It’s A Women’s World

It is very easy to buy dresses in the summer, as the weather is warm and most dresses are just made for that type of temperature. They are often cool and light, and that makes wearing them a breeze in the summer. Some even work well in the fall and the spring for the most part. I love to put dresses on my little girl and she always wears them when she goes to church on the weekends. When it comes to winter dresses, I sometimes have problems keeping her as warm as I would like her to be.

There are winter dresses out there for sale and they are warmer than the ones you would wear in the summer, but that is not enough. Most of them have thicker material and they do keep the torso warm. When it comes to the legs, neck and arms, there are other problems. You can’t imagine how easily these areas can cause someone to shiver unless you have stood out in the winter without those areas being covered. They make a huge difference and most winter dresses to not cover them.

The best we can do is to buy her stockings that are thicker than normal nylons for her legs and to put long sleeved turtlenecks under her winter dresses. This might seem like a lot under a heavy winter jacket, but I have yet to see her complain about being too hot with that much on her body in the winter. In fact, she seems to be just fine. This seems to work under thinner types of dress as well, but we do try to buy her heavier winter dresses so that she can remain warm.

She’ll be starting school next year and I think I will try to refrain from sending her in winter dresses unless it is a special occasion. When she is old enough to decide if she wants to be cold on her way to school in the winter, then she can decide if she wants to wear them or not. I don’t remember wearing a lot of dresses to school when I was a kid and that was because of my long walk to the bus stop. I thought it was because I was a tomboy, but perhaps my mom just had my comfort in mind as well. Some days I was cold, but it wasn’t because I was wearing a dress.

One of the things we have to realize about children is, just because they are in church, it doesn’t mean they won’t be children. Kids need stimulation and if you don’t have the right Sunday school materials, the lessons simply will not sink in. Not only are good Sunday school lesson plans required, but the activities must be timed perfectly. You need to strike the right balance between individual work, group work, lectures and games. Your Sunday school material has to be fresh, up to date, interesting and relevant to the lives of the kids you are teaching. I am not saying that you shouldn’t use the Bible in your Sunday school materials – of course you should. There is just more than one way to teach that book.

I try to never use the same Sunday school materials for more than two years in a row. That way, I will change my Sunday school lesson plans as frequently as possible. I am not saying that all of the Sunday school material gets old. A lot of it remains relevant for decades at a time. It is important to make yourself constantly re-examine and re-work in the Sunday school materials that you are using. There are too many Sunday schools that preach in an outdated manner to kids who are no longer listening. You can talk about the decline of teenage culture as much as you want, but the fact remains that unless you talk to the kids in their language, they won’t listen.

Some of my favorite Sunday school materials have been made by the kids themselves. The more you can get the kids to participate and the more ways you can get them to work together, the better. This means that it can be a lot of fun to make the kids do the lesson plans themselves. I always have each of the kids come up with some of the Sunday school materials. One day a month, the children will teach the lesson. They’ll make their own Sunday school materials, plan out their own mini-lessons and be quizzed on what the other children presented. In this way, they have to engage with the materials Sunday school more fully. They have to become aware of what is involved in teaching and learn their lessons well enough to explain them to the other children. You never really understand the subject fully until you have had to teach it!