Primary Documents

Every Sunday, the kids run into sacrament meeting carrying several pieces of paper each, their Primary work product. They are always so excited to show us what they made or drew or colored or cut out during the previous two hours, and we love seeing their stuff. But we don't usually come to church equipped to deal with the document retention issues their output demands. Usually, their drawings get stuffed quickly into the brutally overstuffed 'church bag,' along with 12 ziploc bags full of half-eaten snacks from previous weeks (a close analysis indicates that the raisins and the fishies are the snacks most likely to be left behind), 11 broken crayons, 3 dry markers, two never-used puppets, hundreds of sacrament meeting programs and several activity booklets and sketch pads. There, these precious records of budding artistry are smashed and crumpled and defaced and, ultimately, forgotten.

Which is just a long way of saying that tonight I cleaned out the church bag, and here are some of the invaluable artifacts I unearthed, captioned with the artist's commentary on each:


Rex: They said to draw Heaven. That's Jesus. Next to him is red berries on a bush. Next to that is a tree with two purple berries. In the air there are some M's. (Are you sure they're not birds?) Oh, yeah, they're birds. It has a yellow sky, because I think Heaven has a yellow sky.



Lucy: This is Jesus. He has some butterflies and some flowers. In Church I did it, and Miss Julie telled me to do it. And we put stickers on it. I liked the butterfly under his chin. And these are his eyes, the flowers are. I think it's pretty. I like him.



Lucy: This is a guy that's a moon and he has feet and he can walk. (The words say you are thankful for the earth). Yeah, it's the earth. I made it purple. I like it like that. I put some pink right here in the middle. I drawed it at our church. It has feet.


Rex: This is Molly June. It's when she has big legs and she can walk, and big arms. She has lots of hair, and has a curl on her forehead. And has my name on it, to Molly June.


Rex: This is me and Pop Pop playing football. But I didn't draw the football. (Isn't that blue thing the football?) No. (What is it?) I don't know. There's grass. (Pop Pop is on the left, Rex is on the right).


Rex: I wanted to color it really good so first I did one side green but it didn't work so I did it red. I did the other side red, I did the whole top blue. I did the top of the T blue, and the straight line of the t blue. Then R line, pink, then on the curl of the R, red. Then on the little line of the R, blue. And the T top is blue, green on the straight line, and blue right here, yellow, red, orange, pink, green, and dark green. And my name. (Is T-Rex your name?) Yeah. I wanted to make it beautiful. And I drawed the outside blue.