X marks the heresy

For those readers who have been with me for a while, you will remember that I teach some of my kids classes (namely: religion and Greek). On reading the sometimes hard to find Christ in Eastern Christian Thought by John Meyendorff last night I mentioned to my wife that the best way to teach kids otherwise boring material is to mention a heresy. She gave me that look; the one which requests prompt elaboration. All husbands are dutifully nodding with understanding.

Some aspects of religious instruction bore children. To allay boredom you can give them little craft activities, but I have always found suspect splitting a child's attention with more engaging activities. One exception is doing activities that reinforce learning...paper armor of God, singing something related from the divine liturgy, finding an icon to color that deals with the same topic, etc.

Another tactic is to give breaks. I find that boys want to keep talking about cartoons or arguments they had with their siblings so that classes take twice as long.

So back to heresies... knowing heresies you can apply more question and answer material to your sessions. Stating a series of facts to children will cause them to emit a low whining sound that when making tea means the water is near boiling, but in children means that they are bored and nearing an end to the earlier agreed upon pedagogical détente.

Here's an example of its use:

"So when you cross yourself how many fingers do you use? And how many fingers are not used? What do the three fingers mean? How about the two fingers?

Allow for answers.

So let's talk about what we mean by the Trinity and His condescension..."

Then you can go on and talk about heretical movements either in detail or in generalities depending on the child's age. This gives children an idea of the borders of orthodox thinking (hypostasis being two natures and not two substances. how not to attribute some acts to Jesus-human nature and others to Jesus-the Word. etc.) and also a historical idea of how things developed. This obviously requires more planning, but it makes the experience more enjoyable and useful to all concerned.