A Donkey's Tale

Tuesday afternoon was after school club and time to put the donkey headdresses I made yesterday, through their paces.

When I was making the headdresses, I decided to staple them one side and fasten them with a paperclip on the opposite side. With hindsight, this was not a terribly good idea, especially as the first race was jumping! The paperclips soon worked their way off the hats and on to the floor, leaving the headdresses to uncurl in a most disconcerting manner!
Plan B was for the participants to hold the headdresses on with one hand.
Plan C was to abandon the headdresses altogether.
We reached plan C.
I should have stuck to my original plan and stapled them on both sides, however, not being entirely sure how big a child's head is, I convinced myself that with the paperclip we could adjust the size as required. Were the children bothered? Nah!  They took it all in their stride, or should I say, gallop! Look on the bright side. The ears, which kept falling off yesterday evening, all stayed firmly attached throughout the duration of the races.

We have a game that requires some physical effort early on in the session to help them get rid of some of their excess energy and calm them down.  I have learnt that some children are like Duracell batteries, they just keep going and going and going!

I like there to be some sort of link between the game and the story - no matter how tenuous! As we are getting close to Holy Week, we were looking at the events of Palm Sunday - hence all the donkeying around.

I discovered a cracking activity on Pinterest - a model of Jesus riding on a donkey. It just requires some scoring beforehand so that the donkey ends up with being 3d, not 2d. 'Jesus' is also pre-scored, so he can sit on the donkey. This model is amazingly stable and Jesus will balance at any point from the donkey's head to tail! I don't think Jesus took part in any gymnastic or tricks whilst riding into Jerusalem, but it certainly increases the play potential of this model!

The children also designed their own palm branches, for use in the storytelling.

We had a prayer table, where the children were giving thanks for things they could remember that Jesus did. The children came up with some great answers - healed, cared for people, forgave, was good. One even said that Jesus was 'the light of the world'.

This term we discovered that one of the men is really good at colouring, so we put him on the table with the felt tip pens. Some of the children really enjoy hanging out, chilling with D, enjoying an oasis of calm in the midst of the scissors and double sided sticky tape...

Too soon it is time to hand the children back to their parents, and head home to prepare for Open the Book the next day. Fortunately, the story this week is very simple, with not many props required and nothing to make, not even a donkey.

We enjoyed adult company in the evening when we went ringing in a nearby village. Noting the banter between sessions, I come to the conclusion that we are all big kids at heart.