Simple Little Things

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SIMPLE LITTLE THINGS

Many months ago, a kindergarten teacher and I talked about simple art projects. For one of my own projects, I’d turned brightly colored Jello boxes into “birdhouses”, complete with black paper “holes” and glued-on paper birds. She acted so interested that I began saving Jello boxes for her. Recently, after I could finally tell her I had a box for each of her 19 students, she announced to her students that they were going to learn about jello.

The kids would look up info on how it was manufactured, and what you did to make it (at home). They could discuss words like "recipes", and "labels" (on the box) and "instructions" for making something, and "list" (the list(s) on the box). The measuring directions could be shown as examples of math problems. She even uses the numbers on the bar codes to work as math.

The ingredients list on the box could become a talk about "health", Someone with food allergies could read the list to see what was in the jello – such as: "red dye # 58."

I wonder how many kindergarteners would normally be taught that people can be allergic to ingredients, and that their food preparers need to read box labels.

At times I feel that I don’t do much to help other people. Circumstances in my life keep me from having a whole lot of contacts and interactions. But I need to remember that simple little things can sometimes offer unexpected blessings.

I seem to have blessed her a lot just by saving otherwise-throwaway little boxes, and by showing her a creative use for them. Her enthusiasm for helping her students learn, and her thanks to me for saving the boxes, blessed me. Apparently, as the teacher said, “There are all kinds of things to learn about Jello.”

We need to keep our eyes on God, don’t we? To count the many ways he blesses us, and makes us a blessing to others, often through simple little things.

This post is shared with L. L. Barkat "On, In and Around Mondays"

and Laura Boggess "Playdates with God"