By now, your Bible Quiz Team is probably studying the Ten Plagues. So I thought I would share an interactive we used back in the summer to draw interest in Exodus. This was part of our “Back to School/Quiz Kick-off”

The Ten Plagues Workshop

We used a room with two entries, so that we could circle around and through. Your fellowship hall would work great though. We moved the children from spot to spot telling the story as we went.

1. Water to Blood – Down the center of the hall floor, we placed blue beach towels to respresent the Nile. We told this portion of the story and gave each child a piece of red streamer that they laid “in the Nile”

2. Frogs – We placed kneeding bowls and pillows in this area. We purchased plastic frogs from Oriental Trading. Lots of them. And placed them all over the pillows and in the bowls. We gave each child a frog to take home as a souvenir.

3. Gnats -We sprinkled confetti in the children’s hair.

4. Flies – Again we purchased plastic flies and placed them all about in this area. Then we gave the children fly swatters to try to “kill the flies”. This area was made with chairs covered by burlap. When the children hit the burlap and flies popped up all over.

5. Livestock – We had a collection of stuffed animals laying all about. The children picked them up and threw them in a basket.

6. Boils – Red circle stickers all over the children’s arms and faces went over real well.

7. Hail – Set up some wheat or plants, maybe attach them to plastic bowling pins (or something that would fall over easily. Give the children ping pong balls to throw at the “crops”.

8. Locusts – Paint clothes pins green. If you want , get creative and add eyes and wings. The children took the clothes pins and clipped them to a ficus tree.

9. Darkness – As we told this part of the story, have assistants gather a black bed sheet over the heads of the children. This creates darkness, but not so much that the children were scared. Then we just talked about how dark it would be and how scary it might be for some.

10. Death of the firstborn – We gave a few select children red scarves while telling this portion of the story. When the death angel came, we had children and adults who were the oldest child in their family to sit done BUT only if they did not have a red scarf.

More Ideas:

If you want to help them know which plagues happened to everyone and which ones effected only the Egyptians, you could have the kids draw cards that determine whether they are Egyptians or Hebrews. Then have the correct group(s) participate in each plague.

If you have costumes, it would be fun to include Moses and Pharoah in this one.

I hope you have fun with this one!

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Most of my ministry, I have been concerned about how we have divided our age groups out into separate ministries and seldom find all ages together to worship… or do anything together for that matter. We have all these grandious programs for each age group and then we call ourselves a “Family” church. This is NOT family. This is anti-family.

Children learn how to grow and behave by watching those around them. If they only ever see how children their age behave, how will they behave? Will they grow? I think not. I think of the days of the one room school house. Little ones, looked up to the “Big” kids, couldn’t wait to get to do the things they do. The “big” kids helped the little ones when needed. The little ones were being exposed to greater concepts, then by the time they were to learn the concept themselves, it came easily because they had already heard it before.

Secondly, How can a family grow together spiritually, if they are all under the ministry of different teachers, maybe different idealogies. How can a parent reinforce what is taught at church, if they don’t know what the child was taught?

A family church is one where families worship together and does many of their other activities together. It is one where children are exposed to people of all ages so that they can watch and learn. Where did we ever get the idea that we can put a child in a group of children all his same age until they are 12 years old and then suddenly, throw them into a worship service and expect them to know how to behave and to participate in worship? How are they going to know how to truelly worship and glean from the service for their spiritual benefit? I feel they need to be taught (from birth) to be in the service …participating in the service.

So … now we have all these “family” churches. How do we transition to a truelly Family Church. I am still struggling with the answer, but I am trying to come up with solutions. This is a tough thing to do when you have a church that has been keeping the children separate and you are trying to integrate the children into the service. Many adults now do not want to be bothered with children in the service. Yes, you will have disruptions. Yes, it hard to do. Sometimes, we may not get much out of the service ourselves, especially when we have children who have never been required to sit through a service.

Here are a few ideas I have: (I hope you’ll share your ideas too)

1) Have your children come into the worship service for the first portion of the service. They can at least see and learn to sing and worship and give offerings. They can learn to stay focused for this short portion. They have to do much more than this in school, so why not in church?

