There was a time in Oak Brook and Hinsdale’s early years when children were brought to Sunday school lessons at one church via a horse-drawn wagon operated by a local dairy.
As fun as traveling by wagon might have been, those lessons hardly could have been as fun or interesting as the ones described by people who help plan today’s programs.
Sitting in rows of desks and learning passages of the Bible by rote is a thing of the past, said Vicki Bare and Barbara Cathey. Bare helps oversee the Sunday school classes at Christ Church of Oak Brook, 31st Street and York Road; Cathey is minister for Christian education at The Union Church of Hinsdale, 137 S. Garfield St.
Just as churches’ ways of reaching their communities have changed over the decades, so have the methods used to give children an understanding of the Bible that teachers hope will stay with them throughout their lives.
“We don’t just sit down and memorize the catechism. We use more active learning approaches,” Cathey said.
These approaches involve appealing to different ways of learning. Some might learn best, for instance, through a hands-on project, while others are better able to visualize a concept if they draw a colorful picture expressing it.
Others might better retain a message if they are involved in a game that exercises their bodies along with their minds. “It’s called multiple intelligences,” Bare said.
There are eight intelligences through which children learn, she said: verbal/linguistic, rhythm/music, naturalistic/environmental, visual/spatial, logic/math, interpersonal, intrapersonal and kinesthetics (body motion).
One lesson involves teaching about the Tabernacle in the Old Testament, Bare said.
The children, who are in 2nd to 5th grade, play a game similar to miniature golf. “During the rounds of mini-golf they earn different parts of the Tabernacle,” she said.
The altar, curtain and linens, for instance, would be won to create a Tabernacle.
“The game teaches the lesson of the Tabernacle and how to prepare for the Messiah,” Bare said.
At Union Church, children in 3rd to 6th grade learned the family tree of Abraham by making gingerbread men and labeling them.
Lynn Beczak, who serves on the children’s ministry team at Christ Church, believes that the approximately 200 children who attend the church’s Sunday school learn better through the use of multiple intelligences.
“They have a deeper knowledge of the Bible stories, rather than just a surface knowledge,” she said, adding that they also spend four weeks studying each story and approaching it from different ways.
They had to spend some time acquainting parents with their methods when they first started using multiple intelligences three years ago, Bare said.
The parents, who may remember their Sunday school experience as less than interesting, are now on board with the program.
