Christ the King Video 11/13/11 at OneTrueMedia.com

This is the slide show I created for use with the Christ the King lesson.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Feast of Christ the King

Opening Song: I decided to use the kids' version of "He Reigns" as found in the LifeWay VBS "Pandamania" from Summer 2011. The song is found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwM6meAVWqc Before teaching the song and the motions, I briefly went over what the word "reigns" means and how it applies to Christ the King. (I also explained what the phrase, "It's every tribe, every tongue, every nation" means). It's a quick and easy song, and fits the occasion very well!

Lesson: For this week's lesson I wanted to focus on the Gospel reading with the mandate from Christ to take care of "the least of my people." To do this, I created a video slide presentation with 12 different pictures of Jesus and 13 pictures of people who were hungry, homeless, in poverty, etc. I found all of the images by using Google image, then saved them onto my computer. I then utilized a web site called One True Media http://www.onetruemedia.com/ which creates music videos out of material that you upload. I arranged the photos so that they alternated between Jesus and the person in need. The end result is posted as a part of this blog page, and you are welcomed to view and/or use it.

I told the children that I would be playing a video for them, and that I would like them to count how many times they see Jesus in the video. (Obviously, virtually everyone is going to count 12). When the video is finished, I ask for answers from about 5 different children, and when they each give the incorrect answer, I told them that I would be giving them a hint. I asked them to listen to the story that Jesus tells us in the Gospel this Sunday, and then proceed to read the selection from Matthew 25: 31-40. I find that the version listed at Pflaum's web site is the most easily understood and child-friendly version, found here: http://www.pflaum.com/readings/ After sharing the reading, I summarize: So, this is what Jesus is telling us -- that all of these people who are in need are really HIM! Helping the hungry is helping Him! Helping the thirsty is helping Him! (etc.)

I then discuss with the children the fact that we are coming into the holiday season and that there are many, many people who will not be able to afford a big Thanksgiving dinner or lots of presents under the Christmas tree... maybe can't even afford a Christmas tree! We have many opportunities to help through our parish, and I go over each of those with the children (food pantry, giving tree, etc). I encourage them to talk it over with their family and think about how they might do what Jesus tells us: help the "least of my people" whenever we can, as much as we can.

I then play the slide show again and ask the children to count the number of times they see Jesus, and that I will let the first person to answer correctly be my contestant for "Minute To Win It" today! This time, of course, I get closer guesses to the right answer! :-)

For our MTWI game today, I chose "Tea Party". The blueprint for this game is found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioGaJYZ4XkQ It was an easy one to create, but a lot of fun watching the child try to win!

As always, please feel free to email me directly at jtruitt@stolivers.com if I can answer any questions or share any material with you!

Wrapping up October and New Roman Missal lessons

Over the last couple of weeks we have had a bit of a jumbled schedule in my parish, including one week off for our local "Fall Break", so my group gatherings have been a little bit out of order; however, it is worthwhile for me to share here, at least in summary, what I have done to wrap up our preparation for the New Roman Missal changes.

I decided to bring in a "special guest" to help our children learn the new music that is coming with the changes to the Mass. Our parish has elected to use the Mass of St. Ann by Ed Bolduc, which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL4nRwlIHnk We are phasing in the music slowly over the course of the next few months, starting with the Holy Holy Holy, the Memorial Acclamation, and the Great Amen. The leader of our Life Teen music group is an amazing musician and a very "cool" young man that I knew the kids would love to hear sing and play guitar, so it is he who came to our group gathering. Line by line he taught the songs, then we all sang them together. The kids enjoyed it as much as I expected that they would!

Finally, I felt that we were ready to review all that I had been going over with the children during our group gatherings, so I decided to wrap it up with a competition of JEOPARDY. For this, I use the Jeopardy Gaming System which is available through a company called Educational Insights (example found here at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Educational-Insights-7910-Classroom-Jeopardy/dp/B000EEX7FM ) With this system, you can create your own questions and answers, and it plays out like a real game of Jeopardy, complete with buzzers and an electronic scoreboard. To make this fun, I decided to use catechist/student teams. I started by telling the students that we were going to play, and then asking them to nominate, by pointing, clapping, yelling, etc... to their catechist, if they wanted their catechist to be my contestant. That led to lots of fun and noisy competition, but I did select three catechists and asked each of them to select a student to play with them. I now had three teams of two ready to play. I had created the following four categories: Opening Rites, Reading Time, Liturgy of the Eucharist, and Music. There were 5 questions under each category with ascending "dollar" values, and then the game ended with a Final Jeopardy question. If you have any interest in the exact questions I created, I am more than happy to send them to you; simply email me at jtruitt@stolivers.com any time! My contestants all received prizes for their efforts, with a special prize going to our winners. It was a lot of fun for the players, as well as for the audience cheering them on. All in all, I have to say that the children of St. Olivers are probably better prepared for the upcoming changes than most of the adults in our parish! :-) Stay tuned as we will now move on to other group gathering topics! Thanks for reading!

