Acacia in the Desert

March 19, 2012

Story Tray: Jesus Heals the Deaf Man

Target Age
Preschool, Kindergarten, and 1st

Contents
sound bottles which are empty pill bottles with the outside covered by Avery labels.  Inside are screws, pony beads, sequins, and sand.  Instructions for using these can be found at Info Montessori.  I’ve been surprised how popular these are with the five and six year olds, I would have thought they’d be too old for them.

Palm tree from Constructive Playthings Wood Block Nativity Set

Jesus, people, and deaf man figures from Worship Woodworks

A cardboard box lid makes the tray

Explanation
This was inspired by the Young Children and Worship: Jesus Heals Blind Bartimaeus story.  It sits on the New Testament shelf in our Sunday School classroom.

Script
Adapted from Mark 7 in the New American Standard Bible.

At a time when the Romans ruled the land of Israel, Jesus was by the Sea of Galilee.  Point to blue sea on green underlay.  Place Jesus figure. 

The people brought Jesus a man who was deaf.  He couldn’t hear and could hardly speak.  Place “people” figure and deaf figure. 

Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself.  Move two figures off to side.

Then Jesus put His fingers into the man’s ears.  Touch your ears, or touch the sides of the figures head.

Jesus spit, and touched the man’s tongue.  Put hand in front of mouth, and say “pppt” then touch figure’s face.  

Jesus looked up to heaven with a deep sigh, and said “Be opened!”  Look up at ceiling and raise arms.

And he could hear and talk!  The people were utterly astonished, saying, “He can make the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

February 13, 2012

Miracles Book Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten – 1st Grade

Contents
A bunch of Christian picture books placed in a 12 x 12 inch tote

Explanation
This bag was introduced in the months leading up to Easter.  Although I didn’t plan it this way, I did end up with two books on the Feeding of the 5000 and two books on Jesus Healing the Paralytic.  That covers healing miracles and power over nature miracles, but I’d like to add one about the resurrection of the dead — perhaps the daughter of Jairus or Lazarus.  It’s pretty difficult to find children’s books about Christ casting out demons, which be another category of miracle.

The Christmas book is because I have so very many of them and if I put them all in the same bag it would get repetitive.  So right now I have one Christmas book each in the Life of Christ and Miracles bag.

January 25, 2012

Story Tray: Abraham and Promise of Descendants

Target Age
Preschool, Kindergarten, and 1st

Contents
3 plastic boxes with filled with sand, blue and silver glitter (stars) and wooden Messiah figure, all from Michaels craft store

Trunk for oak tree of Mamre from Haba Middle Eastern blocks, and top of tree from Constructive Playthings Wood Block Nativity Set

Abram and Sarai figures from Worship Woodworks set 609

Angel figure is sadly not the same size as Abram and Sarai — it’s a good half inch thicker.  I wish I had known beforehand that the sets were not interchangeable.  But the angel is from Worship Woodworks set 637.

Tent is a square building block with a piece of scrap leather (available from craft stores) draped over it

Explanation
This was inspired by the Godly Play: Great Family story.  It sits on the Old Testament shelf in our Sunday School classroom.

January 18, 2012

Creation Book Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten

Contents
All items placed in a 12 x 12 inch tote

Could Also Add

Explanation
The books in this take-home bag run the gamut from a board book (Shiny Touchy) to a philosophical book about evolution (Yellow and Pink).  The book of poetry illustrated by Eric Carle celebrates the majesty of God’s creation.  The Norman Messenger book provides the backbone for this story bag, as it takes its text directly from the New Living Bible translation, with no additions.

One of my favorite bags, because the books complement each other perfectly by being so different stylistically.

January 11, 2012

Noah Book Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten

Contents
All items placed in a 12 x 12 inch tote

Explanation
I got the idea for a Bible book bag from the literacy bags that are sometimes used as homework by schools.  When selecting the books in this bag, a main concern was that illustrations of the ark were realistically proportional to the animals.  I didn’t want a cartoonish ark to give the idea that this was a fictitious story.

January 4, 2012

Abraham Book Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten-1st

Contents
All items placed in a 12″ x 12″ tote. I used a luggage tag saying “Abraham” on the handle. 

Explanation
These bags were designed to enhance the home church connection.  As I put together each story bag, my goal was to have them substantively different.  It would be easy, for example, to have an Arch book in each bag, felt pieces to act out the story, and a foam craft.  So I went further afield when looking for books.  If one of the books in the bag rhymes (Big Test), then the next one needs to be a point-of-view interpretation (Sarah Laughs), and so on and so forth.

This bag could be improved upon by adding a book specifically about Abram and Lot.

November 21, 2011

3 Books for Psalm 23 Take-Home Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten, but would probably work with early elementary ages

Contents
A bunch of Christian books for children placed in a 12 x 12 inch tote

Details
This is an easy bag.  It’s designed to be done all in one go on a Sunday afternoon, with zero crafts.

Originally I planned to have one bag that was completely David books, and another bag that was completely Psalm 23 books.  That plan has changed, for several reasons.

