Wisdom Week 3 of 4

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool for his master.

~ Ben Johnson

 

Here's a rundown of what we did at co-op this week:

• Prayer and pledge of allegiance, share praise reports
• Children recite the Bible verses they memorized this week
• Homework - I talked to the kids about the verses their moms have chosen for them to memorize each week and how as individuals we are each responsible for our own behavior and choices but that their parents are responsible to God for what is taught to them.  After discussing this a little I asked the kids to each bring a verse back next week that they thought the parents should work to remember.  The other moms and I plan to hang them on our doorposts.
• Essays on famous quotes read for group (Pg. 10-11 Act. # 34) 
• Have kids bake a cake without using any instructions and then make another with instructions. (Pg. 10 Act. # 32)  While I expected the lesson learned to be that we all need to pay attention to instruction - the Bible is our instruction book for life, (that lesson was conveyed) I was surprised to find the children working together and listening to each other to gain wisdom in how to go about making this first cake.  A perfect reflection of one of the quotes chosen for an earlier essay shown above.
• Discuss what is meant by "gray area."  Kids sort paint chips from darkest to lightest.  (Pg, 11 Act. # 38)  This was interesting.  Again, I was surprised.  What I expected to be a very short, rather boring project turned out to take a bit of time.  There are so many shades within the spectrum that it was often hard to decide if something was darker or lighter.  Sometimes a color didn't seem like it belonged at all.  And the kids did make some keen comparisons from this activity to true wisdom.
• Plan an art contest.  Develop criteria for judging artwork.  Work out potential problems ahead of time.  Although the assignment in the book suggests having contestants, we chose to use several pieces of established artwork from the Picturing America packet of paintings.  (Pg. 12 Act. # 39)  We then went further with this idea and had the students come up with a list of criteria for a Student of the Week contest that we'll be using in future weeks.

All KONOS activities listed for our co-op are from Volume II - Wisdom. Please feel free to contact me if you have trouble finding one of the activities.