Lesson for Sunday, Oct. 16th

This week I am continuing to build upon the lessons on the New Roman Missal changes.

Our opening song is a favorite of the children (and me!): Lord, I Lift Your Name on High. (It doesn't really have anything to do with "change", but I wanted to sing it this week!) I like the video found at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYBUGhWQdLA These are the same hand motions we use, more or less.

To begin the lesson, I told the children that I wanted to tell them a story about some people that lived at the same time and in the same place as Jesus. The story went as follows:

Back when Jesus was alive, the place that he lived had some different kinds of people living there. One group that lived there was the Jewish people, called Jews. Will you say that? (Jews). Jesus himself was a Jew. The Jews lived in this area for a long time, but another group of people came in and fought a war with the Jews. These people were called the Romans. Say that: (Romans). Now, at this time, the Romans had won the control of the area where Jesus lived, and so the Romans were in charge of everything. The Jews DID NOT like those Romans, and especially did not like the Roman soldiers who bossed them around, made them pay taxes that they didn't want to pay, and things like that. In the same way, the Romans really DID NOT like the Jews. They did not think they were as good as the Romans, and so they picked on those Jews and talked bad about them a lot.

Well, there was one Roman soldier that I want to tell you about today who really did something unbelievable. This Roman soldier, called a Centurion, had a servant who was also his friend. This servant became very suddenly sick - very sick - in fact, so sick that he was going to die. This made the Roman soldier very, very upset. His servant needed a miracle if he was going to live. Well, the Roman Centurion knew that there was a Jewish man, called Jesus, who was very special. Jesus was rumored to be able to perform miracles, and so the Roman decided to go see him. I want you to watch this video of whath appened next!

Show the video clip from NEST entertainment called, "Lord, I believe" which is about 2 minutes long and shows the centurion going to Jesus and begging for his servant to be healed. When Jesus says he will come to the centurion, the response is, "Lord, I am not worthy for you to enter under my roof. But if you only say the word I know my servant will be healed." The link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH3xLRapUMw After showing the clip, continue to explain:

Now, this was just amazing that a soldier, who didn't even like Jews, had enough faith in Jesus to call him "Lord" and to believe that he could heal the servant. But did you hear what the soldier said when Jesus told him that he would come heal the servant? The soldier said, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and I know my servant will be healed." Does that sound familiar to you at all? Yes? Remember last week I showed you how we are going to have something new to say at Mass? Let's review all of those new things we are going to say, and when you hear something that sounds like what the Roman soldier said, I want you to raise your hand.

I reviewed last week's power point (see blog for Oct. 9) with the students, and of course they all raised their hand at the appropriate time.

I then used this to lead into introducing our Prayer Honor Roll for this year. Prayer Honor Roll is something I use to have the students memorize appropriate prayers for their grade level. I will expand on that in another blog post very soon.

This week we wrapped up the lesson with the Minute to Win It Game "Junk In the Trunk." The blueprint for this game is found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZEAEvIq4Y8 This week I selected my contestant by putting three vessels on the altar: a coffee cup, a drinking cup, and a chalice. I asked who could remember from last week's video about changes what these items on the altar have to do with the changes that are coming. The selected volunteer came up and correctly identified that they were all kinds of cups, but one is called a chalice. We reviewed that "chalice" will replace "cup" in the Eucharistic prayer. As a bonus, I asked if he remembered the Latin word, calix, but he didn't! (However, an audience member did!)

If you have any questions about this lesson or need more information, please contact me at jtruitt@stolivers.com! :-)

Lesson for Sunday, Oct. 9th

Now that the students know that change is coming to our Mass, this week I am going to get a little bit specific about some of the changes.


