Gospel presentation: Chalk Walk

This is a gospel presentation my church has been using during Bible clubs for years, since I was in high school (you know when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth, or that’s what my kids believe anyways).

You start off by filling an area completely with chalk, so there’s nothing uncovered.  Then you explain the side that Superman is standing on is us, and the other side represents heaven.  And all of that pretty chalk represents the sin that separates us from God.  Sometimes sin can look pretty or fun to us, but it has consequences we don’t see right away.

 

Next, challenge them to get across without getting their feet dirty.  It’s not possible, even if you walk on your tippy toes you get chalk dust on you.  And even a tiny little bit of sin keeps you out of heaven.  No matter how hard we try, we can’t get in on our own.

 

But, if someone covers that sin with their payment, like Jesus did with his death on the cross, than we can walk across to become friends with God.

 

It’s simple, easy, and effective.  It’s one of my favorite gospel presentations for kids.

Bible craft: David and Jonathan

One of my favorite stories of friendship in the Bible is the story of David and Jonathan.  Jonathan’s father, King Saul, started off treating David as a son, but as he became more jealous he chose to try and kill him.
In the story, Jonathan promises to find out his father’s plans and then let David know by firing arrows into a field.  They set up a code, and Jonathan goes to get the news from his Dad.  Sadly, he finds out that David needs to run.  After reading the story, we decided to make our own bows and arrows.
On my 1 and 2 Samuel pinterest board, I have a link to make a bow out of a popsicle stick.  I followed the directions pretty closely, with one major adaptation.

The instructions are well described on the original blog post, so I’m not going to say too much here.

The main thing I would add is to carefully and slowly bend the sticks.  It doesn’t take much to make a “good bow,” but it is very easy to splinter them even after soaking for hours.

** I categorized this as a Mommy craft because my kids do not yet have the dexterity/fine motor control to make this.  Upper elementary kids might be able to do this.
linking up to Kids in the Word Wednesdays

Bible Craft: David Man after God’s own heart

We read about when Samuel came to choose the new king.  Samuel kept looking at the older brothers and thinking, “Now that looks like a king,”

 

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  1 Samuel 16:7

 

So, we talked about what things are important in our hearts.  Which of course led to drawing our hearts.  I wanted it to be this multi-sensory use lots of different coloring sources…….  Yeah, not so much.

 

They enjoyed it though, and that’s what matters.

 

If you look into their hearts and what they drew, you can see, what’s in their hearts.  Family, friends, animals.  (kids in order: Batman, Superman, Princess)

 

It made me happy to see the values I’ve been pouring into them reflected back.

Bible Craft: Jesus heals

One of the days of clubs was the story of Jesus and all of the amazing things he did.

With the pre-schoolers we talked about how Jesus could heal the people without using medicine or band-aids, just by talking Jesus was able to heal them.

But, we can’t do that, we need band-aids, so we “healed” our friends, with band-aids.

There were a lot of “owies.”

After we played a game.  One person laid down at the end and was hurt.  The first person in line would run over, hug them and heal them, then lay down and pretend to be sick.

This was wildly popular, but rather crazy, so no pictures of the game.

linked up over at Kids in the Word Wednesdays

How to make Gospel Fuzzies

Does your church use Gospel Fuzzies?  Ours does for the pre-schoolers.  To spare you my singing voice, I’ll share the same video I found for our training this year:

Little kids love this song.  Especially if they have their own Gospel Fuzzies to sing with.

 

So, I spent an hour or so making 100 sets for Kids Clubs this year.  It’s easy for the simple version all you need are:

popsicle sticks, yellow, black, red, white, and green pom-poms (or fuzzies), glue, google eyes (for the complicated version)

 

Just put a dot of glue on each stick and that’s all you need, it holds up against destructive 4 year olds just fine.

 

Put your sets in a ziploc bag and you’re good to go.

Holy week devotional

I put this up over at my other blog, but I think it's so cool I wanted to share it with all of ya'll.

Holy Week Devotional for your family

So go check it out!

God loves hearts

Happy Chocolate Sale Day!

Okay, so that started yesterday, and is actually the reason for this post.  I wanted to alert you to a cool item for teaching your kids the 10 Commandments that I made.

I blogged about it at my NEW BLOG, PEG DOLL BIBLE STORIES, where I’ll primarily be putting up my posts about what we’re doing to learn about God’s Word.  But occasionally I’ll post them here too still.

