Our Sermon on the Mount Summer Program
We concentrated on the Sermon On The Mount Lesson for the entire summer. We made a continuous bulletin board showing what we learned. In the center of the board was a mountain with Jesus on top and the title "Sermon on the Mount". I am not posting a complete lesson set, but I will share what we did for each topic:
Beatitudes: showed the sermon on the mount scene from "Jesus of Nazareth" staring Jeremy Sisto and discussed. Afterwards, we recalled what we learned by writing the 'blessed' of each beatitude on the left wing of a bee cutout and the answer to each on the right wing. We hung these around a paper skep.
Salt of the Earth: We mapped our tongues (per "It Only Takes a Spark" isbn# 0-570-05329-3 lesson #18) we used sugar, salt, water melon, lemon, bacon, cinnamon candy. We hung a completed tongue map on the wall. Note: each child mapped their own tongue.
Law: we talked about the three basic categories of law. 1) ceremonial, 2) civil, and 3) moral. We talked about how that might apply to us today. We emphasized how Jesus came to uphold the moral law and we made a Ten Commandment tree to put on our wall.
Anger & revenge: we talked about things that make us angry and what we might to do curb our anger. We wrote our ideas on paper ice cubes and posted them around an angry face on our bulletin board. There was a lot of open discussion on this one...seems we have anger issues here :-)
Vows or Oaths: we studied the Pledge of Allegience and what it means to us...talked a little bit about US founding history. Hung a flag for our board. We looked at vows we take in church when we are baptized or become a member.
Prayer: We learned the Lord's Prayer in Hand sign language. We hung a graphical representation of it on our board.
Money: I placed a lot of fake money on a table before the kids entered. when they asked about it, I told them they could have as much or little as they wanted... they were eager to share as new kids arrived. We talked about storing treasures on Earth vs. Heaven.
Building on solid ground: we divided up into teams and each team was instructed to build one tower. Each team had a different type of building block (ie: legos, wooden, cardboard). When a team had completed its tower, the teacher shook the table to test the foundation of the tower. The were some shocked kids until we explained the purpose of the lesson!
Testing their knowledge: We gave them an open book (Bible) test during the last class to see what they learned. (ref: "Zondervan's Great Bible Trivia Workout" by Brad Densmore pages 62-62 - update 2017 available now as an e-book or paperback on Amazon). We put a blank copy of the quiz on our board.
