Easter Club Week 4/OsterAG Woche 4

Als Abschluss zur OsterAG besuchten wir einen Kinderclub in einer anderen Bezirk von Berlin. Diese Bezirk hat leider nicht den besten Ruf in Berlin wegen Kriminalität und einer hohen Zahl am Immigranten, aber sie ist trotzdem kinderreich und hat viele Familien, die ihren Kindern nur das Beste im Leben wünschen. Wir erzählen unseren Schülern die negativen Infos nicht, weil wir möchten, dass sie ihre eigene Eindrücke, weg von Stereotypen, formulieren.  Dadurch hoffen wir, dass wir zukünftige Brücken bauen können, die diese Bezirk positiv sozial und wirtschaftlich prägen können. Our last week of Easter Club was spent visiting a children's after-school club in another part of Berlin. This children's club is in a part of Berlin that doesn't necessarily have the best reputation, although we do not share this information with our children. One reason we make this trip with our kids is that we believe that by building bridges early on, we can help shape the social and economic future of this district in a positive way.

Mit den begabten Mitarbeitern des Kinderclubs haben wir einige Angebote für die Kinder organisiert. Wir schauten auch darauf, dass die Gruppen sich mischten, damit die Kinder ein bisschen aus ihren Komfortzonen kamen. Along with the gifted staff of the children's club, we organized several activities for the children to choose from. We also made sure that each activity involved children from both our school and the club to encourage the children to mix with one another rather than staying in their comfort zones.

Bei einem Projekt konnten die Kinder Sämlingen, die im Winter von den Mitarbeitern des Clubs angebaut wurden, in Töpfe einpflanzen. Unten kann man die Blumenerde und Sämlinge auf einen Tisch sehen und die Vasen u. Wasserkannen auf dem anderen. Obwohl die Sonne schien, war das Wettervorschau etwa unsicher gewesen und wir entschieden uns dafür drin mit der Aktion zu bleiben.  One project involved planting seedlings (cultivated over the winter months by the staff of the children's club) in pots for the children to take home with them. Below you can see the gardening soil and and seedlings on one table and the decorative vases and watering cans on the other table. Although it was a beautiful day outside, the weather forecast had been a bit "iffy", so we opted to do the planting inside.

Während manche Kinder warteten um einzupflanzen, konnten sie Brettspielen mit einander spielen.  While waiting for their turn to plant a seedling, the others played board games in another room. 

Eine andere Gruppe von Mädels und Jungs entschied sich für Fußball. Another group of girls and boys went out to the soccer cage for a tournament.

Am Ende kamen wir alle zusammen mit der riesen Springseile zu hüpfen . . .
 We came together at the end to jump rope  . . . 

und den Pokal an der gewinnenden Mannschaft zu überreichen.

and present the "trophy" to the winning soccer team composed of kids from both places. 

Wie die Zeit vergeht, wenn man Spass hat! Bald waren wir auf dem Weg nach Hause. Wir tauschten unsere Eindrücke kurz aus, während wir auf die Strassenbahn warteten. Viele von uns äußerten, wie nett sie die Kinder dort fanden. Das Einpflanzen und  Springseilspringen waren unter den lieblings Aktivitäten. Time flies when you're having fun, and before we knew it, we were on our way home. Waiting for the tram, we talked about what we had experienced. Our kids commented on how nice they thought the other children at the club were. Planting the seedlings and jumping rope were among the favorite activities. 

Ein Junge erzählte auch, dass es alles zu viel für ihn war und dass dieser Teil der AG nicht sein lieblings gewesen war. Ich war dankbar für seine Ehrlichkeit. One child also voiced that there had been too much going on, and that the visit to the children's club had not been his favorite part of the Easter Club. I appreciated his honesty. 

Im Großen und Ganzem war diese Aktion sehr wertvoll und ein schöner Weg gewesen um zu Ostern vorzubereiten! All in all, it was a meaningful way to spend our time and prepare for Easter!