 

Supplies: giant chocolate heart, foamboard or posterboard (I used the thinnest layer of foamboard, if you do that you need a thicker box, like as in one designed to hold 2 layers of candy), various red tissue paper and red or pink scrapbook paper

1.  Trace your box onto your foam board.  When you cut it out, cut just inside the lines.  Check to make sure you can easily take your heart in and out of the box, for me I needed to trim my heart a little.

 

2.  Trace the top part of your heart and divide it into two.  This will let you make the pieces for the Commandments (sorry, I have no pictures).

 

3.  Start putting your paper on using mod podge or something similar.  I figured out that tissue paper works best because it adds the least bulk.

4.  Check to see if it all fits in your box.  The second time through it did for me.

 

If you go to 10 Commandments Activity, there’s a printable for your kids to make their own version.

Christmas story bracelet

Little Wonder Days did this adorable bracelet for her kids for Christmas, and I loved the idea and knew I had to use it for my Sunday School class.  She used beads she had on hand, but since I only had various shades of red and clear beads I had to go out and buy mine, so it’s slightly different than hers.

 

 

White- for the angel who came to Zechariah and told him his wife would have a baby.

Blue- for Mary who believed what the angel told her and trusted God.

Brown- for Joseph who was going to divorce Mary, but stopped when an angel told him to trust Mary.

Grey- for the donkey Mary rode to Bethlehem because of the Roman decree.

Gold bell- for Jesus, the bell rings to remind us to tell everyone of the Good News, and it’s gold because Jesus will wear a gold crown.

Star- for the star that appeared above Jesus.

White- for the angel that appeared to the shepherds to tell them of Jesus’ birth.

Green- for the shepherds who ran to see the newborn babe.

Light purple- for the magi who traveled so far to see the baby Jesus.

Yellow, purple, and red- for the gifts the magi brought.  Gifts fit for a king.

 

Merry Christmas to all of you, I’ve no guarantee I’ll be posting again until after Christmas, I have a wonderful Merry Christmas post I’d like to write, but I don’t guarantee it.

So, just in case:

 

Merry Christmas to all!

Advent Days 7 and 8, I think

Sigh, I know where these fell, but I’m totally not remembering the exact day.

 

We talked about the story of Jacob and how he tricked his brother and had to run away.  Then we talked about Jacob having his dream with the angels coming up and down.

 

Afterwards we created our own Jacob’s ladder.  I had planned to take another stab with the bubble dying, but I was not feeling up to it, and my second plan was missing parts.  So, regular old blue paper it was……

 

Since they didn’t know about my more ambitious plans they didn’t care one bit.

 

Princess was quite proud of her creation, and so were all of the kids, but she was the only one who posed with hers.

 

 

 

I love how everyone had a different interpretation.  Superman literally built a stairs out of popsicle sticks, and Batman had huge numbers of steps.  Princess wanted her angels to be pretty.

 

Now on to the next day, acting out the story of Joseph with popsicle stick puppets, which was a huge hit.  Other than I had to sit through 3 renditions of it all, which got to be rather “creative,” yeah let’s say creative.

 

You can see a not really tutorial on how to make the puppet theater here.  You can find the printables for the Bible story and craft at part 1 of my Advent project.

 

Advent Calendar part 2

We’ve completed the first few days of our Advent project.  The kids happily search through the Christmas tree to find the day’s activity and box.  It’s a bit of a challenge because some of the numbers are on there as words, and they don’t know all of their number words yet.  So, this has been great practice.

Day 13- Solomon, God said Solomon’s wisdom would be greater than the sands on the shore.  Make “sand pudding.”  I don’t have any extras with this one because I have no movie or book in particular for it at this time.

 

Day 14- Elijah, God kept his prophet safe even when all else seemed to be against him, and Elijah was able to show others the mighty wonders of God because of this.  Same for this one, for some reason there’s not a lot of movies about Elijah, which is a shame because he has some great stories.

 

Day 15- Esther, God used Esther to keep His people safe so that His BIG Plan could go forward.  Make the princess pretty using markers and glitter and whatever else you have.  Watch the Veggietales: Duke and the Great Pie War.  If my kids had an amazing attention span and were older we could watch “One Night with the King.”  I highly recommend that movie if you have any interest in Old Testament history, or want to watch a true romantic movie.  It is wonderfully made.

 

Day 16- Nehemiah, God used Nehemiah to bring His people back to Israel, so eventually His Promised One would be born where God promised.  Build a wall like Nehemiah did, try to keep others from knocking it down.  Again no movie, another sorely under represented figure in animation and books.