2) Have a “Family Day” once a month. On this Sunday, children remain in the worship service with their parents for the whole service. Encourage parents to ‘help’ their children participate and listen during the entire service. The pastor (senior or children’s) could offer a children’s sermon on this Sunday. Perhaps a section of the sanctuary could be designated for families only.

3) Offer children’s bulletins. Have a lay out where they can record what happens in the service. Have them list the songs that were sung and at least one main point from the sermon. At times I have offered prizes to the children if they will show a completed form at the end of the service.

4) If you can’t work it out to have the children in the main sanctuary for worship, then invite other adults to come in and share with them. Do this often. Children need to really know people from church other than a few other kids. Our seniors have so much to offer and we are not taking advantage of their wisdom. (Maybe, if the children know the older people personally, they would be less likely to run through the crowds practically knocking an elderly person down.)

5) Plan activities for the children that include the whole family. No more “drop and go” (babysitting) events.

And here is why I started this whole blog entry in the first place ….

6) Visitation …. Last Wednesday, I arranged to have all our children picked up after school and we headed to the retirement center to visit one of our shut-in couples. They were thrilled when we all showed up. (To tell the truth, the kids were excited too! How cool to have the children’s director pick you up at school). I was concerned that the children would all sit their silently so, I took along some question cards from our board game Life Stories. The questions are to get you to share about your life. I couldn’t get the children to quit talking. They all wanted to answer every question. We all had a ball! We’ll definately, do this again!

Please, share you ideas for all of us!

Mandy

LifeStories, Christian Version

Bring family & friends together to recall and share their LifeStories. An enjoyable pastime with surprising and revealing results, this storytelling game is a way to warm up a family gathering, rekindle a friendship or renew histories. While playing this game, generations of family and friends will talk, laugh and share opinions together as they recall memories, reveal hopes and dreams in response to stimulating questions. An ingenious game that opens a pathway to each other’s heart and soul. LifeStories encourages self-expression, affirmation, creative thinking, problem solving and team work! Includes 3 additional card decks with questions related to the Christian faith. Ages 6 to 106, 2 to 8 Players

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I found a pretty neat piece of software that allows a student a great way to review. This software will create a study guide or several types a quizzes to review material. For the student, the free trial portion of this software is enough. The student can put in their own questions (which would be review in itself); then save the test. The next time they come in and open that test, he can take the quiz in any of the formats. Each time the questions are in a different order. The free version will handle up to 20 questions.

If the teacher purchases the teacher edition, you can upload the tests to their website. The student can download them and take the test over and over for review. They can print the test grade out to report to the teacher. The teacher edition is only about $20.

Below you will see the description from the website. This is worth checking out! ….

MegaCrammer is essential for the student who wants to get ahead. MegaCrammer is a test maker that allows users to create personalized tests to suit their specific needs and greatly inproves study efficiency. The program creates a unique test that changes each time it is taken. MegaCrammer will even grade the test for you and highlight your errors. By simply restarting the test, a new test is created on the same material and in a different order. MegaCrammer allows the user to create multiple-choice, true of false, and fill-in-the-blank tests, as well as study guides. MegaCrammer creates tests for many different subjects, including Math, English, Social Studies, and foreign languages. MegaCrammer allows for easy data manipulation and supports the alphabets of fourteen different languages including Spanish, French, German, Latin, and Italian. There are also free downloads of readymade tests from our website.

http://www.katzreview.com/megacrammer/

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Exodus 14:14 The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.

Our kids are learning this verse this week. Sounds like a simple thing, doesn’t it? But everytime I go over this verse, my mind goes back to my college days. I was working in the strawberry field for a family friend. It was after the strawberry season, so I was the only one in the field. Just doing the weeding and such.

Some bees decided to give me a visit. My mind kept telling me to be still and let the bees go on their way. BUT, the rest of my body was swatting and waving and dancing around. Thankfully, I was not stung. But I clearly remember how I felt. It didn’t matter what my mind said, my body did not want to listen. The advice did not seem right at the time.

This is alot like our spiritual life. Even though we hear what God has to say. We are too close to the situation and we don’t listen to the advice of God or even our spiritual advisors around us.