If you missed the other "episodes" of Easter Club, please click below:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Happy Easter!

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Der Herr ist auferstanden!

Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!

Hopefully some Easter grass will begin growing here during Eastertide!

Happy Easter!

Frohe Ostern!

A Song for Good Friday

On this Good Friday, I want to share with you one of the songs that we sing with our children each night before they go to bed. It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer during his stay at Tegel prison here in Berlin shortly before his execution. 

The song is called "Von guten Mächten" and roughly translates as "By Gracious Powers". Below is the original German followed by the most popular English translation. 

Von guten Mächten

Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben,
behütet und getröstet wunderbar,
so will ich diese Tage mit euch leben, 
und mit euch gehen in ein neues Jahr.

Refrain:
Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen
erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen
und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.

Noch will das alte unsre Herzen quälen,
noch drückt uns böser Tage schwere Last.
Ach Herr, gib unsern aufgeschreckten Seelen
das Heil, für das Du uns geschaffen hast.

Und reichst Du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern,
des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand,
so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern
aus Deiner guten und geliebten Hand.

Doch willst Du uns noch einmal Freude schenken
an dieser Welt und ihrer Sonne Glanz,
dann woll'n wir des Vergangenen gedenken,
und dann gehört Dir unser Leben ganz.

Laß warm und hell die Kerzen heute flammen
die Du in unsre Dunkelheit gebracht,
führ, wenn es sein kann, wieder uns zusammen!
Wir wissen es, Dein Licht scheint in der Nacht.

Wenn sich die Stille nun tief um uns breitet,
so laß uns hören jenen vollen Klang
der Welt, die unsichtbar sich um uns weitet,
all Deiner Kinder hohen Lobgesang.



"By gracious powers"

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
with bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us
the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.

Übersetzung: F. Pratt Green

You can hear the melody to the song here in German and in English here. 

A note about the translation: Green's translation is the most readable, but this one more accurately reflects the original German, although the sentence constructions render it difficult to read.

In our sketchbooks . . .

If you read our last post, you know that we've been spending a lot of time at the hospital. Between visits to Grandpapa, we've managed to make some art. 

This is a picture inspired by sketches of trees that I saw on furniture at the Art Nouveau Museum here in Berlin.

And another phoenix. The phoenix is an ancient symbol of Christ's resurrection that I have been exploring during Lent. 

This is the Michaelis Kloster (St. Michael's Monastery) in Hildesheim, Germany that I recently visited.

My 10-year-old made a linocut of some Marvel superheroes. Guess who?

And my 8-year-old loves cupcakes and horses.

We're joining Friday Sketches at Dion Dior's beautiful blog. 

A different Holy Week than we imagined . . .

Once a year, the grandparents come to visit us from the US. One of the hardest things about living the life we have chosen is that we are so far away from them, so we love seeing them and spending time with them. For many years now, they have come to visit us in Berlin and we have taken a trip together to some other European vacation spot. We have made a lot of unforgettable memories this way. 

My children could hardly sleep on Thursday night waiting for Grandmama and Grandpapa to get here. The grandparents arrived late that evening, so the kids expected them to come to their school on Friday, the last day of school before the Easter holidays, to pick them up. Then, on Sunday, we would all fly to Sicily, Italy together for a vacation. The kids could hardly contain themselves with excitement - grandparents, the beach, gelato on every corner, and as much pizza as they could eat!

But what happened is this . . . my father-in-law, who loves to get out and about, decided to go grocery shopping with me and my husband on Friday morning. As we were walking along and chatting, he suddenly stumbled on some cobblestones and took a very hard fall on the sidewalk. Even though he got up, it became quickly apparent that he wasn't going anywhere. The ambulance came minutes later and took him to the emergency room. 

A hospital stay and surgery on his fractured tibia followed. Although Germany has an excellent medical system, it's still scary to have surgery in a foreign country where you don't speak the language. He came through the surgery okay, thank the Lord, and will start physical therapy today. 

So here we are. The last few days have been completely different than we imagined they would be. Everyone has been dealing sadness and disappointment, especially my father-in-law, who never dreamed that he was flying to Germany to stay in a hospital. An somehow, we have all felt God's grace gently carrying us through it all. 

This was not the Holy Week that I would have chosen for our family, but it is the one that God allowed. And here are some things that I have observed:

Jesus' followers also imagined a very different Holy Week so many years ago. After Palm Sunday where all Jerusalem hailed Jesus as the new king, they probably imagined a grand outcome with celebrations. It's no surprise that they all ran away after the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Our natural instinct is to run away from anything painful. The disciples also had to deal with pain, sadness and disappointment that would not be resolved until well after the resurrection had taken place. And our sadness here will linger for a while as well, but that's okay.

Falls are unexpected, they happen quickly, and you are not prepared for them. I am re-visiting the Stations of the Cross, where Jesus falls three times, in a new way. Watching my father-in-law stumble and fall was terrifying. Not knowing how badly he was hurt and being momentarily paralyzed with shock - I never want to relive that again, but I know there will be other falls in life, literal and metaphorical. My comfort is in knowing that God will always be there. 

Before this happened, I thought my rest would come in the form of a vacation - sitting on the beach, soaking up the sun, viewing amazing art and eating wonderful food. I thought that I had earned this after the last eight weeks of hard work. But as my friend Shannon in Brussels (you can read her thoughts at THÉology) has shared with me, God's rest does not always come in that way. There are times when physical rest does not happen and we rest in who He is: His completed work in creation, the work the He will complete when creation is fully renewed, what He has done in us, and what He will do in us. And this is the kind of rest that I am seeking this Holy Week. 

I wish you and your families a meaningful Holy Week and a joyous Easter celebration!

It's Pysanky time again!

"Mom, I'm so glad we get to make Pysanky and not just those boring Easter eggs that everyone else makes!"

Not that I have anything against other kinds of Easter eggs, but it is nice to that hear my ten-year-old really enjoys making Pysanky, the Ukrainian Easter eggs that are painted using a batik method with beeswax. 

If you'd like to find out how I learned to make them and then taught my children, please read this. 

This year, I finally made a real drying rack. I, the handwork challenged one, hammered some nails into plywood (driving my neighbors batty, I'm sure!) in tripod formations to dry the eggs after dying and more easily varnish them.

This year, I also got brave enough to hollow out the eggs afterwards with an egg pump. (In the past, we have just left the insides intact and they harden after a couple of years.) So now, we'll be able to glue ribbons on to our finished eggs and give them to friends for their Easter trees.

Art Project: Sewn Collages with Felt and Burlap

Over the last 5 years of doing after-school clubs, I have become better at recycling (or "upcycling") art supplies to reuse in new projects. When planning the Easter Club this year, I looked around at what I had and saw that we still had tons of burlap left over from our wool pictures that we have used in several clubs and children's church. And as you can imagine, being a Godly Play teacher, I have lots of felt scraps lying around as well. So, inspired by an idea that I saw in an art book where the children sewed pictures onto cloth, I came up with this idea for sewn collages. 

In setting up this corner of our Godly Play room, I tried to visually explain the process to the children with the examples below, so that they could figure out what to do without asking. This was, of course, motivated by the Montessori principle, "help me to help myself". I then threaded several needles with embroidery thread and had them in a pin cushion with a needle threader beside it. 

Here are the visual examples of the process for the children to follow:
1) pinning the cut-out felt pieces onto the burlap
2) sewing the felt pieces onto the the cloth

I also made my example as simple as possible, because I have learned that if I make a full picture, some children often simply copy my work rather than coming up with their own ideas. 

The children needed about two sessions to complete their work. These were 1-5 graders, who worked independently for the most part. Preschoolers would probably needed more time and slightly more assistance. 

