Incorporating information about the Ethiopian church and Ethiopian customs and Ethiopian food
The Ethiopian Orthodox church has been around for 2000+ years, and is full of fascinating iconography and traditions. (In fact, they trace the origins of their church to the encounter between Phillip and the eunuch, so it's a direct link to the lessons.)
Here's what we're doing:
- Theme: God shows his love for all people regardless of their location, skin color, etc. We also tell the kids a little bit about the Ethiopian church--as a way to demonstrate to them that from the beginning, Jesus' message was spread to all corners of the earth and involved people of all colors and origins!
- Cooking: have a volunteer from the parish prepare injera--a traditional Ethiopian flatbread (like a crepe) that we'll eat with feta cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and a mixture of cottage cheese and yogurt (I just googled recipes for injera and Ethiopian cheese) Eat the injera like the Ethiopians do--all share a big flatbread and each tear off a little piece to wrap around the egg/cheese, etc.
- Art: having kids model "Ethiopian-style" crosses out of self-hardening modeling clay. I googled images of Ethiopian crosses and printed them out so the kids can use them for inspiration.
- Games: Chariot races! We tied a rope around a flat furniture dolly (the type that looks like a small pallet on wheels) so that it has a "harness" for pulling. One kid sits on the dolly (after thorough instructions to keep hands off the ground and out from under the wheels) and the other kid pulls it with the rope harness. (We used two dollies so they could race.) Then we had them run a large "racecourse" (i.e. oval) around our parish hall--the kids had a great time, and called it "the most fun church school game EVER!" (BTW, this works great for lessons featuring the Romans too--you can rename the parish hall the "hippodrome".)
