My Religious Journey
From a very young age, my family and I attended our Chinese Catholic Church called Mission of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since the beginning, we have gathered in borrowed churches, commercial buildings, etc.. For the last 20 or so years, we have been blessed to have our very own church in Plano, TX.
My dad grew up Buddhist but went to Catholic high school in Taiwan. After being married to my mom for a decade or so, he converted to Catholicism. Ever since I can remember, we have been attending Catholic mass every Sunday. My siblings and I pretty much grew up in the church. We had a strong social network there and celebrated lots of Christian and Chinese holidays with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
After being away for college, medical school, and residency, I finally made it back to my home church a few years ago. Many of my childhood church friends are also back at our home church and we have children of similar ages. We have formed the Young Family Ministry at our church and we work together to teach Sunday School, plan activities, and help grow our church.
How I Became a Sunday School Teacher
I have to admit, I’ve always been a little bit embarrassed about my lack of scriptural knowledge. Even though I attended Sunday School myself through high school, I couldn’t recite to you many Bible verses or tell you much about Catholic doctrines. When our church was short on Sunday School teachers, I volunteered to be an assistant. Little did I know, I would end up being the primary teacher in the kindergarten/first grade class.
Over the last three years of teaching Sunday School, I have definitely learned a lot. When it comes to these younger kids, my approach is just to make the class really fun. My hope is that they will love coming to church and learning about our religion. In the process, I hope they build a strong relationship with God and also a faith-based social network that will support them throughout their lives.
Kindergarten/1st Grade Class Itinerary
At our church, we have class every Sunday during the school year except for school, religious, and Chinese holidays. We start at 10:45 am and go until 12:15 pm. Here is the basic structure of each class:
- 10:45 am – Class starts. Children wash their hands, then we sing a Chinese prayer song of thanks and begin snacks. We start coloring page on topic from last week’s Bible story. We discuss last week’s Bible story to jog their memory.
- 11:00 am – Read the next Bible story.
- 11:15 am – Do Craft related to new Bible story.
- 11:45 am – Craft finished. Start Catholic worksheet.
- 12:00 pm – Worksheet finished. Clean up. Group prayer about what we are thankful for.
- 12:15 pm – Class ends.
I hope my posts help you teach the children in your classes and at home about God’s love. Please leave a comment below and share your experience!
You may be interested in some of my other pages: