Mr. Jones and I volunteered at the "Kids Games" sponsored by Urban Family Ministries. It was held at Martin Luther King Academy, located near Madison and Logan Streets. It's an evening thing, from 6:00 until 9:00 Monday through Friday. Mr. Jones was able to help out Tuesday and Wednesday evenings ~ I was available those nights as well as tonight.
There is an opening 15 minutes of enthusiastic singing, all focused on how much God loves us! They did some great songs with the children, all of whom were very musical.
The children were divided into groups "A" through "L", male and female, based on their age. Then four of these groups would be put together to begin the rotation of activities. Here are groups A-D studying about nutrition. Each night, the nutrition leader (Karen) would entertain the children with her great teaching ability, and talk about healthy eating habits, the food groups, obesity, etc. She taught about natural sugar versus man-made sugar tonight. The children were given two little signs: one had a sun on it, the other had a picture of a man. Karen would show them a grocery item and ask if it was a natural sugar or a man-made sugar. The kids would respond by raising the appropriate sign. She asked if any of the children would like an M & M. She informed the kids that whoever wanted the M & M would first have to "work it off" and then they could eat it. So she chose a small boy who was very eager for his M & M ~ but he had to run in place for 60 seconds before he could have it! She had an ordinary looking sucker and told the kids it would take almost 10 minutes of running in place to burn off the sugar that was packed into that sucker! Not many children were very interested in running in place for 10 minutes just to have a sucker! 
Our next rotation was to the gym where the kids played a game called, "Cross the sea." It's a basic running game from one side of the gym to the other. The yellow-shirted folk were the sharks, and if you were tagged, you had to sit down. They only good thing about being caught by a shark was that you then became a shark and could catch other kids; except you had to stay seated. With our group of little kids, most of them did not want to admit to being caught by the shark and would just continue running ... so the leaders had a talk about honesty and playing fair ... and really tried hard to keep the kids accountable. But most of the kids in groups A - D were between 5 and 7 years of age, so it was difficult.
After 25 minutes in the gym, it was time for Drama. Each night, there have been skits about two Bible heroes: David from the Old Testament, and then Jesus from the New Testament. They did a really good job with this part of the program. Some seminary students who attend Eastern Avenue CRC were in charge, and they were excellent at teaching some pretty difficult concepts to these kids. Tonight, both stories centered on situations that were fair as well as unfair. It was interesting to see how the kids were able to share some of their own stories about times when they have been in fair or unfair situations.
Here is group A drawing a poster of some good things in their lives ...
From 8:00 until 9:00 there was something called Track Time and children could choose either Dance, Woodworking, Arts & Crafts, Jump roping, Archery, Horse riding (!) ~ but whatever activity they chose, they had to stick with that one thing throughout the week. I volunteered in Arts & Crafts. Tonight we decorated flip-flops. This is Shamarianna gluing the sides of her flip-flops in preparation for glitter and to attach buttons and other assorted items. Mr. Jones was helping out in Woodworking the two nights he volunteered. They made tool boxes the first night and then made a bird house last night. Pretty nice! 
A mosaic that hangs on the hallway of the schoolI'm pretty tired after three nights of "Kids Games." The whole situation was rather a stretch for me ... lots of new people, tons of different children every night, constant chaos, names that I could not begin to pronounce and immediately forgot (!) ... my natural impulse the first night was not to return the next! But I'm glad I was able to hang in there and see my commitment through. I am thankful to the Lord for this truth: "My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT
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