beyond-dust-particles-an-experiment-in-sunday-school-by-amy-fiedler/?subscribe=success#blog_subscription-2

It is full of so many good ideas!

I am involved in reworking my parish’s Sunday School curriculum in terms of a CM style while maintaining most of the content areas. 

We are thinking of giving the children books where they can paste in what they do each week or write narrations, rather than sending something home every week.  A lot of the time, those things soon get lost, and often they aren’t really worth much all alone.  It’s when you see what has been done over the whole year that it becomes more helpful, and then we can also refer back to things in subsequent lessons.

So we may include copies of whatever text we use, be it a Bible story or something else, narrations they have done which we or they have copied or drawn, copies of artworks we discussed or poetry.  We will also learn a few new hymns each year that correspond to the liturgical season, and some simple versions of sung prayers or the liturgy, including in Latin since we often use those during our service.

I am not so sure about handwork – our lesson time is not long, and often the “crafts” and such aren’t that valuble, but I know there are at least some exceptions.  Things like making palm crosses or learning about making icons, or perhaps even learning some skills involved with things like caring for the altar linens and so on.