What color does Jesus like best?

The first week of school doesn't go without stories.

On Tuesday this past week. I was doing an activity with my kiddos (my 2 students :0) and we were decorating a block letter of our first name to tell about us. I was showing them my example. I explained that I drew a cross on my letter because I love Jesus. I also drew a picture of my dog and cat and labeled the dog Keegan and the cat Izzy and the Colorado mountains and my family, etc. My student who doesn't speak very much English drew some of the same pictures that I had and then she also drew a dog and named it Keegan as well. Haha. It's just a hunch but I have a feeling that she doesn't have a dog named Keegan also. Maybe I should explain the assignment with more Thai words next time. My student who speaks English was doing the assignment and kindly looked up and said "teacher, what color does Jesus like best?" That moment, my heart melted. He too was drawing a cross and wanted to color it with Jesus' favorite color. I was quick on my feet and told him that God created all of the colors and so Jesus likes them all. He smiled and went on with his work. Apparently he decided Jesus likes red because that's what he chose to color his cross.

Later in the week, I was teaching them math symbols. when I brought up the division symbol, he smiles at me and says with excited eyes "teacher, can you teach me to divide?" This makes my heart happy.

My other student is so sweet. We can't talk a lot verbally right now, but we do a lot of smiling and I give her a lot of high-5's. One of my favorite things this week was reading "The Diary of a Worm." This is such a darling book. For Science, we're talking about dirt, plants, roots, etc. I decided to read them this book to talk about what lives in the dirt. My favorite line in this book is where the little worm boy says "my sister always looks in the mirror at herself. I tell her it doesn't matter how long she looks at herself, her face will always look like her rear-end." haha. I read this to my kiddos. Then, we went about with our lesson and then had like 5 minutes left in our lesson so I let them look through the book together. I was thinking they would just flip through to look at the pictures. Instead, my sweet student who speaks English took it upon himself to read the book out loud in English and then would look at my student who can't speak English and he would point at the picture and explain in Thai what was happening. It was the sweetest site.

Side note: I secretly think that they would make the cutest couple and would love to see them be best friends all through school and then get married when they are in their 20's and invite me to their wedding . . . but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, maybe I should just focus on teaching and not match making. ;)


Here's a picture of them after we did an activity about the story of Noah's Ark.


I know that teaching means more than the students being able to recite the alphabet flawlessly or to be able to repeat their times tables in record time. I'm not concerned as much with them looking back at their 4th grade year and remember every lesson we ever did. My prayer is that they look back on their 4th grade year and remember they were loved, encouraged and accepted for who they are and for who Christ sees them as - his precious children.

Love them.