Spies in the Promised Land

My pictures have been in the memory card black hole, so I haven't updated my lessons in a while.  These will not be in order, but here we go!

Before I share a Bible story each week, we review previous weeks using our word wall.  I am always impressed by how much the kids remember!  Also, I try to make them think about our current story and have them make predictions or draw conclusions based on what we already know about God before I share the full story.  The more they "own" the story, the more they remember!  :)

When we study Numbers 13 and 14, which includes the story of Joshua and Caleb's faithful report, I ALWAYS make sure to have a "milk and honey" snack.   We talk about how God promised a land "flowing with milk and honey," and the kids struggle to picture that figurative language.  So, after we talk about how that means it would just be better than they could imagine, we break out the milk and honey.  This year we got boxes of vanilla "Tru Moo" milk (YUM!), pretzels dipped in honey, and raisins to represent the grapes the spies carried.   Because I teach Sunday morning class, I try to keep any relevant snacks somewhat healthy so the kids aren't wired when they go to worship in the auditorium.  :)

Following the story and our snack, we review using our word wall, which I have posted about previously.  We focus heavily on how Joshua and Caleb trusted God (and had "faith) and the others were influenced by the unfaithful spies to not believe God's promises because of what they could see in the land before them (and had "fear").

Our next activity depends on my current class.  Sometimes we do "quilling" and make grapes from curled purple paper.  Other times, we just glue purple circles onto paper to make large bunches of grapes.  This year, we traced their handprints on construction paper and put "handles" on them to fit around their hands.  On one handprint for each kid, we wrote "faith," and on the other, "fear."  We talked about different parts of the story and they raised their hands that said "faith" if we talked about Joshua or Caleb and "fear" if we talked about the others.  Then, I gave them different scenarios that might happen to them, and they had to choose if what I told them showed "faith" or "fear."  Here, we focused on obedience.

I use the reproducible story from the workbook that goes with this:  http://www.amazon.com/Young-Readers-Bible-Bonnie-Bruno/dp/0784705054/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388433954&sr=8-2&keywords=young+reader%27s+bible

(Note:  I could not find the workbook for sale online anymore.  Perhaps it is out of print?)

I do NOT recommend this book as a substitute for using the Bible, but it does have some good "easy reading" stories to encourage confidence as the kids find words and read on their own some.  We frequently do activities at the beginning or end of class where they have to find and circle important words in the story. I  always brag on how well they are "reading" when they do this successfully!