Mission Around the World

This summer we did a rotation on Mission Around the World, based on the PCUSA's Children's Mission Yearbook.

It was probably one of the easiest rotations to do, because the yearbook supplies most of the ideas.

We wrote a one page lesson plan/outline to follow, and then supplied the two pages from the book that went with their country. We allowed them to use their own recipe or craft if they prefered, just to let us know so we didn't have anything too similar.

The children had passports and each week received a sticker with a map and flag of the country, along with info about size,% in poverty, types of religion practised, and currency exchange.

We had a large world map where we would put post-it arrows pointing to the country. Around the map, we hung copies of the mission talked about from the yearbook.

The teachers loved it...many picked countries they had been to on mission trips, or had a compassion child in, or was their own ethnic heritage.

Our main focus was to let the children know about the work of the church throughout the world, and to let them see how everyday people try to live their faith through helping others.

They made a lot of different foods... fufu and groundnut stew from Ghana, Indonesian fried rice, Ethiopian bread, Sudanese cucmber yogurt salad, etc.

They also made Cambodian shadow puppets, Mexican God's Eyes, Irish calendar sticks, and even watched a video from our Honduras mission trip (including a scream from our pastor as she found a scorpion on her shorts!).

We actually used the 2003 yearbook, but new ones can be ordered every year...maybe $4, not sure. In the summer, we combine from four age groups down to two, and I believe we "visited" 11 different countries.