Just the two of us...

Most of the time, a Primary will have a Primary presidency (3-4 people), a singing teacher, maybe 6-8 teachers, a pianist, and 2-3 nursery teachers. What does that add up to? 15-20 people or so. Wow. I had not appreciated what a huge number that was until just now! In our branch, we are a bit smaller, so we have 3 people in the Primary presidency, 2 nursery teachers and (hopefully) 1-2 class teachers. Seven would be a great number of people to run the Primary.

But today, lots of people were sick, and we only had 2 adults in Primary. Of course, 11 out of our 12 kids were there. Which does go contrary to how most people think germs work, but I guess the germs like old people this season. We actually had a plan for this type of situation

Person 1	Person 2
Teach the CTR class	Teach Sharing time to the Valiant class
Teach the Valiant class	Teach Sharing time to the CTR class
Help with singing time	Teach singing time
Collapse	Look around urgently for sugar

The Nursery kids are both 3 years old, and we let them come in to Primary with the CTR class. And that is how you do Primary with 2 adults!

It went pretty well except two things: I should have passed Jane off to her dad, because if you stop to take care of your baby, you've lost the 3-yr olds, and you might never get them back. And, you can't keep 3-yr olds through 11-yr olds really engaged all together. There's no such thing as striking a balance of being interesting to both ages simultaneously. In my case, I'm just way better with older kids, and by the end, everyone under 5 was pretty much just wandering around the Primary room. Hey, it was 1:45, they hadn't had lunch or nap, and they really didn't care if they belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (that's the song we were learning) anymore.

For Sharing time, we learned how to tell the Joseph Smith story in ASL. The Valiant class did great, the CTR class didn't seem really interested. Ok, I totally lost half the class by the end. But later that evening, during dinner, Sam said he wanted to tell us a story. He proceeded to sign the Joseph Smith story in ASL, just like we'd learned it in Sharing time! Note that Sam was one of the lost half of the class! I realized that sometimes they don't look like they're listening, but they are. 

So, high fives to me and my partner in crime, er, teaching! And hopefully it gets easier from here!