It's suppose to be real

Tara, age eight, during a parish Christmas pageant rehearsal:"It's not supposed to be cute, it's supposed to be real."
She refused to participate but arranged to read her own prayer at the end of the pageant which included a reference to Jesus, the True Vine.
Tara is an outspoken child and loves to perform. To refuse to be in the pageant indicates very strong feelings.

We need to be grateful

A group of 9-12-year-0ld children were reflecting on the parable on the Workers in the Vineyard. Judith immediately said, "We need to be grateful for what we have, and not be jealous of others. Like the children in Haiti (referring to children in an orphanage we were collecting clothing and raising money for) are grateful for food and probably not jealous of us."
The context of discussing plans to help the Haitian children immediately before the lesson nudged Judith into a more immediate, or current, understanding of the parable.

A kindergarten aged child shared this reflection with her mother: "Mommy, have you ever had a thought like, if you combined all of the words in the world into a word or a sentence, it might say something like God's name?"  A few minutes later, she added that "or if you combined all of the pictures of things in the world -like the houses and the cars and the street and everything on the whole earth and even inside the earth - maybe you could look at it and it would be a picture of God or heaven."