It was a cold and wintry day with snowflakes gently falling from a grey sky. On impulse I dropped my lesson plan for the afternoon and taught my grade 4 students how to make a six-sided paper snowflake. We carefully folded and cut white paper into beautiful snowflakes.
One student concentrated very hard on folding and cutting his snowflakes just right. After he had meticulously cut out three of them, he put down his scissors with a sigh and said, very seriously, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not God. Making snowflakes is hard work!”
—Christine de Boer
My parents have a fiber-optic Christmas tree. This initially perplexed my 4-year-old nephew. But after a close study he announced, “Your tree doesn’t have lightbulbs . . . but that’s OK because the whiskers light up.”
—Monique Bos
For two days a husband and wife refused to talk to each other. The second night, the husband went to bed early and left a note on his wife’s pillow. The note read: I have an important meeting early tomorrow. Let me know when it’s 6 a.m.
The next morning he awoke suddenly to the morning light and saw that it was 7:30 a.m. He looked angrily over to her pillow. His note was gone, but another one was there. It read: It’s 6 a.m. Time to get up.
—Adrian Vander Starre
After the first week of attending their new parochial school, our boys shared how it felt to be the new kids. “I get called ‘Isaiah’ a lot,” Isaac laughed. Joshua observed that his teacher kept calling him “Joseph.”
“Just wait until you get called ‘Jerusalem,’” younger brother Isaac quipped, “because I’ve also been called ‘Israel’!”
—Eliza J. Anderson
During a Story Hour lesson with 2- and 3-year-olds, I was reviewing the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea:
“When the Israelites escaped from Egypt, Pharaoh and his soldiers started chasing them. The Israelites got to the sea and couldn’t go across. What happened to the water?”
Little Jacob answered, “God broke it!”
“That’s right. God made a path for them to walk on,” I said. “After the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, what happened to the water?”
Again Jacob responded. “God fixed it!”
—Janet Vreugdenhil
During the children’s message the speaker handed out WWJD bracelets. The children were then asked what they thought the JD stood for. My son, Sam, raised his hand and was called on. He very confidently spoke into the microphone, “JOHN DEERE”!
—Jen Schoenherr
In a supermarket, a woman was pushing a cart containing a screaming baby. She kept saying soothing things like, “Keep calm, Jenny,” and “Don’t get upset, Jenny.”
Overhearing this, a shopper complimented her parenting skills, saying, “You have remarkable patience with little Jenny!”
“I’m Jenny,” the woman said with a sigh.
—Sue Lauritzen
My husband and I are feeling the financial crunch of having two kids in college. Our daughter texted us that she needed $400 to pay for her second-semester books. Meanwhile, a relative asked if their college student could board with us for the second semester. We love kids and were happy to oblige. The relative graciously offered to pay rent.
So I texted my husband:
Me: The Lord provided Lisa’s exact book amount with our boarder’s rent!
Husband: The Lord also takes away: we have $8.32 in our checking account until tomorrow!
Me: LOL!
—Barb Andreas
