CTR 4

This Sunday I was a substitute teacher in Primary. I have played the piano in Primary a couple times since moving into this ward, but I haven't taught a Primary class since I was a teenager, and I learned a few things. Like that the writers of the manual severely overestimate the attention span of 4-year-olds. I suspected this as I read through the lesson (they really want a group of four-year-olds to have a discussion about the meaning of "trust"?), but it turned out that even my suspicions about the lesson overestimating the attention span of 4-year-olds overestimated the attention span of 4-year-olds.

Still, I had fun. It was barely-controlled chaos, but fun barely-controlled chaos. One of my favorite moments was near the beginning when I told a story about a prince obeying his father the king, and we read a poem about how we are all children of a Heavenly king: "My spirit was born in the courts on high. A child beloved, a prince (or princess) am I."

"What are you?" I asked them each, one at a time.

"A princess!" "A prince!" they answered enthusiastically, until I got to one little boy.

"I'm not a prince," he stated. "I'm going to be a chemist."

"Well, you can be a prince and a chemist."

"No." He was very matter-of-fact about this. "A prince is a prince, but a chemist just mixes chemicals and studies molecules and chemical reactions." I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. I mean, I didn't want to quash his dreams of being a chemist (what four-year-old dreams of being a chemist?), but I also didn't want him to think chemistry and godliness are mutually exclusive. (Of course, I doubt I really need to worry too much - I suspect not many abstract connections were being made that hour.)

My first-favorite moment, though, was near the end. I told each of the children that I was going to whisper a special instruction in their ears, leave the room, and then return to see if they had followed the instructions. "Fold your arms, close your eyes, and think about Heavenly Father and Jesus," I whispered to each of them, just as the manual told me to. I was pretty sure they would get the "fold your arms and close your eyes part," and they did. When I asked them what they had been thinking about, though, I wasn't surprised to get a range of answers - "my family," and "CTR," for example, which I still counted as reasonably successful.

But then one child said, very thoughtfully, "Actually, I was thinking about a story about Jesus that I remember." I encouraged him to tell the story to myself and the class, and he very articulately told about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. The story had obviously impressed him, and hearing the wonder in his voice as he retold it made me hear the familiar story in a new light myself.

I think I wish I could be in Primary every week.