Today, my little wilderness explorers ran out to "our tree" to check on Webber the spider.
But before we did that, Jordan - who arrived leagues ahead of his friends, passed the time and boredom by giving Bionic Horse and Bear check-ups.
I I couldn't help but notice the difference in our tree between last week and today. With most of the leaves now on the ground, the kids made the best pile of leaves they could without the benefit of a rake.
As we diligently searched, to no avail, around the tree trunk for Webber, Eliza called out: "Ms. Kelly, we have a lizard!" We all went to where she was, but the lizard got away...temporarily. We did find another spider hiding in our plastic house/castle/McDonald's/whatever we are imagining at the time.
We returned inside for lesson time about the ten lepers (not leopards, though they did have spots!) being healed and only one returning to say "Thank you, Jesus."
To illustrate this point - literally - our 10 fingers got spots which also served as eyes, but only one finger- the pointer- had a smile drawn on. Over the course of the day, their "spots" will disappear like the lepers. Meanwhile, our 10 leper fingers clapped, "bowed their heads" to form a church ("Here is the Church, Here is the Steeple" rhyme), splayed & gobbled to form a turkey and pointed Heaven-ward like praying hands to give thanks to God.
We then had each leper count up things in our life to be grateful for - including arms, legs, eyes, ears, moms, dads, snacks, pets and all the animals, everywhere.
Madison remembered last week's lesson about God helping the man with no arms and legs (Nick Vujicic)
We watched a video of the Bible story, greeted Mr. Carrell and Mr. Tristan like we do every week and returned outside to find the lizard... he slipped through our grasp a few times and finally found sanctuary by slipping under the door and into the church hall.
