March 13 - Fun Friday!

On Friday’s, my Mentor Teacher does a motivational thing called Fun Friday. Now most of our students have BIP’s (Behavior Intervention Plans) that measure their behavior on a daily basis. When the goal points have been earned, Fun Friday kicks in. Fun Friday is small block of time when a kid gets to do what he does best, play. And they love Fun Friday. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes board games, and always Legos.

What these young ones don’t realize is that Fun Friday is my Mentor’s sly way of teaching social skills. While they play, they still have to work on taking turns, sharing, asking nicely, and generally being polite and conversational with each other.

I spent my first Fun Friday playing Connect Four with one of my boys. It’s a simple game, but the concept of dropping four checkers in a row was a hard concept to grasp. Fortunately for him, I knew how to play the game, and how to manipulate it so he won more games than I did. The smile on his face was priceless. He beat the teacher!!

Now the big kids are too cool for Fun Friday. Instead they come to Friendship Groups. A Friendship Group is a small enclave of students who participate in a club like group. They do creative Power Point projects, read cool books, make puppets and write puppets scripts. And like their younger counterparts, they work on taking turns, sharing, asking nicely, and generally being polite and conversational to each other. My Mentor Teacher is so-o-o smart.

Now this Fun Friday thing was a blessing to me, because Friday is a really hard day. You see, for as long as I can remember, Friday has been my day off. And getting up to go to school on Friday was really hard. (Yeah, I know, you are not sympathetic at all) My challenge now is to get to school on time each Friday and earn enough behavior points so I can challenge another student to a game of Connect Four.

Application: When do we schedule time for our church kids to just play? Children are at their best when they are playing. The church word for Play could be Fellowship, a time when we get together to eat and enjoy each other’s company. We get to know each other better, which equips us to care for each other later. It’s not much different for children. Our children live in different neighborhoods and communities. They attend at least seven different elementary schools. The only time many of them get to see their church friends is at church! When do they get to play with their most important friends? Is there value in planning some events for children, just for fun? I think so…