  1. The parents can read all the books aloud in one go, because the books aren’t too similar.
  2. The child checks out the David bag this week, the Psalm 23 bag next week, and the Good Shepherd bag the following week.  He hears the same text over an extended period of time, and without consciously realizing it, begins to memorize a psalm.  This wouldn’t happen if all the Psalm 23 books were consolidated into one bag.

The Little Golden book was moved to this bag instead of the Good Shepherd bag because I decided the illustrations were specific to David.  None of my other Psalm 23 books have the shepherd playing a harp, but this one does.

I love the way the Jean Marzollo book interweaves Psalm 23 with the story of David and Goliath.  As David goes down by the stream bed to fill his pouch with stones in preparation for fighting Goliath, he sings to himself about the valley of the shadow of death.  Quite fitting!

Helen Caswell’s drawings evoke a sense of peace and contentment.  In terms of sheer beauty, this books pictures are the best.

October 19, 2011

5 Books for Good Shepherd Take-Home Bag

Target Age
Kindergarten

Contents
A bunch of Christian books for children placed in a 12 x 12 inch tote

Green pasture underlay
1 blue felt for still waters
2 rocks for valley of shadow of death
1 wolf to stand next to valley of shadow of death
1 shepherd
3 sheep
4 sticks for sheep pen

Explanation
This Bible take-home bag was inspired by Young Children and Worship which combined the Parable of the Lost Sheep, Psalm 23, and the Good Shepherd of John 10 into one cohesive story.  Without the storytelling kit, this bag would be pretty bland — three of the books have the same text!  But I’m hopeful that being able to act out the story will up the fun quotient.

October 17, 2011

Noah Accordion

Filed under: Flood — Tags: , , , , , , — Acacia @ 8:08 am

Target Age
Kindergarten-1st

Materials
See 9 Items for Lapbooking for more information.

  • 12 x 12 sheet of patterned paper cut into 4 long sheets of 12 by 3 inches
  • Colored pencils

Prep Work
None

Activity Description
Reviewed the Noah story, and instructed kids to draw what happened in the story on the paper.  Encouraged them to draw what happened first on the left side, and what happened next in the middle, and so on.

Afterwards
I folded the paper accordion style, and decorated the cover.

Field Report
Easy to do.  Most kids struggled with the idea of drawing separate scenes of the Noah story, and instead drew one large one.  I had to help a couple of them with ideas for what to draw.

Storage
I wrote each kid’s name on an index card, and stuck it inside a ziploc sandwich bag.  Throughout the two months we worked on this project, the books went into the bags and came home with me each week.

Final Result
I spent a weekend gluing the books the kids had made into manila folders, and gave them to the kids on Sunday.  For the kids who only attended a few Sundays, I used Lifeway provided materials to fill in around the edges.  Here’s one final result that showcases the Noah Accordion.

 

October 10, 2011

Creation Circles

Filed under: Creation — Tags: , , , , , , — Acacia @ 8:12 am

Target Age
Craft was done with Kindergarten-1st, although I’ve done something similar with preschoolers

Materials
See 9 Items for Lapbooking for more information.

  • Stickers of animals and plants – I used the Design Your Own Jungle Scene from Oriental Trading.
  • 2 gold circles per student – I used colored printer paper, although construction paper might also work.  The trusty die cut machine at my library was used to punch them out
  • 2 green circles per student
  • 2 blue circles per student
  • 1 white circle per student – for the cover
  • Brads
  • Crayons

Prep Work
None, other than to punch out the circles and gather the materials.

Activity Description
The idea for this activity came from Answers in Genesis How to Draw the 6 Days of Creation which highlights the parallelism between the first three days and the last three days.  I tried to have the kids do the actual coloring activity, but folding the page into thirds was beyond them.  So this activity highlights the paralellism with colors.

  • Gold Circle: Write a 1 on the back.  Color half of the circle black to symbolize light and darkness
  • Blue Circle: Write a 2 on the back.  Color clouds on the top half and waves on the bottom.
  • Green Circle: Write a 3 on the back.  Stick plant stickers on it.
  • Gold Circle:  Write a 4 on the back.  Color the sun, moon, and stars.
  • Blue Circle: Write a 5 on the back.  Stick bird stickers on it.  Draw fish on it as well.
  • Green Circle: Write a 6 on the back.  Stick animal stickers on it.

As each kid finished, he brought his circles over to me.   I put them in the correct order, used a ice pick to drill a hole in the circles, and let the kids choose which brad to use to attach them together.

Afterwards
I decorated the cover.  The title I cut from an extra student page and glued it on.

Field Report
Easy to do, although most of the kids had mixed up the birds and the beasts.  Some of the animals ended up on the 5th day, and some of the birds ended up on the 6th.

Storage
I wrote each kid’s name on an index card, and stuck it inside a ziploc sandwich bag.  Throughout the two months we worked on this project, the books went into the bags and came home with me each week.

Final Result
I spent a weekend gluing the books the kids had made into manila folders, and gave them to the kids on Sunday.  For the kids who only attended a few Sundays, I used Lifeway provided materials to fill in around the edges.  Here’s one final result that showcases the Creation Circles.

 

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