#7 I'm Thankful For......

I have what some would consider a hard calling at church.  No, I'm not the Relief Society President or any other president.  Thank goodness.  But I am in charge of 50 toddler/preschoolers in the Nursery.

I've begun to enjoy my calling, despite the stresses of finding substitutes and keeping kids entertained and under control for two hours.

What so nice is that it's getting easier.  And I'm thankful for that. 

We've done a few things to make it easier.  First of all, I have four classes and two teachers in each classroom.  They all know the routine and are teaching it to the kids.  Ahh.

Second, we are training the parents to collect their children as quickly as they can after church so the next ward can begin setting up.  And today they did.

Third, we don't need substitutes every week, but when we do the subs are generally very willing to help out.  Today we had three substitutes and our music director helped fill in for the fourth teacher that was missing. 

Fourth, we are having some success with our extremely experimental older class.  Two of our classes consist of 25 kids that will move to Sunbeams in January.  The other two classes consist of the younger kids that we get to keep for another year.  In the older classes we do a lot of combined activities: read books, play with toys, and do music time.  They separate to make the lesson and snack times more manageable.  Last week we began our experiment.  We decided to change things up and have an opening exercises, sharing time, and music time to "practice" for Primary.  Then we break for snack and lesson and combine at the end to play with toys.  We'll keep this up through the rest of the year.  The kids are getting it and the teachers are SO AWESOME.  I really couldn't ask for better teachers to help prepare the kids for the sitting and expected reverence of Primary.

I'm thankful for my calling, the kids, the teachers, the parents, the Primary leaders and Bishopric that check in with me nearly weekly to make sure I'm surviving, my kids that help me prepare, my sister that stops and helps me set up some Sundays, my husband that listens to me report how my day went, and everyone else that does anything they can to help us out.  I'm sure I make a bigger deal out of it than it really is, but it's my calling and if I'm going to spend my energy on it, I better do it right.