"Cereal Boxes and Plastic Tubing"
Our Wed. Night Kids Fellowship has been studying "About" the Bible. Here are some things we've done. More later. <>< Neil
New Books of Bible Art Project
We collected cereal boxes (Word is bread!) and had kids decorate one for each book of Bible, cover the box with paper. They had to research each book and write certain materials on each cereal box. Then we used books to memorize in order. They liked it a lot. We put paperclips in top of boxes and hung our Bible boxes on a line in Fellowship Hall.
Torah/Mezuzah -Art Project for First 5 Books
Now we're teaching them about the "categories of books" (Law, History, Wisdom/Poetry, Prophets, Gospel). Using games, etc. Our kids are really responding to these lessons and memory work. HERE IS THE ART PROJECT we just did for LAW category:
We identified Moses' statement in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6 below) about the importance of writing/seeing the word where you live/work/sleep/rise up. So we made Mezuzahs -traditional Jewish scripture boxes that go on a doorpost.
We made ours out of 1" CLEAR plastic tubing -figuring the kids would want to CONTINUE TO SEE what was in it and probably play with it a bit at home.
We bought the clear tubing from local hardware, cut it into 7 inch pieces. Kids decorated it with markers and glitter glue (but not smothering the whole thing -gotta be able to see what's inside). Then they selected one of the following verses, cut it to fit inside the tube.
If you cut the verse paper width and height JUST RIGHT, the paper will curl a bit inside the tube so that you don't need to seal the tube to hold the paper inside. Then we provided double-sided tape so they could stick it on their bedroom doorpost or front doorpost at home. The project itself took about 20 minutes and turned out neat. The helpers and students enjoyed thinking about how to decorate their Mezuzahs with symbols and words.
Possible verses:
“Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Deuteronomy. 6:4
“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them on your hand and forehead and write them on your doorpost....” Deuteronomy 6:6-9
Moses said to Joshua: “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8
“The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” -from the Song of Moses in Exodus 15:2
Sarah said, “God has brought laughter to me.”
-Genesis 21:6
“And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.” Genesis 1:31
There are many Bible songs to sing.
We made up verses for the popular (and funny) "Give Me Oil in My Lamp" (which includes such fun standard verses as give me gas for my ford keep me truckin for the Lord).
Our verses were: "Give me strength from the Bible, it's my guidebook for survival" and "Gimme a cheer for the Covenant, cause I'm part of it and lovin' it."
Neil MacQueen
