Gleek’s primary teacher went out of town for the weekend and asked me to substitute. So today after a sacrament meeting wrestling Gleek and Patches into submission while Howard literally fell asleep at the end of the bench (LTUE and being sick hammered him hard), I took on The Sunbeam Class. Sunbeams is the age group 3-4 years old. In this case it was 5 little girls all adorably dressed in their sunday best. They look like innocent little angels, but when I tell you that Gleek fits right in with this group you should have an idea what I was in for.
The amusement began during sharing time when an adult began the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Gleek loves this story. It is her favorite bible story, so when the teacher asked “Who knows why they put Daniel in the lion’s den?”, she skipped the hand raising and announced in her loudest voice “Because he prayed!” All the adults were impressed, and I was pleased that my child had shown such knowledge. But then she continued: “And then they threw him in the lions den! And the Fairy came and shut all the mouths and Daniel was safe. We don’t like lions. We should chop off their heads!” Oops. Looks like we need to clarify the difference between angels and fairies a little better.
Then the classes all split up into their separate rooms and I had to go solo with these five angelic looking little girls. They were gorgeous all with beautiful dresses and ringlets. Except for Gleek, she picked her own dress this morning and I chose not to argue. I’m lucky we managed to brush hair this morning let alone sit down for 20 minutes putting ringlets in her hair. So I guess I should say that there were 4 angels and one ragamuffin. You know that saying about books and covers? No sooner were we seated than a beautiful girl with long brown ringlets interrupted my sentence to inform me that fish live in the water and birds live in the sky. I thanked her for the information and attempted to continue my lesson, but then the angel with long blonde ringlets announced “Yeah! And Zombies live in the graveyard!” Hmm. I’m thinking daddy probably plays video games.
One lesson, one trip to the drinking fountain, one coloring project, and one potty trip later I still had 15 minutes of time left. These girls raced through each step as if there were no tomorrow. And I do mean raced, especially in the halls. 5 girls, 3 directions and I get to catch them all while wearing heels and attempting not to be irreverent in a church building. Since I had no intention of letting them all out of the room again until I could shove them into the hands of their parents, I needed to think of an activity. They seemed quite content to roll their pictures into tubes and use them for spotting pirates or having sword fights, but I thought something more group oriented would be better. So we played “Lion hunt”.
The “Lion Hunt” game is supposed to be rythmic and repetitive where you overcome obstacles to find a lion. Then you run back across all the obstacles to the safety of your own house. Not these girls. They can’t just swim the river. No. The river has to be full of crocodiles and snakes. And when we reach the “scary dark cave” none of them are scared. Instead they grab their flashlights and dash into the cave where they chop off the lion’s head and stomp on all the snakes that were there. Except for the baby snakes, they pick those up to take home because baby snakes are cute.
I can just imagine how these girls are going to answer the question: “So what did you learn at church today?” “There were pirates, and Lions and we chopped off their heads and stomped the snakes, and zombies live in graveyards!” Watch out Xena. Here come The Sunbeams.
Wow, how did you have the energy to write this after that? All that imagination in those little packages – wow.
That’s so cool. We never were allowed to do such un-girly things. We were dressed to look like little angels and expected to act appropriately. Line up our dolls in minature pews, play tea party and amuse the adult watchers at how we mixed up teaparty with communion.
Boring as all get-out. Particularly since even at that age I had no interest in dolls or teaparties. Tho there was the time mom gave me a teaparty set to take to church, and afterwards I took it and ran down to the drainage ditch and used the pieces to make mud-city (think sandcastles at the beach, but using teaparty dishes instead of buckets, and mud instead of dirt).
I was in Wal-Mart the other night, with my Sunbeam, Scarlet. Nature called.
I chose the handicapped stall, because there is more room for her to jump and dance in. She turned her back to me, and handed me her hands, and said, “Daddy, put me in prisoner.” That’s a thing we do, where I hold on to her, and she escapes, then usually she blows up my lasers so I can’t destroy the world. Well, this time I put a twist on it. After she escaped, I told her that I was going to lock her in the highest room in the tallest tower, and she could never get out.
Her response? She gave me the you’re in trouble now look, said “I’m a NINJA princess,” and proceeded to beat the stuffin’s out of me.
I blame Princess Fiona.
And by blame, I mean thank. Because, frankly, I find this sort of attitude in girls this age to be far more healthy than the one engendered by Snow White and the stories that Shrek was spoofing.
Particularly in this day and age, girls that believe they can do whatever they need to do, and still take the cute baby snakes back to their house to play with, all while wearing ringlets and pretty dresses will not be the kind of victims you see on Lifetime so often.
My daughter is a Sunbeam, who likes to dress up as much as she likes to kick butt. It’s a riot to watch, but scary at the same time. She has no fear about anything. My son is rather cautious, my daughter is going to be the terror of the neighborhood in just a few years I’m sure. Congratulations on surviving primary with the Sunbeams. My hat goes off to my kids primary teachers.
My post-church thoughts were very similar to yours. I’m very glad that none of these girls looks to be victim material.
My during church thoughts were all along the lines of: “Aaaagh they’re getting away!”