Here are a couple of examples of the children's work:

In general, I have found that both girls and boys in the elementary years love to sew. Obviously, sewing is good for their fine motor skills, and there is something very satisfying about the end result. 

Easter Club 2014 Week 3 / OsterAG Woche 3

Diese Woche haben wir "Die Gesichter Christi" gehört, die  vom Leben Jesu erzählt, mit Schnappschüsse von seiner Geburt bis zur Auferstehung. This week we heard the Godly Play story called "The Faces of Easter". This story takes us through the life of Jesus with snapshots of his life from birth to death and resurrection.

Wie bei "Das Geheimnis von Ostern" betont diese Geschichte, dass Ostern 2 Seiten hat, die man nicht von einander trennen kann (auch wenn man will!). Eine Seite ist ernst und traurig und die andere verursacht Freude. Die Auferstehung, das "Ende" der Geschichte, ist gleich wie ein Anfang, damit die Geschichte immer weitergehen kann. Like "The Mystery of Easter", "Faces" emphasizes that Easter has both a sad and joyful side, and even if we wanted to, we can't separate the two sides from one another. But the resurrection, the "end of the story", is really a beginning, and the story goes on.

Nach der Erzählung wurden die Kinder eingeladen das Zimmer anzuschauen und einen Gegenstand auszusuchen, der uns etwas mehr von der Geschichte erzählt. Sie waren echt kreativ gewesen! At the end, the children are invited to look around the room and place an object next to one of the pictures to tell us more about the story. It is amazing what the children come up!

Dieses Mädchen nahm Stempeln mit Symbolen der Dreieinigkeit und stellte sie neben das Bild von Jesu Taufe.  This child chose stamps with symbols of the Trinity to place near the picture of Jesus' baptism.

Dieser Junge nahm Da Vincis "Letzter Abendmahl" und stellte es neben das Bild, wo Jesus Brot und Wein mit seinen Jüngern teilt. This child placed Da Vinci's "Last Supper" near the picture of Jesus breaking bread and wine with the disciples.

Und dieser Junge nahm 2 Bauklötze und stapelte sie auf einander. Er sagte, der Bauklotz unten stellt Gott dar and und der obere die Welt. Er erklärte weiter, die Welt ist stabil, weil Gott das Fundament ist. And this child chose two wooden blocks, saying that one block represented Jesus as the foundation and that the other block was the rest of creation resting on him. 

Viele Kinder wollten in der Kreativphase mit Farbe malen. Many of the children chose to paint during the Response Time.

Andere fertigten ihre Papierblumen und klebte sie an Ästen. Others finished their paper flowers and attached them to twigs. 

Einige arbeiteten mit Buntstiften und Stempeln. Some worked with colored pencils and stamps.

Und andere nähten Collagen mit Filz und Jutestoff. Others made sewn collages with felt scraps and burlap.

Nächste Woche besuchen wir einen Kinderclub in einem anderen Stadtteil. Warum? Weil wir Kindern  vermitteln möchten, dass unser Leben mit Gott nicht nur in der Kirche ist. Er geht mit uns überall hin, und wir feiern ihn in allem, was wir tun!  Next week we'll be visiting a children's club in a different part of the city to play together and plant some flowers. Why? Well, we like for children to make the connection that our faith in God isn't just something for inside the church walls. We take it with us wherever we go and celebrate God in everything we do.

Woche 4 kommt bald! 

Stay tuned for Week 4!

Easter Club 2014 Week 2 / OsterAG Woche 2

In der 2.Woche der OsterAG haben wir das Gleichnis, "Der Barmherzige Vater", gehört. Im Bild unten sieht man das Endbild mit dem Vater und dem jüngeren Sohn in der Mitte. Der ältere Sohn ist unentschieden, ob er zur Party kommt oder nicht. Ich habe den Kindern nachher eine Bibel gezeigt, damit sie wissen, woher diese Geschichte kam. In the second week of Easter Club, we heard the "Parable of the Loving Father". Below you can see the final scene of the story with the father and younger brother in the middle and the older brother deciding what he is going to do. I am holding a Bible to show the children where this story came from. (Please note that this parable is not one of the original Godly Play stories, but one told in Godly Play "style".)

