#43--Games played at the end of Sunday school lessons when the teacher runs out of material and the sermon is going far too long
It's about 12 o'clock (maybe earlier) in your local sunday school class, and the snacks have been consumed, the object lesson has been taught, prayer requests submitted, and even the main lesson has been completed, and retaught, and summarized all over again....
And one teacher keeps going in and out of the classroom to see if the pastor has dismissed his sermon...but when the teacher comes back there is horror in her eyes: The pastor hasn't even started closing on his sermon!
And the teacher of the main lesson just keeps talking in circles and looking at the other teachers with, "what do we do now? I got nothing!"
And the kids themselves are beyond antsy ready to take tear the head off a baby bird just to see some kind of action in their lives....
So another teacher steps in and one of two things happens:
1) If the weather is nice, the kids will be led outside where upon absolute anarchy will ensue within the limits of whatever game is chosen by the teacher for the kids to play....with being stocked up in a 12 x 15 classroom for two hours, they would be content to play chicken with cars racing by in the street.....
Most of the time the game that is chosen is either getting the children to randomly elevate and run underneath a giant multi-colored parachute or red rover which is easily one of the most fun games anyone could imagine. I still secretly curse the girl who got the game banned at my church when she broke her arm via some 175 lb 10 year old (how this doesn't happen more often in the game blows my mind).
2)If the weather is bad, the kids are instructed to take part in a rousing rendition of "father Abraham" ...if the kids aren't dead after the first go-round, a second encore of the song will surely follow whereby the hope is that all the children will be so tired of an overly exhaustive performance of the song, that they will pass out into a nap and the teachers can rest easy.
Simon Says also gets much publicity during these times although I always found myself getting really angry at the kid who would always cheat and hope that no one saw him mess up or the kid who would act like he was out and then jump back in a minute later hoping the teacher wouldn't remember the first time he was out.
The other game that can be played is administered by the cruelest of teachers: The silent game where the one who is quietest the longest wins.......A brilliant contradiction of morality for sunday school kids everywhere: Be competitive and possibly win a game, or have loud outbursts that are so natural to our demographic.....O the terror!
The favorite among my SS kids is "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands". I have an inflatable globe and I tell the kids that God's got the whole world in His hands and won't ever let it fall. We need to try to be like God. We then volley the globe, trying not to let it hit the floor. They kids also like to play a game where they are paired into four groups. They are intermixed in chairs along both sides of the room. when two or more of the group names are called, they must get up and change chairs. As a variation, remove a chair each time. These are great energy outlets.
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