Opening song: Your Life Will Change (see blog last week for link)


Minute to Win It Game: I decided after last week's lesson that I am going to actually hold off on doing the MITWI game until the *end* of our group gathering time. I discovered that the kids are so excited about it, that to do the MITWI first is sort of like putting the climax of the group gathering time at the beginning. Beginning this week, I am going to let the children earn the MITWI by being good listeners, participating in the lesson, etc. In other words, it is the carrot I will dangle in front of them to get cooperative behavior! :-) Anyway, this week I promised them we would do the "Face the Cookie" challenge, wehreby a student will be selected to move a cookie from the forehead to the mouth without using hands. There are two videos to use with this, one being the typical blueprint video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBqnIJV8dws and the other being a video of a young man actually accomplishing the task: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21KGnaeJS8 (Note: I am only going to require one cookie instead of three, and will use Nilla wafers.) Again, this portion of the gathering time will be at the end.


After our opening song, I will quickly remind the students that our last lesson told us that change was coming. Today we will be getting more specific about that change, and I'd like to start by having two of my friends explain it to you a little bit! (Show video from Life Teen's web site called ismasschanging.org . The link is: http://www.ismasschanging.org/ and you will download the video for middle school youth. It works fine for the elementary students!


After the video, I will tell the students that we are going to look a little bit more specifically at some of the words that WE will be saying differently. To do this, I will utilize and talk through a power point presentation which I have created. The power point link is here: https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcXPFwPkrCrJZHN3MjkzOF8yNWIyODMyZms&hl=en_US Please email me if you'd like me to send it to you directly. My email is jtruitt@stolivers.com .





There will not likely be time for a closing song this gathering, so after Minute to Win It, I will dismiss the children with our standard "GOD IS GOOD.... ALL THE TIME" echo!

Group Gathering for Sunday, Oct. 2nd: Begin New Roman Missal Prep

Now that we have a couple of weeks of classes under our belts, it is time to start preparing the children for the switch to the New Roman Missal coming in November! I am taking several weeks to try and break down the "why" we are changing and the "how" we are changing into the most basic, kid-understandable elements. This is how this week's group gathering will go:

Opening song: Your Life Will Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwTTU7eIw5Qv=CwTTU7eIw5Qyoutube.com/watch?v=CwTTU7eIw5Q This is a great song from an old VBS that has very easy motions to learn.

Minute to Win It: We will review last week's lesson about the parable of the two brothers. I will seek an audience member who can summarize the lesson, and especially the point that it isn't what we SAY that really matters, it's what we DO and how we ACT that shows we are Catholic Christians. The person who summarizes last week will be invited to play the game called "Penny Hose." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXb2rY_Zv9M As usual, if the task is successfully completed the contestant will win a "big" prize, but will win a small prize for at least trying.

Mini-Lesson: This lesson is strictly going to focus on "change." I will begin by having teachers give each student a sheet of paper on which I have pre-printed the Staples Easy Button image on one side and the Mr. Yuck Green Frown Face on the other side.

. I will tell the children that I am going to talk to them today about CHANGE, and we are going to think about and decide whether or not we think change is easy or difficult. I will proceed as follows:

Boys and girls, I am going to say a kind of situation that involves CHANGE. If you think that making that kind of change is easy, I would like you to hold up your sign with the EASY BUTTON showing. If you think that the kind of change that I mention is not too easy, then I want you to hold up the Mr. Yuk face. Everyone ready? Ok! Here we go! First of all, it just changed seasons last week from Summer to Fall. Was that change to Fall last Friday an easy change or a hard change? (pause - comment on signs, which will most likely all say 'easy'). Yes, I think changing seasons is easy, but there is something that happens along with seasons changing sometimes, and that is the Daylight Savings Time change, where we either lose an hour or gain an hour. What do you think? Is Daylight Savings Time an easy change or a hard change? You've got the idea, now! Let's go through a bunch of them. I want you to vote by holding up your signs, and you can look at each others', but let's keep our voices out of it so we can hear each question. Here we go:

Eating your favorite food?

Giving up your favorite food for Lent?

Learning a new language?

Getting a haircut?

Outgrowing your clothes to a new size?

Finishing school in May and going to the next higher grade?

Going to a new school?

Getting a new coach for your sports team?

Moving to a new state?

Moving to the North Pole?

Getting a new pet?

Having a pet run away or die?

VERY GOOD! We saw lots of examples of EASY changes and lots of examples of tough changes today. Some changes we know are coming, don't we? Like we know the seasons are changing; we know that we'll be going to the next grade, etc. But some changes we can't prepare for, like if our pet suddenly ran away from home? I want you to use your sign and answer this question for me. If you think it is easier to deal with changes that you know are coming, show me the easy button, but if you think it is easier to deal with unexpected changes that come, like a tornado wiping out a house, hold up the Mr. Yuk. I agree with all of you who think change is easier to handle when we know it is coming and can plan for it!

