Q & A with Guest Author Maddie Akin

Meet our Guest Author of "A Day at Parkway"

Maddie dressed in her dream job outfit

Name? Madison McKenzie Akin

Who is in your family? My little sister Morgan. My mom and dad. And my playful dog Sandy.

What grade are you in? 3rd Grade

What is your favorite color? Light blue.

What is your favorite TV show? Sponge Bob

What is your favorite movie? Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

What is your favorite food? Spaghetti with Garlic Bread and a Shirley Temple.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Peppermint

What is your favorite ride at Disney World? Space Mountain and Everest Expedition

If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be? Sydney, Australia

What is your favorite musician? Taylor Swift and Black Eyed Peas

What is your favorite animal? Spider Monkey

What is your favorite thing to do at home? Swim in my new pool!

What do you want to be when you grow up? A chef

What is your favorite football team? Georgia Bulldogs!! (GEORGIA TECH STINKS!)

What is your teacher's name? Mrs. Feinstein

What is your favorite game? LIFE

What is your favorite vacation that you've ever been on? Disney World

What is your favorite DS game? Ninento Dogs

What do you love about Parkway? The teachers and my friends

What is your favorite thing to do at church? Missions and being with my friends

What is your favorite Bible story? Daniel in the Lions Den or Jonah in the Belly of the Whale

What is your favorite song from choir? Goliath (from our Heroes of the Faith Musical)

Who are your Sunday School teachers? Mrs. Paula, Mrs. Amy, Mr. Joel, Mr. Chad, Ms. Peggy

What is your favorite craft? the vase that I made in art at school

Is there anything else you want to tell us? Parkway is the best church!!!!!!!!!!

A Day at Parkway by Maddie Akin

We have a wonderful Children's Minister, Mrs. Rebecca. We have fun activities throughout the year. On Sundays we have a children's sermon with Mrs. Rebecca. We talk about how God loves us, how Jesus died for our sins, and much more! We have two Sunday School teachers, Mrs. Paula and Mr. Bob. They teach us crafts and we learn about God.

Children in grades K-5 can present the Bible to Dr. King, our pastor. In the middle of the adult sermon, children in Kindergarten thru 1st Grade can go upstairs and learn some more about God.

We have a wonderful music teacher, Mrs. Susan. She teaches us songs about God on Wednesday. This is optional for all ages. We have different musicals to participate in. We are working now on Heroes of the Faith, a wonderful fun-filled musical. On Wednesday we have dinner served for families. After dinner and music we have missions to teach us about missionaries around the world that are sharing God's love with others.

Be sure to check out Parkway!

Parkway Baptist Church
State Bridge Road
Duluth, GA

For nothing shall be impossible with God. Luke 1:37


If you are interested in being a Guest Author, please post a comment or talk to Mrs. Rebecca!!

A gift of art.

During the month of January, our Kindergarten through 2nd Grade Sunday School class studied church helpers. As one of their activities, Mr. Bob asked the children to draw pictures of specific church helpers from Parkway.

Marie Loden, a 2nd Grader, drew this picture of me. What impressed me the most was that she even drew in the right eye color! When Mr. Bob gave this to me, he said that he thought she also captured my spirit:-)

I just love this! Thank you Marie! You are so talented. I can't wait to hang this up in my office.

Maybe I will start decorating my office with the artwork of Parkway kids, like this.

We come to church with our families.

Last Wednesday, the 27th, we learned about families that come to church to learn English. We have an ESL program at Parkway and we talked about how many churches provide these classes to help people learn English that can't speak it very well. Last week's story was told through the eyes of the child in a family who goes to church to learn English. We drew pictures of our families because we come to church with our families just like the little girl in the story goes to church with her family.

Tyler Grace and her family. We think there's an extra person in there...

Truman and his family. He only drew 3 people at first-those 3 in the center that look the same. Not sure why, but after we asked him about everyone else he added the other 2 over on the side.

Harris and his family. He spent as much time drawing those boots as the other kids spent on their entire pictures. After finishing the boots, he was tired and asked me to help him finish. Harris told me to make his dad's pants khaki and we decided that yellow was the closest available crayon color to khaki. The yellow crayon I picked up happened to have glitter in it so Harris says his dad is wearing "circus pants."

And they needed me to draw my family, too. John, me and Piper.

Helping Others

In preschool missions on January 13, we learned about ways that we can help others. The activities and story in the lesson were geared specifically to learning about homeless people and helping them. We played a matching game with pictures of items that are used by homeless people and in homeless shelters...sleeping bags, tents, cots, warm soup, spaghetti, and vans.

We also read a story that included those items and information about a few members of Fredricksburg Baptist Church who volunteer to pick up homeless people in their church van and take them to the homeless shelter for a warm meal and place to sleep. To help the kids understand what it might be like to be homeless, we stepped outside in the cold for a few minutes and talked about what it would feel like to have to sleep out there! As you can imagine, that did not sound like much fun to them.

On this particular night, Harris was the only one that felt like praying and he asked God to "help homeless people have a warm bed and maybe some soup." The prayers of these preschoolers are always so sweet, and there's nothing like hearing these kids talk to God.

After watching a short Boz video on helping others (more on him later), our task was to build a homeless shelter using blocks for the building, and felt pieces for beds. Check out the individual creations of Ally, Truman, and Harris below. They took this activity seriously and worked hard on their shelters to make a safe place for people without a home to sleep. I have to say that I am always amazed by the level of understanding and compassion that these preschoolers show.

Truman, Harris, Ally

Truman working on his shelter.

Harris's shelter before he put the roof on.

Harris and his finished product.

Ally and her shelter.

I also have to add that this month of lessons on helping others in both preschool and elementary missions has been well-timed and has allowed us to talk about helping the people of Haiti. Our preschoolers even knew what happened without us having explain the earthquake!

Pic of the week

Carlton wore his birthday present from me for the first time, so we had to take a pic together:)

December 20 - Last Sunday of Advent

Toddler Sunday School Class

The Preschool Choir waits to sing in Big Church

Go Tell It on the Mountain...

Over the hills and everywhere

This is the way the wise men came

This is the way the stars shone bright

John and Will in the nursery

Our attempt at a group photo