I almost decided not to post this lesson, as it wasn't all I wanted it to be. We were wiped out last week with a stomach bug, and Sunday morning on the way out the door it hit my husband, so I was solo with the kiddos, more than a little stressed, and rather chaotic! Plus, I was recovering from feeling icky, so I wasn't my full teacher-self. I'll post what we DID do, and then make some notes about what else I had planned.
Our starter activity was for the kids to color (with sharpies!) some laminated storytelling pieces about Elijah's challenge to the prophets of Baal. (I had cut them out, laminated them, and put small pieces of magnet tape on the back). This was a good opener while the kids straggled in...AND they got to use permanent markers, which just made their morning. It lasted a little longer than I had planned because some of our kiddos came in more than a little late. As they colored, we reviewed previous lessons using our word wall.
When it was time to tell the story, I told the first part of Elijah's ministry by drawing out the story on a white board. (This ended up being more challenging than it should have, as someone had left the lids off our dry erase markers...) The kids always enjoy having me draw out things, as my drawing skills leave much to be desired! We end up with lots of stick people! When I teach a story this way, I draw pieces of the story as we go. I do a lot of "questioning" when I teach, such as "What do you think happened next?" or "Why do you think God told us that part of the story?" or "Oooh, how do you think King Ahab felt when Elijah challenged his pretend god, Baal?" The more invested they can get in the story, the more they pay attention AND the more they remember!
When we got to the part about the contest on Mount Carmel, I passed out their individual pizza pans/cookie sheets that we keep in our classroom. As I told this part of the story, I added magnetic pieces to MY board and they copied me with theirs. They always LOVE the part about Elijah mocking the prophets and asking if their "god" is on vacation or asleep. :) After we finished the story, they got to retell it piece by piece as a group. They took turns and did a great job!
Side note: What I INTENDED to do first for this part was to bring in a large bowl, "build" an altar with 12 stones, dump 12 waterpots (dixie cups) of water over the altar, and try to light it with a grill lighter to show the kiddos that it would be impossible to catch that on fire without God's intervention. However, when my hubby got sick 10 minutes before time to go, I dropped everything to help him and left it behind.
The next activity was supposed to be a scrapbook page I made with "stones" representing the 12 tribes of Israel to cut out and glue on an altar page. However, that page got left behind in the chaos of the morning, so we improvised! I quickly ripped up pieces of brown paper into rough rectangles, had each kid count out 12, and let them glue them onto a backgrouund page. Then, we tore red, orange, and yellow construction paper to make "flames" to put on the altars. I didn't get a picture of this and my co-teacher has already taken them home and put them in the kids' scrapbooks, so you'll just have to imagine it...or maybe my son can make another one. :) Although my planned page was more "professional" looking, I'm not so sure that I didn't like the improv version better!
Afterwards, we had time for a quick review using our "Parent Review Card" that I send home each week.
Last, we played a game to help us work on our current "pew packer" memory card for evening services. Prior to our evening services, one of the men in our congregation works on memory cards with the kiddos. When they know the card and can tell an elder, they get trophies. My class is working on the junior version together, so this week we played a jumping game. I cut out and laminated the chapter names and subjects for each entry on the card and the kids had to jump from each chapter to the corresponding subject and say it out loud. My classroom is super small, so there was the added challenge of not knocking each other over. Ha! Fun times, and they did great!
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