Unser Ergründungsgespräch am Ende war wirklich lebendig. Es gab unterschiedliche Meinungen, ob der ältere Brüder seinen Bruder vergeben hat und sich mit ihm versöhnt hat. Manche Kinder haben sich Sorgen gemacht, dass er vielleicht so wütend war, dass er den jüngeren Bruder sogar verletzen würde. Andere fanden es unfair, dass der jüngere Bruder eine Party kriegte, nachdem er alles so versaut hat. Andere waren nicht sicher, ob der jüngere Bruder wirklich so glücklich war. Vielleicht war es ihm immer noch peinlich? Wir haben festgestellt, dass es nicht leicht zwischen Geschwistern sein kann . . . Our Wondering at the end was quite lively. The children had different opinions about whether or not the older brother forgave and reconciled himself to his younger brother. Some kids were worried that he might have been angry enough to hurt the younger brother. Some found it unfair that the younger brother got a party after he had messed up so badly. And others were not sure if the younger brother was even happy now. Maybe he was still too embarrassed to enjoy himself? In any case, we agreed that things are not always easy between siblings . . . 

In der Kreativphase gab es die Möglichkeit Nähbilder aus Filz und Jutestoff zu machen. During Response Time the children could sew collages with cut-out felt pieces on burlap.

Dieses unfertige Bild unten ist von einem Jungen aus der 5. Klasse. Als ich fragte, ob er mit etwas davon erzählen möchte, meinte er, dass es der Vater und älterer Bruder von dem Gleichnis seien. Der Vater reicht ihm ein Kelch und bittet in zur Party zu kommen. Der Kelch errinerte mich daran, wie Gott uns zu seinem Tisch während des Abendmahls lädt. The unfinished picture below was made by a boy in the fifth grade. When I asked him if he wanted to tell me something about it, he explained that it was the father from the parable offering the older brother a drink and inviting him to come in. The chalice shape of the cup made me think of how God invites us to his table when we take communion. 

Andere Kinder malten Bilder mit Wasser vermalbaren Stiften. Other painted pictures with water soluble crayons. 

Einige machten weiter mit den Papierblumen, und anderen bauten Jerusalem mit Holzklötzen. And still others worked on their paper flowers or built Jerusalem with blocks.

Jedes Mal am Ende feiern wir ein kleines Fest zusammen. Danach stehen wir auf und sagen den Vater Unser zusammen als Abschied. Each time we meet, we have a small feast after the Response Time. Afterwards, we say the Lord's Prayer together to end our time. 

Woche 3 kommt bald!

Week 3 is coming up!

Click here for Week 1

Remembering Muriel Silberstein-Storfer

I'd like to take a moment and remember Muriel Silberstein-Storfer, a pioneer in art education and the author of Doing Art Together, whom I have written about several times on this blog. I did not know her personally, but a friend of mine who is an art teacher in Texas did, and she introduced me to Miriam's work about 8 years ago when I was looking for ways to incorporate art into children's church. 

Source: Staten Island Advance

In some ways, Miriam prepared me for my future work with Godly Play. She was a woman who obviously loved and understood children. She also believed that art could help children develop their linguistic skills. From her I learned never to ask a child, "What is that?" when discussing his/her artwork. She also helped me to discover what kinds of  questions were helpful. Exactly the sort of things that we learn and teach in Godly Play trainings. I don't know if she and Jerome Berryman ever met, but I'm sure they would have liked each other.: )

To read more about her life and achievements, see this article. Also, click here to see how I used her methodology with my own children.

And if you don't have a copy of Doing Art Together, it should definitely be a part of your library!