Sharing Resources

For the month of September, Marineview Chapel joined in the celebration of Seasons of Creation.  As a church we desired to encounter God as the Creator, to celebrate the goodness of His Creation, and to attune our ears to better listen to the voice of creation.  A friend directed us to Salal + Cedar as a good compliment for the children in Sunday School.  As a small church, it can be difficult to find curriculum that appropriate for a wide range of children.  Currently our Sunday school program includes 10 children ranging from grades 1-7. 
    Salad + Cedar graciously loaned us “The Trees” and “All the Birds of the Air” curriculum.  The children enjoyed the interactive and hands on opportunity to explore creation through these two programs.  They particularly enjoyed guessing the various types of fruit as part of the Tree Fruit Salad activity and marveled at the wide range of variety of fruit God created and how even similar looking seeds would yield very different fruit at maturity.  Leaves collected from the church property and nearby forest provided wonderful material for leaf rubbing, and they all diligently worked to create their own works of art with the flower press that was provided.  When it was time to work through the “All the Birds of the Air Curriculum”, they so enjoyed foraging around the outside to look for additional material to compliment the material already provided to build a bird’s nest.  Building a nest is apparently hard work for the birds!  We also studied the various types of feathers, guessing that type of bird they belonged to; all the children left the station wishing they could take home a feather or two.
    We were very pleased with the detail of the above wonder box curriculum, the quality and quantity of the material and even the care taken to refresh the boxes after use.  In fact, one child saw the large bin labeled “Birds” and exclaimed, “There’s so much stuff just about birds?!”.   Although we were only able to use a portion of the curriculum due to time constraints, I could see how the program could be extended into a longer period of time, or possible several sessions to reinforce the original lesson.  Our hope is that the children left the two sessions with a greater appreciation and wonder at the created world around them. 

    Blessings to all those at Salal + Cedar for developing and sharing this wonderful resource.

Winnie Leong
Children’s Ministry  
Marineview Chapel