The Burning Bush

When we were studying the life of Moses, I took a bush from the living room and put a string of red Christmas lights I got last year after Christmas for 50 cents. It really glowed when we turned the lights out. The kids loved have a "real" burning bush in our classroom. Anna and Jon Michael are posing with our burning bush.

Quail....What is Quail?

The children enjoyed gathering manna so much, I decided to spend a little more time with the quail that God provided for the Israelites. I used balloons to make 15 "quail". We used them for the children to "catch;" we tried to keep the quail in the air; and we divided into teams and used "quail holders" to put our quail into their houses. I also made a very simple quail pattern and helped the children make a quail as their take-home.

I also used the "Bingo" song for the quail and made letter cards for QUAIL as well. The children took turns pointing to these letters as we sang:

There was a food that God did give

And quail was its name o

Q-U-A-I-L, Q-U-A-I-L, Q-U-A-I-L,

And quail was its name o.

Gathering Manna

We are studying Exodus in my 4-year-old class. When we learned about how God provided the Israelites with manna, I had the children "gather" Frosted Flakes "manna" in little baskets I made with the diecut machine. I put the "manna" on pieces of green construction paper for each one to have his own area to gather from.

We also learned this song to help us remember: (Tune Bingo)

There was a food that God did give

And manna was its name o

M-A-N-N-A, M-A-N-N-A, M-A-N-N-A,

And manna was its name o.

The kids had trouble remembering the letters, and the kindergarten teacher in me saw an opportunity to let them practice letter recognition, so I made letter cards for each letter and one of the kids gets to point to the letters as we sing the song. They love it!!!

Edible Manger!

Recently when teaching a lesson on "Jesus is Born" I made these edible mangers for the class to enjoy. I found the idea for these in a book Becky had called "Creative Bible Learning -Science and Cooking" by. Karyn Henley. This is a very neat book. They were fairly easy to make and the kids really enjoyed them.



Recipe
2 bags of butterscotch chips
1 can chow mein noodles
1 can cocktail peanuts (I omitted these due to a peanut allergy in our class..and I prefer them without peanuts anyway) I think the peanuts would make them harder to work with too!
1 bag small pretzel twist

1. Melt butterscotch chips in a saucepan
2. Stir in peanuts and chow mein noodles
3. Place spoonful of mixture on wax paper
4. Press with spoon (or fingers) into the center of the mixture to make it look like a manger
5. gently press a pretzel twist onto each end of the manger. (Do this before the mixture cools. The pretzels form the manger legs.)

Enjoy!

Trash-Filled Thursdays - Paper Roll Fire

The last lesson we have about Jesus's life is him preparing breakfast by the sea for His friends. To teach this lesson, I built a campfire and we gather around the campfire to hear the lesson. Then, I let them act out the story (will blog about that later) and finish that with our own breakfast by the sea - fishsticks. The kids love this lesson and the props we use in it.

The campfire is made very simply. I found a piece of cardboard and many toilet paper and paper towel rolls. Using the bigger rolls, I built a base for the fire on the card board just by hot glueing the rolls to the cardboard. Then, using the other rolls, I just built the fire up, again using hot glue to hold it all in place. Lastly, I used red, yellow and orange paper to make the flames, glueing them into the fire as well.

We enjoy this prop and this lesson very much.

Trash-Filled Thursdays - Square Kleenex Box

A square Kleenex box was used to help with this review activity. We needed two for this one. Each is covered with bulletin board paper and, then, covered with clear contact paper. Notice we did leave the opening open so we could place items down into the box. We found pictures to represent Elijah and Elisha. We colored them, laminated them and placed them on the boxes with tape. See the previous post to see how these boxes were used in our class.

Elijah and Elisha Review

Elijah and Elisha are tough to keep straight - even for adults. In the 4 year old class, they end their time there learning about these two men but there is still some confusion. So, for our new Kindergartners, we use this to help us ALL keep these two important men straight.

We use two square Kleenex boxes one for each man (see this post). Then we made a poster board for each man as well (see pictures below).

In each Kleenex box, we placed pictures that represented each story that was taught on each man. We would pull the picture out of Elijah's box and review the story. Then, we would place the picture on the Elijah board. We would do the same thing for Elisha.

To do a complete review, we would place all the pictures in one box and as we would take the pictures out, the students would tell us which man it belonged to and we would let them place it on the appropriate poster.

Later, it would be a center game for the students to play as they came into class.