Lord, help us when we get in a mess. Help us to stop and be still. Because you can handle our situations much better than we can! You see the whole picture!

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I received a catalog today from one of my favorite places to purchase crafts supplies – Guildcraft Arts and Crafts. These crafts seem to be a bit nicer than those you can acquire from Oriental Trading. I like their catalog because they usually tell you what ages can do the craft and how long it takes to make it. The company has always been helpful and supportive. They have been co-operative when a shipment was incorrect, even when it was my own fault.

Anyway, they now have several crafts for Exodus including a weaving project “Moses Basket Placemats”, Ten Commandment stones, and Crossing the Red Sea project.

Go check them out at www.guildcraftinc.com

Hope this is helpful!

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We had a good kick-off to quizzing today! Everyone did a great job.

Honorable Mention

Sarah Dickt (Waycross); Toby Carver (Waycross);

Randi Tapscott (Moultrie); Alexus Jewel (Waycross);

Brittany Carver (Waycross); Holly Pittman (Waycross);

Alexandra Sayre (Valdosta); Emily Carver (Waycross);

Bryonna Wolfe (Waycross);

Excellent (Missing only 3-5)

Zach Carver (Waycross); Kristopher Morse (Valdosta);

Deborah Bontrager (Moultrie);

Superior (Missing two or less)

Marely Rodriguez (Valdosta); Mikaela Farmer (Moultrie);

Emily Hogan (Valdosta); Miraam Conrad (Valdosta);

Ellie Deener (Waycross); Ally Dickt (Waycross);

Brialisse Sayre (Valdosta);

Brooklyn Sheets (Moultrie) – Perfect Score & Quoted 5 Scriptures

Keep up the good work! I’ll see you November 8th in Waycross!

Mrs. Mandy Farmer

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Though I teach my children how to multiply, divide, and diagram a sentence, but fail to show them love, I have taught them nothing. Andthough I take them on numerous field trips, to swim practice and flute lessons; and though I involve them in every church activity, but fail to give them love, I profit nothing. And though I scrub my house relentlessly, run countless errands, and serve three nutritious meals every day but fail to be an example of love, I have done nothing.

Love is patient with misspelled words and is kind to young interrupters. Love does not envy high SAT scores of other homeschool families. Love does not claim to have better teaching methods than anyone else, is not rude to the fourth telephone caller during a science lesson, does not seek perfectly behaved geniuses, does not turn into a drill sergeant, thinks no evil about friends’ educational choices. Love bears all my children’s challenges, believes all my children are God’s precious gifts, hopes all my children establish permanent relationships with Christ, and endures all things to demonstrate God’s love.

Love never fails.

Where there are college degrees, they will fail; where there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we teach in part. But when the trials of life come to our children, the history,math, and science will be done away and faith, hope and love will remain; but the greatest of these is love.

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Playing games that review the information is an effective way, not to mention fun, to review materials. The children are learning the answers whether they have heard the material or not.

Our favorite game is Jeopardy.

Take the time to make a nice board and it will last you for years.

You will need the following:

a tri-fold project board

a pack of variety colored library pockets. You’ll need 5 each of 5 different colors or designs. I purchased them at a school supply store. They came in a pack of 30 with 5 or 6 designs.

a pack of variety colored 3×5 index cards

large paper clips, scotch tape, rubber cement, adhesive magnetic strips, fat black marker

(more…)

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Moses and the Burning Bush

I don’t have any really great ideas for this lesson to make it come alive. I have wanted for years to have someone bring live snakes in to show the kids when we talk about Moses throwing down his staff and the staff turning into a snake. It has never panned out. But just imagine … the kids would have an unforgettable lesson. If you try this … be sure to have a professional.

Here’s a Burning Bush review game idea.

Make a large picture of a bush, placing the sticky part of velcro all over the branches. Cut out red, orange, & yellow flames out of felt. Have the same number of each color.

Divide your children into 3 teams. (Red, Yellow, Orange)

Each time they answer a question correctly, they get to place a flame on the bush. The felt should easily stick to the velcro. The first team to place all their flames, wins the game.

Of course, they have to play this game in their bare feet because they are standing on holy ground!

Have fun!

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