I want to ask you another question. If you like to deal with change by having others who have to deal with it too, like if you get a new coach on your team and everyone who plays on the team has to get used to that coach, you will show me the easy button. If you would rather be all by yourself to deal with change, and have nobody to talk about the change with, show me the Mr. Yuk button. I agree with everyone who is holding up the easy button: I think it is much easier to deal with change when we have others that we can talk about it with.

WELL... there is a reason that we are talking about change today. It's because there is a big change coming to our Mass! It is something that has been planned for a long time, and the change is going to start in November, so we have some time to get ready for it. I want to show you a video clip about the changes coming, and so get ready to read along with what it says...

(The Words of the Mass Are Changing Video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmuCNMsG5Q

So, you just heard all of those people talk about the change that is coming, and whether or not they like change and how they get redy for it. Whether we like change or not, we ARE having a change to Mass, and so we ARE going to get ready for it. And I am counting on you, boys and girls, to help your parents to prepare for the change by talking to them about everything that YOU learn about the changes. Since most of your parents don't go to a religous ed. class, it will be up to you to help your family prepare. Can you do that?! Can you DO THAT??!! All right!!!

Next week we are going to have a look at what is changing about the Mass, and we are going to start to learn some of the new things. This week I want you to start to prepare your minds for the change that is coming, ok?

Since you are going to be messengers of these changes, helping others get ready for it, I think that is kind of like letting your light shine before man, and doing a good deed. So let's close with our Let Your Light Shine song! GOD IS GOOD!

Sunday, Sept. 25th Group Gathering Lesson

Parable of the Two Brothers: Sunday, Sept. 25th - 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Opening Song: Ha La La La (Same as last week - see 9/18 blog notes for link)

Review of Last Week: I will start our class by asking who remembers what Jesus taught us last week about what is fair and what isn't fair... if they can summarize for us the Gospel that we talked about. The first student who is able to give some sort of a synopsis of last week's class will be invited up to play a "Minute to Win It" type game. Today we will play "Sharp Shooter", where a student takes aim with rubber bands at playing cards set up with clothes pins. You can find and download the blueprint for this game at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksr2JPk2MnM . I use a 60 second timer for the countdown that can be downloaded at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq25cELZozU . If the student completes the task in 60 seconds, he will win a "big prize" of a notepad and pen... if not, the "small prize" is a fun-sized bag of M&Ms.

Mini-Lesson: I will have pre-chosen two children from among the early arrivals to be my helpers for a skit that we will present, and will assign them their roles. The stage will be pre-set with a television and video game. Both children will be sitting in front of the TV, pretending to play the video game. On the opposite side of the stage I will have a broom set up, along with some random objects (toys, papers, etc) to make the area look messy. The skit will proceed as follows, with me playing the mom:

Mom: Kids, the playroom is pretty messy! I need for the toys to be picked up and for you to sweep up the floor of all of the cookie crumbs. Will you please take care of that?
Child 1: Ok, mom! I'll be there in a minute!
Child 2: Awwww, come on, Mom! I am in the middle of a good game! Why do you always make me stop my FUN and do work for you?! I don't WANT to pick up right now! I'm staying right here!
Mom: (Shrugs shoulders and walks away)

Children continue to play for a few seconds.
Child 2: Come on, Mom needs us to clean up. We'd better do it!
Child 1: No way! If I stop now I will lose the high score! I'm not going to do it!

Child 2 gets up, goes and picks up the mess and starts sweeping.
Child 1 continues to play the video game.

That will end the skit, at which point I will summarize what happened and ask the students what they think: which child did the better thing? The one who was polite to the mom and said he'd do it, but then didn't ... or the one who back-talked his mom, but then did what she asked? I will point out that neither one of them was a really good example, but that Jesus has something to say to us about that. I will then read to them the Gospel for 9/25, which can be found at http://www.pflaum.com/readings/sept_2011/sept_25.pdf . We will teach that Jesus is telling us that it is fine to say you are a Christian, to say that you love God, etc., but if you don't ACT like it, you're not doing the right thing. It's much better to ACT like that Christian person and to let your good deeds shine.

Closing song: Let Your Light Shine Before Man - found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZMMz5uJKkQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLAA76858E183053E1


The kids love this song! The motions are very easy.

If you have any questions about this lesson, please feel free to contact me at jtruitt@stolivers.com !