 

Day 17- Zechariah and Elizabeth- play charades.  I also loved the idea from over at Fantastic Five of making edible peanut butter and HONEY play dough (get it because John ate honey), but since I’m making this for others as well I didn’t want to include something their kid might potentially be allergic to.

 

Day 18- Mary and Joseph, got told Mary and Joseph beforehand about Jesus’ coming.  Create a song of praise like Mary did to God.  As a side note I opted to go with the traditional colors for the Nativity figures and just paint them solid.  Therefore Mary is blue for purity and mercy, Joseph is brown for humility.  Many thanks to Nicole from Tired, Need Sleep for helping me figure that out.

 

Day 19- Journey to Bethlehem- play the game.  We’ll also read “Donkey’s Dream,” a very cute story that is beautifully illustrated about the donkey carrying Mary to Bethlehem.  He dreams he is carrying many different things that are all names for Jesus or come from Catholic imagery (this is my memory from reading it last year, it’s not one I’ve read zillions of times).

Day 20-Shepherds, while reading the story eat your candy canes that look like shepherd’s crooks.  I painted the shepherd figures green for their traditional color, but couldn’t find what it is supposed to represent.  Any ideas people? Any Godly Play people know?  Maybe life or growing?  I’m planning to read Crippled Lamb, if I can find my copy.  I think it might technically be my Mom’s……..  So maybe at her house.

 

Day 21-Magi, the magi are painted yellow to represent wisdom or preciousness (maybe, anybody know for sure?).  I included popsicle sticks to make a star and decorate it to hang on the tree.  I’m thinking of teaching the boys how to make this, because I’m a glutton for punishment.

 

Day 22- Simeon and Anna, I love this part of the story and it is so rarely included when we teach it.  We tell about the shepherds and the magi, but we leave out these two simple people who waited their whole lives.  In that vein we will each have a cookie place in front of us and have to wait 5 minutes to show us how hard it is to wait like Simeon and Anna did.

 

Day 23- Flight to Egypt, Dixie cups in a Pringles can.  I’ve made my kids eat a lot of Pringles recently.  The cups are to stack to make a pyramid.  How big of a pyramid can you make?

 

Here is part 1 of the Advent project

Here are the updated Advent printables (including a master list of what to do each day).

 

I meant to get this up before December 1, but I quite literally finished all of these on December 1, and I already had posts scheduled and I haven’t had time to sit down and write until now………  All right, I’m off to start school for the day.  We’ve already gotten our Advent acitivity for today done.  I quite literally got out of bed and they pounced on me saying, “We have to find the 5!”

Bible Alive: Baby Moses

 

Earlier this year I studied Moses with my 2nd/3rd graders (there’s a ridiculously detailed post explaining the original project), and since we’ve started on our grand “Study the Bible in 2 Years” plan we’re going to be covering it again soon, so I’m trying out the lessons on my kids to start out.

Well, the other day Batman was happily running a dungeon with Jeff on a computer game, so to make Superman and Princess happier I let them make our craft.  I got out some of the wooden babies from Casey’s Wood Products and an egg carton and let them have at it decorating their craft.

 

Of course we tested if our baskets floated in water, which they did quite successfully.  This then led to the kids NEEDING to take a bath right then with their peg dolls.

 

That ended our Bible lesson until the next morning.

 

At which point we acted out the entire story using our peg dolls.  Princess quite happily shared the mommy and little girl she colored, I contributed some of the ones I colored, and Superman contributed the basket.

 

Once there was a family who had a baby boy.  It was against the law to have a baby boy, and the soldiers were going to come and kill the baby.  So his mommy and daddy hid him for 3 months.  It’s very hard to hide a baby that long because babies cry and are noisy.

 

 

Finally, they could hide the baby no longer, so they made a basket and covered it in tar (you could bring in this science experiment), and Miriam watched over him in the reeds.

 

 

 

While the basket was floating in the reeds, Pharaoh’s daughter came down and found him there.  “A baby!,” she said, “I’ll name him Moses because I drew him out of the water.”

 

 

 

Miriam came up to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Would you like me to find someone who can take care of him for you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Pharaoh’s daughter, “and I will play her to do it.”

 

 

Miriam brought her mother and Pharaoh’s daughter said, “I will pay you to take care of him, and when he is grown bring him back to me.”

 

 

 

One of the things I noticed when I was preparing for this lesson that I had never noticed before, Miriam was sitting right there watching over Moses.  Admittedly, she was hiding, but it’s not like the scene in “Prince of Egypt” where he’s just randomly floating down the Nile river.  He was being watched.

 

Have you ever suddenly noticed something in a story you’ve read many times?