A Note on Several of the Materials Used in this Lesson Set

Ezra and Nehemiah Storybooks

The story is too long to read from the Bible, so we used a combination of 3 items, in this order:

• The Arch Book from Concordia Publishing, called "Zerubbabel Rebuilds the Temple"
• I wrote a short bit about Ezra, which I illustrated with a few pieces of clipart or pictures from coloring books.  Here is the text:
  
  Ezra Teaches the People:  Sixty  years had gone by since Zerubbabel (pronounced: zuh-RUHB-uh-buhl) had rebuilt the temple.  A new king decided to send Ezra to Jerusalem to teach the people there about God’s laws.
  
  Ezra was a priest and his name meant “helper”.  Ezra gathered together another group of exiles to return to Jerusalem.  The king gave them many expensive gifts to take with them to the Lord’s temple.  These riches would be tempting for robbers along the way.  Ezra did not want to ask the king for soldiers to protect the people and their expensive gifts, because he had told the king that God would be with them.  So the people gathered together.  Ezra said that he would pray to God and ask God for a safe journey for us and our children.  God did watch over them and they arrived safely in Jerusalem.
  
  Shortly after they arrived, Ezra learned that the people had been doing many of the same sins that had led them away from God in the past.  Ezra fell to his knees and wept and prayed to God.   The people were sorry for their sins and changed the way that they were behaving.  Ezra helped the people to rebuild their lives with God.
• There is a short story about Nehemiah at this Web address that we also used:  http://www.biblewise.com/kids/.../nehemiah-builds.php

Story Cards

I created 8 story cards (4 per page) about different aspects of the story and found a picture to go with each of them.  (I can't include all of them here due to copyright issues.) These were the titles or descriptions of the 8 cards in order:

1. Led Into Captivity
2. 70 Years of Exile
3. Small map with an arrow showing the route from Babylon to Jerusalem
4. Rebuilding the Altar and Temple
5. The King Sent Ezra to Jerusalem to Teach the People about the Law of God
6. Nehemiah Prays to God
7. Rebuilding the Walls
8. Ezra Reads the Law

Images in this post:
The Arch book cover via Amazon (fair use)
Rebuilding the walls offered by Sweet Publishing under a Creative Commons usage agreement.

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