Paper arrow-planes and Fanuel-on-the-Wall

On Saturday afternoon, Zoë and I put stars on about thirty boxes I'd reserved over the course of several months. I drew the stars on (scrap—it had been printed on) paper and glued them to the boxes; Zoë painted them yellow. 

I took them to church on Sunday for singing time, where we're busy doing review for the sharing time presentation. The children sang their little hearts out in some "Primary's Got Talent" acts I challenged them with and a panel of judges rated their efforts by holding up a number of stars. I selected that number of children to go grab a box from around the room to build a wall of stars in front of me (we talked about building a strong foundation last week, so the kids were on top of their construction strategies). By the end of singing time we had a big wall of stars and I brought out the surprise—Samuel the Lamanite—to stand on the city wall while they children all threw paper airplanes at him to try to hit him. 

See, because "Samuel the Lamanite, high on the city wall, came to warn the people and repentance was his call." The people did not like what Samuel had to say, though, so they tried to kill him, but "arrows could not hit him, for a man of God was he."

The trick here is that I attached Samuel to a box fan...so those paper airplanes simply could not hit him.

Alexander and I tested several things last week—ping pong balls, ball pit balls, wads of paper, etc.—but it was the paper airplanes that worked the best...meaning that the fan could redirect them away from Samuel well enough. 

So during the last few minutes of singing time I let the kids throw paper airplanes at Samuel (high on the city wall) while we sang the verse about him from "Book of Mormon Stories." 

The kids had a blast. And we practiced four or five songs.

And then I recycled all my prep work for family night! How environmentally conscious of me!

We couldn't construct a full wall because Phoebe had made a house out of all the boxes and was feeling territorial.

But we did manage to convince her to let us use a few to construct a wall. We talked about Samuel's story and the children shared things they remember hearing our prophet admonish in recent history, like "Think Celestial" (Benjamin) and "99 + 1" (Miriam). I was impressed with their answers (I honestly was surprised that question got any response at all, but these kids are pretty awesome so I should have been that surprised). Lastly I had everyone write on a paper the ways in which prophets (the prophet, ancient prophets, following the prophet, etc) points us to Christ. 

Then I had them fold their papers into airplanes so we could throw them at Samuel, who Phoebe dragged out to stand high on the city wall. She was so excited for this part of evening because she attended primary for the first time on Sunday and loved, loved, loved it! Probably because no one tried to touch her or really even talk to her (the primary president said, "Oh, hello, Phoebe! Are you joining us today?" and then quickly repented and said, "Okay, I'm sorry. I don't want to ruin this interaction. Pretend I didn't even look at you." Phoebe is not a...bubbly...baby. 

She detests nursery. She doesn't like free play. She doesn't like when other kids try to touch her. She doesn't like when certain activities (colouring time or play-dough time) are, in her opinion, cut short. She...has a long list of nursery grievances (not the least of which is that the one time we convinced her to try nursery somewhat on her own she got whacked in the head with a handbell within the first five minutes). 

So, I figured...she's graduating from nursery at the end of December (not that she's ever really gone)...she may as well get used to coming to primary. 

Fun fact: I was unable to attend nursery for reasons similar to Phoebe's, so I actually went to Sunbeams two years in a row (because I was able to enjoy class time and singing time).

Anyway, Phoebe loved the activity. She loved getting called on to take her turn stacking boxes on the wall. She loved singing the songs (she knows every primary song because she listens to them at night). And she loved throwing airplanes.

So she lugged Samuel out before we were even really ready for him, but we finished up really fast and started to see if we could hit him while he stood on his (short—because all the boxes were being used for Phoebe's house) wall:

You can maybe see that some of the boxes had been used previously to help the kids learn "Have I Done Any Good?" 

I taped the words to that song on various boxes and the kids built a tower with the words in order, and then King Benjamin (a hand puppet we got in Egypt) came to visit the kids to talk about doing good (I just acted him out while we sang the song, so it looked like maybe he was also singing (Zoë told me that I was a very good puppeteer, so perhaps I did an okay job)). So these boxes were used to ship things or hold things, then used for primary (sometimes twice—maybe even three times because we used them again during my Pioneer Day lesson to pass down the rows and load into the covered wagon while we sang the song again), and then they were used by Phoebe to make houses and then they were used for Family Night. And I'll probably use some of the boxes again next week. 

And then maybe we can recycle them (it will make Andrew happy to get them out of the house, I'm sure).

That looks like only Phoebe got to have a turn throwing airplanes, but that's only because she was throwing them from pretty close up. Everyone else was much farther away:

And here's Zoë (with her windswept hair) showing me how silly her airplane ended up. She had written something about drawing closer to the Saviour...but when she folded her plane it ended up saying "loser." 

Andrew joked that this lesson strayed dangerously close to the accidental irreverence of one of our All Time Favourite family night lessons: Pin the Jesus on the Cross.

Why were we throwing arrow-planes (filled with ways the prophet "points" us to Christ) at Samuel?! 

He's absolutely correct that the metaphors don't mix well. 

But it was fun!

And Phoebe can now tell you a whole lot about Fanuel-on-the-Wall...and the children sang really well on Sunday...so I think, as far as lessons go, that it went pretty well.