A teachable moment!

Each morning I drive Carol and our neighbor's 4 year old daughter to school named Saphia. When we arrive, Carol goes to her classroom and I usually give Saphia a piggy-back ride to the kinergarten playground where she waits until classes start about 30 minutes later.

Usually there are several teen-age girls there to greet us and watch the children before school starts, but this morning I did not see any girls there waiting for us.

So I decided to stay with Saphia and wait until they showed up.

While waiting we talked about many things, and then Saphia said she would like to touch a branch on a tree. So her climb a sliding board near a tree and by standing on the top (with me holding her of course), she could touch the branch of a tree. By this time there were other children waiting for the school to start and so I let them all have a turn touching the tree branch.

Then they wanted to climb a tree, so I took them over to a tree and taught them how to climb it. At first some of them were scared, but the tree was next to a wall, and when the other kids said they could see cars and people over the wall, the ones that were scared got up their courage and climbed as well.

It was a thrill to see them overcome their fears and experience something new, as well as learning a new skill.

That is one of the things that makes teaching fun!

I saw that this was one of those "teachable moments" and had them sit down at a picnic table and asked them if they knew anyone in the Bible who had climbed a tree. Apparently they had not heard the story of Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10), because they could not think of anyone. So I taught them a kids song about Zaccheus, and told them the story.

Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see
And as the Savior passed that way
He looked up in that tree
And He said, “Zacchaeus, you come down!
For I’m going to your house today
For I’m going to your house to stay”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV8wFANocHY

I told them that before meeting Jesus, Zaccheus stole money from the people by charging too much for taxes. One of the little girls said "Is this story true?" I said "yes", She said "Well I'm glas Zaccheus is not around now because I don't want him to steal from me." Then I went on to explain how Zaccheus said he would stop stealing because he wanted to follow Jesus and asked forgiveness for the bad things he had done.

So these little ones learned how to climb a tree today, and also heard about how Jesus will forgive them for the bad things they have done. All because of teachable moment!

What "teachable moments" will you look for today with your children or grandchildren?